Snow never stays white for long

the skin cannot stay clean.

Dirt sinks in.

I can only stand in the cold

for an hour before my heart

goes blue.

I am the hidden

green in hazel eyes

you almost forget me.

I am always sitting too close

stroking the lint from your

black dogs fur.  Chewing

your food for you.

Wrap yourself

in the ink

of dead poets.

And your wrist

and your wrist

will scar over.

The audience cry

and cry

break and break

against the day

with you.

A balled up tissue

Burns slow, stops

Often though I light it

Over and over

For you – a beacon

Glowing,

Slumped on a saucer

- you took the ashtray

The shoes from the corner -

Though I came on a stray

Cigarette in my scrambling

Assembling an altar

(you left back in May)

Just as you left it

Bent in the centre

Perfect

I held it, slit,

Emptied its innards

Onto my tongue

Cradled your taste

Willing saliva

Barefaced and kneeling

In front of our bed,

Throw draped just so

Sage leaves more so

Your photo propped up

And that same slouched tissue

Oozing smoke, steady,

That lingered for days.

Miles have passed

to bring us here:

jutting, rocky edge of a mountain

along the river

across the field

just beyond the place we thought soft

comforts of home would be kept.

Wringing out the sleep made during

the other end of a night,

shaking every step

fingers of raw cold.

Snow cuts away

shops that keep the extra stores,

coffee stacked in bags,

potatoes for warm bellies,

delicate leaves of green

for ballast against the white.

So many miles.

We drove to the next little town. It was

a mild September evening. Rain began to fall

for the first time all summer. We

argued as he drove along US 41, we

argued. He wanted to drive across the state

line where he could buy beer at a take out

window. I wanted to go home to History homework.

I’m not drunk, he said. Take me home, I said.

He passed a dim line of cars going up a long hill.

We hit a wet oil slick in the passing lane did a 360

slipped off the road down a small slope through a wire

fence into a tree near a shallow pond while going fast.

When we struck the tree the

engine was pushed into the front seat the

steering wheel buried in his soft skull.

I was found screaming in the back seat.

After that I had eyes. I could see things

I couldn’t see before. People I knew,

and others I didn’t know, had been swallowed

by the earth. Marked. New, and old,

I was bleeding from every known opening,

and from some no one had told me about.

Her wrist

highlights guilt and

anxiety for new

skin she identifies with which

sheds fur

Looking for the scrap in a day, a week, but this one is too small and that one too weary. Believing that it is possible to trade now for later, but missing the magic of the present. I unravel my hair at the end of each day as a symbolic casting of of all I carry: books, bags, bookbags, keys, frames of glass to improve my vision. Clothes to lie to you about who I am and what it is like to be me. Most of us don’t care what the other is about, but a few with hearts too big for their chests will love you before knowing you.  Love you for just existing, this makes you a better person.  Because you want to see what they see, wat they know you are capable of.  So, is this a lie? Do they know you better than you know yourself? Picture this, you and me and all we believe that is real.  What color is it?  What does this life taste like?  How is the weather?

brown backed notebooks fed to the fire

as the steam roller chugs along

East Coast Road, looming higher

than its shiny chested servants

rushing round in ragged lungis

attending to the monstrous

machine’s every need

they have already razed

the houses, shops, illegal extensions

built claiming a better life

inside walls exposed

a Ganesh tile observes

his failure – the wrong

obstacles removed

smoke billowing from the warm tar

the workers’ feet swell

in rubber boots

as they walk the hot coals

I sit naked ash covered

smoke swirling on the ghat

my hair matted

my cup a skull

as I search

for rags and bones

among the ashes

The cold working its way into my lungs,

systematically

burning its way up

and around the edges of my throat

until I am taking that

            deep

                        breath

                                    in

and hold it,

in this second time stops

to observe the

blue and white sugar cookies

on the coffee table

and eyes fall on the tumbler glass of

water

            just

                        out

                                    of

                                                                                               reach.

Let it go,

Pinch your throat together and push out air,

Resistance and impedance.

Feel it burn, burn, burn.