Aquatic Elegy

you're my favorite imaginary friend.

the only one to escape

the child sewn to ceiling

porcelain limbed hollow

flight from your voice to my memories

so I told you (the one with the right words):

if I stretch your skin to a parachute

all the pieces will still shatter

when you exit orbit

and watching makes me burn

the sheets canopy draped

to escape the sun



but during the day,

when I leave,

I wish I could carry fire in my hands

and bring it to my mouth like candy when

I'm hungry

because it's always freezing and...

nothing you say makes it better.

I'm still going home, fingers and knees on splinters, and waiting for someone new to copy the keys.

because you're still gone, and I'm too small for the imprint of the body in my bed.

tracing the margins to fill with more stories of why

we can't meet for drinks sometime between twilight and dawn,

and why

I'm (sorry) a liar



Twilight:

you're taking pictures

(other girls)

while I'm hiding beneath

a bed.

the flash cast shadow

covers my hands

and for a second

the circuit completes

I can almost follow the impulse to where you're standing

where she's looking

and over-expose the frame

(your bones hold a network of tunnels,

and I'm creeping in and out 'til lost
in skeletal structure and nervous lines)

dawn:

you have the child,

I keep the girls,

and the shift

axis-shudder keeps us asleep