guest

once we were women or rather
the beginning of trees
loose with sturdy lovers

you the calling and I the sphere

we ate biscuits of second guesses
place-cards for absence and exception
our house and its ravaged doors

we washed our fists and coated the mirror with brine

we begged for the seasonal crushing of berries
hostages to the vine

stooped
we let pass
the killer

don’t bury the birdcage

you are no more the viking than the prayer
a wasteland of irony
a house sketched in fire and envy

your solitudes your fortresses your sounds of extinction
once carried home

I am an abstract           secrecy on tap
scurrying chair drifting towards the corner

loose landscapes crowd the mirror
centuries sprawl across the couch

you lay this coarse earth
poise
convict

following

third is the mime’s conversation,
shuttered

longing for a sightline she
grows petals in her closet

winds the hush around her hand,
second seam closing in

flush from her climb
she cradles,
and roams through rips in the sky

her first wound is the desert, silent blast
the burnt field