Maybe

i.

if the garden were 10 inches wider

and the night less kind to me

if the neutral point was raised 

and i could drink it down 

if the drip came a few minutes later

when you were dreamless and slouching

if i could chip at the small divide

and the ivory birds nesting in my head

didn’t nearly break me 

then, maybe

ii.

the coming is in the middle, 

the third way is the unravelling 

i’m not ready to close my shaking 

fist around it 

maybe love is always overkill.  

i’ve been chewing the right words 

for so long my mouth is full 

of blood. i thought that maybe

if you met me there, in that blind 

corridor of sound, i could

read the dreams out of your mouth. 

or maybe i just had faith 

that you would bring me a thousand 

glass moons and i would never 

have to fill another silly canvas 

with lines and round birds.

the way forward would be clear 

and i would teach it how to fuck

i would teach my future how to spot 

a lonely road and leave it

how to not be afraid 

of the canyon of time 

that rests between us.

the way forward would want 

to touch my bloodied feet with its hours 

down in a small church where they 

never say god, they just silently gather

no lost, dying crows drowning 

in this river, no. at the very least 

they would put their perfumed cheeks 

to the sky resting their faces against nothing

and the wide open underbelly of dizzying light 

would take my stupid world, the one that i built 

and shatter it over my silver head. 

i’ve never been good at pretending i don’t love, 

but today i learned something new.  

you taught me about dying twice.  

you showed me how to long for indifference.  

this time i am begging for an orange 

i want to suck something sour and honest. 

strange boy,  i can’t help myself.

tomorrow i will find the best way

across the satin covers, slipping 

beneath their wounds. 

the truth is, i know exactly how this ends, 

i’ve planned it. down to the rock

suffering in silence. the subway platform 

with its smells and the lonesome 

little voices pitying my head.  

i want them all to be forgotten, born in 

someone else’s chest, someone who can hold it. 

as for me, i have a smaller purpose. 

i said i didn’t want to stay 

wrecking myself on a violent ocean 

the feeling is always the same:

imperturbable ash smudging my 

daffodils with their searching hands.

and i have been a daughter 

and i have been a whore 

but i have never been a lover. 

the first time i felt someone else’s skin 

i thought it was a river. 

iii.

so go to the garden 

dress the cold in mirrors 

wake up to the falling morning 

stretching her fidgeting hands. 

soon, time will turn you over,

geometric shadows will eat your brain. 

my vision of july is a trembling

echo of light and you are 

antiquating beneath spills of 

old ocean. what if the mathematics

is this simple:  the slight 

burning bulb is a sheet of metal. 

the light is the equation.  the 

answer is the question.  we have 

already swam across the moon

as she touched herself with the sky.