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I fell in love with autumn when I discovered how little fires fell from the sky dry as leaves— as if dying could be a miracle if one just dressed the part.

A man dies, but you only remember the boy, a lifetime like a blink then a nod— if I could ask any questions, they would be composed of whispers, —silent like a blink, a nod.

I’m watching a person decay, she’s crawling into her skin: a reverse metamorphosis— a frailty of skin and bones and just when I think she cannot get any smaller, a wave crashes over her and strips her of all the muscle she carried yesterday, and suddenly tomorrow seems weaker, less tangible, less important.

I've bit everything except my own tongue & like a song, words spilled across— lines like trembling to soothe & dislocate, adding melody to each day turned night turned day.

In that well at her hips I tossed two coins, forgotten prayers against flesh: with no real promise of divinity but two wishes against luck.

Somedays I let silence consume me, it’s the closest thing to touch I’ve felt for years: a woman on the outskirts of her own skin, like an abandoned town, war torn.

There are things I can’t unread: the feel of skin, like Braille, beneath my fingertips, or on my tongue, your name spelled out in every night, in street lights, and moon.

Between Walls      —after William Carlos Williams at the farthest end of the  house where our bed stands shadows fall like hands that always  reach out but never take hold

sometimes skin is kissed beyond the surface,  & a rising like mountains from ocean depths emerges and conquers the finest of enamel, the smoothest of fields.