i

She wanted to be my

Bitter burning dry kettle love.

Cobweb hands, I was holding the fog

in the creases of her elbows with the

black paint, soot, dust. 
Her body, a sighing, moaning house, 

Like there was God who favored an

abandoned mansion in our ghosted woods,

Ribs for the old wooden frames with bird’s

nests and rat poison hot traps in the corners

Her clutches, creaking door frame fingers

that she’d use to tap away on scrap thread strings

Of antique instruments in an attic

she blew her

breath away into

 

ii

 

Crimson beating flesh heart, for a linger

of her brass hinges . Swallow up the gorging

 

pulse of the sun to new evenings of new distance.

It hazes, it phases all amid mist folded up in layers

 

on top of the trees to suffocate
The grime spiders which crept inside

 

her hollow lungs to echo tapping absence. 
To see the forest for the trees, was to see her

 

for her mountain top gaze grazing along the surface
Not even to search and to be smitten for the gateway,

 

opened up for those who waited