The story starts

between one breath and another

and it has such terrible teeth

sinking into me, so hungry

with its carnivorous strength.

It beats like a fist on the door

a shaking fist of a man

who I have never seen cry.

Why he is crying now, I can't bear to know.

But I open the door anyway

he is standing there and I am afraid

that if I hide he will not go away.

That what he says will never go away.

It's a lie of course.

It cannot be a true thing.

We were going to be married in July.

First Freeze

The first skin of ice

grows like dawn across the pond

with fractal patterns

spinning in a liquid fingerprint.

A breath would break it

but still it stretches with fragile edges

tightening its hold on the smooth surface.

A misty layer taking a pearl sheen

it is the quietest spreading thing.

What would not bear a fingertip

will grow swirling bones of strength.

Winter nurtures the newborn

and nothing thickens into new stone.

From a tendril of affection

comes a love you can stand on.

Blinded love

For this only can I give you

the sweetest shade of my own two eyes

In your place of pain

in your gaping wound

I can place no healing hand

Stand you there shaking

with the spit and spittle

scattered across your face

with the stench of loss of control

streaming from you in potent flood

and you are a broken thing

an eagle on shattered wings

I cannot reach to you my friend

cannot speak to silence the sounds

of those gutted breaths you keep taking

I am myself bound

myself a broken bird

a mouth of fear standing in darkness

This only can I give you

That I shall not see your shame

that you must not see me seeing

you in all your filth and fear.

My eyes are closed and heart open

This only can I give you

the blessed darkness of face turned aside

of a shame unseen.

Ice Snap

The loudest rupture comes in spring

on the tallest finger of the oldest cherry tree

out in the midst of the green

The bees wait for it

slowing their buzz in their waxy cones

to better hear the report

The birds keep up a constant pattern

across the nondescript sky

drifting on silent breezes with cocked heads

The sun lingers day by day

each day a minute longer or two

just to see, just in case

The loudest rupture comes in spring

on the tallest finger of the oldest cherry tree

With the first petal sprung

Spring sounds out across the green.

Rude Awakening

I woke up and all the clocks were changed.

I walked out and all the locks were changed.

I have no key to turn the time

no hand to turn the key

There's a circle with the center

and I'm a perimeter

What does it mean to be a cipher

with no denotation, no equation

no clue towards conclusion?

What does it mean to ask a question

but as a suggestion?

You asked if I was running late

if I thought I should go walking.

You always held me in a net

but there was never a connection.

I dreamt you were a dream come true

but I awoke and all the locks were changed.

seamaid

Boot it ill to claim

this sort of travail, this travel

as a crime, this climb

to the top of the bottom of the heap

and at least it was not so deep

as the last dream

where you swam like a fish

across the scratching sand

and every breath was strangling

with your jewel skin streaked all ruby red

and the whole world a facet, a faucet

with the light turned off

with no water flowing

How to handle that dream but to dive

again and dare some transformation

so it is and so it shall be

but what worse curse this

with women's wiles and fishy styles

half-soul, half-flesh

and nothing doing.

Don't call it travel-- this travail

you half thing in water, in air

dragging your descendants

through evolution.