The insects come and praise what they see,

oh how drunk on the short-lived velvet of her.

She likes their little hymns and lets them hover,

but praise is just sunshine with a tongue;

it stays awhile, then goes off somewhere else.

We praise the flower standing alone,

call her strong when nobody brings light.

Somewhere beneath the praise, she thirsts.

No living thing was made to earn its tending,

nor beauty meant to function as a ransom.

Enough of the half-truths,

and of the missing truth.

Enough of it arriving barefoot,

then three days late to boot,

and with blood on its feet.

Or was it only your throat, speaking a language it hadn’t been given yet?

the natural world, indifferent and immense;

the sea not needing to know my depths,

the trees seasonally meeting with death,

the creatures innocent of our despair.

And across the ground

lie all the things

once mistaken

for belonging.

so deep into the night

the birds forget their names,

the night birds tangled with the bats,

winged things stitched into my hair,

your mouth still near my ear,

first, the silhouette.

Then the eternal.

Then the laugh—

startlingly sweet—

then the strange friendship

which had no proper name

and entered everything.

And still we lift it to our mouths.

And we call the rot a blessing.

And still, we bite near the bruise

and let the sweetness lie to us.

I told my love: I cannot stay alive

without my stories fastened to my eyes,

without my stories waking in my hands.

The world extends its help in measured spoons.

I only want my art. I want what’s mine.

Freedom won by turning the mirror

to watch the thing behind me—

to finally walk into its own proportions,

survive its own weather,

wear its impossible shape—

and all without my hands to fix it.

So the water holds it all,

So the working does not fall,

Sealed by hand and sealed by art,

Sealed by what came from my part.

A white vessel split upon the dark,

its flawless halves made sacred

only after the fracture.

Tin stars.
Empty bottles.

when the promised dawn

forgets how to come