light refracted, splintered divinity ;

that the sadness has not found yet,

i have not found it either.

i am becoming this empty cathedral,

draped in generational sacrilege.

always sorry for the wrong sins

and never sorry enough.

i’m asked if the bruises are really mine,

but i don’t know if i could breathe without them.

there is a dream where my mother shows me the

oleander blooms and i do not

stick them in my mouth when no one’s looking.

there is a dream where i wake up in november

under a perfect sky and don’t want to leave.

i’m still finding dirt underneath my fingernails,

even though i’ve never been to the grave.

pain is not a gentle lover

in the care of something soft.

this, the last door i’ve closed.

my chest, the last thing to rupture—

like cancer

or the flowerbed weeds

or the stray dog that thinks you are a home.

it’s soft, and then it’s not.

it belongs to you, and then it doesn’t.

they say that dead wood has to fall some time,

but i do not want to see.

just because you’ve lived half your life apart from

something doesn’t mean you can live without it.

we are sick of poisoning our own water

and of never being sick enough.

it’s december and i am unforgiven.

it isn’t december and i am still unforgiven.

they say you are either the body

or the one that defiles it,

but i do not want to be a either.

again, i am letting all the boys look at me

when it hurts,

and you are letting the forests burn unredeemed,

and she is letting go of tomorrow,

and no one is sorry until the beached whale asks

someone to take it home.

they say the entire pod will follow

and no one knows why,

but if there’s a god i will bury all of them.

and if there isn’t a god, then they won’t

like a heartbeat, but not.

like honey crawling down what the bear left behind.

black ink pressed heavy into blankets; sick

tributaries running through the thread.

a bad thing happened here, is always

happening here.

i’m tired of keeping the letter under my pillow,

but i haven’t thrown it out yet.

the closet is empty, so i shut myself inside,

but the closet is still empty.

i am starved for touch but it is still just me,

rotting in the same forfeit bones.

when i killed the thing beneath the floor, no

one said i’d have to take its place.

(but everyone knows to become something

is to have feared it.)

in the misty morning i throw out the letter

and write a prettier one.

here we are, brought back full circle.

the forest lies in ruin but there’s no one left

to miss it.

the sick man takes everything without touching,

and never lets go.

we are born thrice from the same birch tree,

and every time we fell it with our teeth.

someone shot down the albatross, yet no one

but the albatross knows who.

in your misty morning, everything shakes.