We Are Nothing If Not ThusIf it would make any difference, the trees in the backyard would rain Rice Krispy treats if not monks and sad cats. Once I thought you were going to speak Mandarin and can yourself with miniature carrots but instead you drove down to the beach chasing a flowering boulder. Must I continue to throw words at this mirror full of foot-long fireplace matches? I have missed you, sweetheart, your wrappers and rings, your ratchets and reasons where. Please if you eat this remember I said once you have a tasteful yet inaudible sense of the surreal. I meant it then and I always will. You are reading this message in large part because you are not my mother. bone songwhose words scratch and claw at lover whose words tear into the flesh of husband whose words bleach the bones of our babies whose tiny bones before beginning shiver and click like dice in my hands dice I choose to shake such barren bones I’ll never know how to sing the marrow into so many hollow bones. A Convention of DeerFive houses earlier, snowflakes littered the blackened night. As deer, we gathered in the street, thick with hunger and a beveled rage. We stumbled along the curve and glide of trails with stiffened knees and frail legs that we might graze through your town, devouring every plant, every winter flower, every chrysanthemum. It is not enough. We startle, we turn, we kick. We smash our jagged winter through your windows onto your duvets, the sharp cold night, the giant snowflakes, your shivering shards of glass. sownwhen I touch his hand his hand doesn’t touch mine he says uhmm a sound in his voice I know has no meaning a silken pouch to hold it in red my embroidery is green, yellow I bury myself the pouch in my yard I stay the child my great joy I tied myself to my child in the knot before I planted it we are strong together no matter what I stay Assent |
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