the singing knives

I watched a circle walk A walled memorabilia sank forth each sundry sun Air and breath were born in one stroke and so the brush struggled on through tresses of trees, and into the tangle of belonging. A calendar of lavender inflects the second of June.

I talk out loud to a dead person. The dead person says nothing. I tell the dead person that my tendons are threads of pain; my memories have grown fingers that pull threads. They make me float. They keep me at home. They make me watch the birds out my window, moving like smoke in the wind.

June day, grey Sky, north wind sighs Ceaseless sorrowless Breath of spacious sky Shaking the long grass, the apple-petals Blowing away.

Some women love to wait for life for a ring in the June light for a touch of the sun to heal them for another woman’s voice to make them whole to untie their hands put words in their mouths form to their passages sound to their screams for some other sleeper to remember their future their past.

You in your ecstasy of coffee me all amped on juice an ooze of sunshine a foil of water a concordance two waves in sync making a larger bright it’s unseasonably warm again nothing will bloom the trees blown way ahead of schedule and we never kissed not even once despite the come-ons of summer scented with rain, lilacs in the deli tempting to send me over the edge as if we could rinse everything and be clean again but no— Thursday 4 p.m. the city can be beautiful when it wants to stands around so photogenic by the boat pond, lucent doorway of the day beams us through, pine needles, puddles, tussle on the sidewalk, a pigeon or two— streaming by here come the minutes exposing themselves and there they go what is real? June keeps on flaunting its meadow of music, its drink let’s leave our apartments and go to the park it’s a festival we want a popsicle some honeydew a break let’s go out into the music flowingbroadly now through giant speakers. The success of friendship let’s drink to it— Hello emptiness that is coming it will engulf and then, a freighted woman I’ll fall back into my hole, goodbye. My body will never be satisfied. But here in the preheadache seasonal glitter, first burst of summer, still the thrill of it, the heat—

The fringy blue of chicory stares out of a ditch as if our dead—partially resurrected— hail us from the roadside. I would brake, gather their wild bitterness in an embrace worthy of Queen Anne's lace unfolding intricate handkerchiefs for this occasion. But I've learned even as blossoms gaze lovingly from my palm, petals droop over each blue eye, lose color the way pebbles grow dim out of water. The dead have no use for our warmth, the blood still pulsing under our skin, yet they yearn incessantly for us, struggle into any light for a glimpse of our faces grown stiff and remote behind glass as we speed past.