i wrote a poem on the kitchen floor
for the days your footsteps would not fall,
indian-style and high hopes, i can't
keep tracing your profile into stone;
i unstitched the threads you'd grown
accustomed to, baby, i can't
keep building an army out of nothing
without taking a few galaxies from the night sky;
i wrote out the songs in my veins that i
kept hearing at night beside your absence,
blood pulsing louder than a shot-gun wound
to the chest, sepia photographs my tourniquet;
i fell back fifteen years when it became silent,
swiss mocha hair & azure blue skies, little girl
with daddy's eyes, strawberry seltzer thinned
liquid opaque blood, glitter-kissed cheeks;

we glowed much easier then:
now i've become half-comatose
in the bed beside your boy-shape,
pretty pattern of a living ghost.

(2003)