The tree murmurs to the wind and for once I sleep

I am grateful to you
to the tree to the sighs the leaves
the roots through me I would not depart I cannot depart
grounded as I am,
earth in lungs tongue to copper green and blue water seeps
through my most solid borders
reaches wells and moss and stone that do not care I thank them

depart, part, it is no matter, there is no matter,
you

you

consolation, light, I do not know I do not
think the two must be separate

I say I am proud of you
All of it passing a greater passing I could not part with
this sting of the bones
to the bones,

i am cold come indoors, inside, I miss you, love you
departures
someone is yelling once (again) into the pillowcase

I need, I let go, I need, I breathe

Yesterday. And yesterday.

I can give you only what I was.

And I dedicate to you my bones
the ribcage
again and again
a pledge brittle to the sands the winds the flesh I lean to

memories, memories, memories.
Vodka and Coke.
features were softer.
faces, face, faces.
contours changed.
you are more bones now -
a softer I, i do not know

do I miss what is passed
or what is passing

S'a mia voglia ardo, onde 'l pianto e lamento?
S'a mal mio grado, il lamentar che vale?
O viva morte, o dilectoso male,
come puoi tanto in me, s'io no 'l consento?

Et s'io 'l consento, a gran torto mi doglio.
Fra sí contrari vènti in frale barca
mi trovo in alto mar senza governo,

sí lieve di saver, d'error sí carca
ch'i' medesmo non so quel ch'io mi voglio,
et tremo a mezza state, ardendo il verno.

narrative motor

Virtually a week seamlessly elided

"she could delay events with this groggy chemistry
of spasms and refusals,
a drowning, that second sleep, in lists of the undone

ungiven, unsought, the nausea could last days,
this room took shape now in yellow and brown,
a window lay behind a wilting curtain, tepid sunlight"

Here was enough

picture

she’s eating away at the margins
light floods from the corners until all that’s left is exposed
into nothing

and all the figures have scattered

One or both of us is impatient though he speaks

and then doesn’t. Our eyes are wandering beyond

our tongues. Lashes into my cheek looking like sunbeams.

And then off again into a vaguer proximity.

Pulling pushes where we are gouged into sensation

(or not, as it happens). A deeper ache from the withdrawal

of those hands, or worse, their absence (from the beginning);

a plummet. Too full of hunger. (      Yawning with it   )

His breath is in my throat. I’m filling with stale life.

Suffocating for more. And still he says nothing else,

though there is a moment- my lungs heave back

his air I move my lips and steal his voice. His frown

so ungentle;

I think he was afraid.

Helen

Imagine arriving at that place,
and staying.
and staying.

"the hous is krynkeled to and fro,
And hath so queynte weyes for to go -
For it is shapen as the mase is wrought"

Green shade, green shade, a week without food

2

You are too much bones to be so soft,
to fit in the arms this close against the heart.
I cannot feel between us and afterwards
I am staring at my spine.

(And I remember that rainy day we hugged,
even to the dark sticking of your hair to your shirt collar.
I have entire winters of you stored in my memory,
but I can never remember the cold, sharp as it always was,
I can never remember the cold.)

1

Low walls of brick and tangled chain-links,
and backstreets full of windows that led to parks
and cornershops, junctions, gravel
and nearby somewhere
the occasional midnights I would not part with
for the healing of me.

Still impotent threads bursting[
they don't even snap,
not exactly, just[

falling off lightly [ maybe? or even
something less than that and besides               ].
Never a clean cut to them,
tufts of string too soft to notice,
[there or] gone.
That's incoherent or immense and my eyes are going

Something completely other
and curved like a moon,
masked under leaves
and their scent.
Strange enough to break a bone.
And it breaks more than that.

The scent of all these
leaves. Where the hell have I been?
Breaking over summers.

I feel the craving of you
down to my toes
and the soles of my feet.
Thoughts veering into dreams it’s too easy
but the fire alarm wakes me up, and anyway,
it’s near summer
and we no longer share a bed. We can't.
We seethe beneath the covers.