Awake before me every morning,

cutting away at your heels

and forcing them into the tight

new spaces you’ve built in

your expectations. 

If only I’d learned to say the right things, 

there might be room for me there,

too. 

Too bad you were never able

to neatly cut at my tongue.

It always grew back

into the spaces between

you and the knife

and the night.

In the end we’ve both said

some appalling and unfair things.

For instance,

I said I wanted someone

who could love me like princes 

love princesses in the grand,

romantic stories. 

And you, 

through the pain, 

said you 

did.

Now you ask, the thing

I’m most afraid of turning

into is my dad.

By the time Columbus jumped down into the lazy

lapping waves of the new world, she was no longer new.

She was at least old enough to buy a packet

of thin, white cigarettes, that had thinner

gold stripes and emitted even thinner wafts

of smoke. (So favored by thin, pale old men

with curled mustaches who thought smoking

made them look regal and tempered their leers.)

By the time the rest of us arrived—burned red by the sun

over the ocean and the atmosphere in our

mothers’ wombs—she was nearing middle age,

but appeared to be much older. In the hospice

we stood back, afraid to breathe, as her soul

curled its wings, touched the tips together, and then

took off. She knew, like mothers know,

that sometimes putting things on the high shelf

is the only way to keep them safe. Now

the same water laps at her skirts as before,

no cleaner for having been purified by

moving through us. Down throats, back over tongues,

out of eyes and pores and pissed onto fires.

There is nothing that touches her that we have not touched.

Tendrils of water tug and sigh: ou-rs, ou-rs, ou-rs.

One man steps back and notices the frame,

askew from the shuddering mass of eyes that have,

dully lovingly curiously hatefully stared slipped

over across it. He thinks to fix it now would be

a tragedy. The dust collected around it

would leave the wellworn outline on the wall

as a reminder. Instead he jumps up, stamps his feet until

the walls shake and the frame tilts its head,

concedes that he’s there and that its seen him seeing.

Satisfied he’s left his mark, he goes outside

to smoke one of his thin, white cigarettes, lighting it

with her burning center, as another year of

lapping waves climbs her skirts for want of anything

else to do. It will manifest.

In the dark tent, surrounded by candles

lighting soft, rolling fog,

        she shatters.

The shards of them flip through empty space

and startle the rooks on their crooked perches.

Black and grey feathers ruffle. Heads turn.

Breaths catch.

        Hearts reach out.

Every pair of eyes holds wide

as their bodies fall, tilt, throttle the hard-packed dirt

with their wings

        and violently collide.

She appears before them from nowhere,

raises her arms and bows low. Inside

wings beat against her ribs.

        She soars.

They thought they’d find you cold in death,

not gone four days against exo-

thermic fairings, turning slowly.

Is warmth what made us different?

I re: leased it. You re: sorbed it.

They don’t know what to make of it.

I was bought to serve, not protect

you from the faded fairness of

youth and dark nights awake. Tender

you wrapped your fingers round my wrist

and tugged. I have a hard drive full

of your memories to upload

for them to re: member you by.

I’ll be wiped clean, passed on. I beg

them to leave us, over and o-

Impossible, they say, as I

cling. The bed sags with the weight of

your name near my teeth. Your son tugs

at me the same gentle way. A-

way. Rolls my name over his tongue.

Il-sa. Ils-a. I-lsa. I-Il.

Let go.

When I was young,

being awake at 2 AM

with someone, meant

an adventure. 

Rough fingers in knotted

curls. Damp, warm, breath

secrets told in passing

no thought given.

Anything was possible

until the grown ups woke.

Now being awake

means lying completely

still. Not drawing attention, in

case of interest.

Conversations at 2 AM

end in pleas more often

than not. The future is 

indecipherable. 

Nothing is thinkable

until the grown ups sleep.

Those early mornings remembered

feel like the rough rug

I ran across my cheek. No

more than fuzzy tile 

as I lay on my stomach, 

rib cage pinching my skin

between it and the cinderblock floor

beneath. They smell of the unforgiving

rubber soles of his steel toed boots,

of the dirt and grass we carried in

on our bare feet. 

And wood supports, moist smell

from seven Florida summers and 

indifferent living. 

The chanson man in the background

is contemplating how to puree his heart.

It makes me think

of wicker etegieres, painted white

and becoming black 

from the smoke and the dying flames. 

A note, not to forget this moment, 

to travel forward and intercept 

the memory. Record. Remember. Rec— 

Play it back and I can’t tell if

the flames are in the future or the past.

But my ribs still ache when I lay face down. 

His boots still un-forgive

and the wood is still damp, heavy

with twenty-five Florida summers. 

Remember it from before it happened. 

Rec—