The deep freeze

I am of the winter people, you see,

of a place where the snow causes

no sighs, no filaments of regret 

to pierce the skin as one

remembers warmth and

light.

Here winter is a relief,

a signal that what is

inevitable has come to

pass.

Disappointment

Kitty was coping with her own sense of rejection.  In her four and a half years at the University of Wisconsin, Kitty hadn’t seen one sign of anyone from the Interior.  If she didn’t still have the bracelet, she might have convinced herself that she’d dreamt the whole thing up.  She had even started to wonder if the bracelet came from some rummage sale she’d been to with her mother, and that she’d spun a fantastic story around, in her need to feel special.  The more time that passed since her last visit, the less real the Interior seemed, and the less she remembered about it.

Sometimes in her dreams she could hear the King talking to her but, of course, she never saw his face.  Nor could she recall what the apartment looked like that she’d stayed in during her convalescence.  The much-faded scar where the Minister’s knife had gone into her side failed to jog her memory.  Even when Kitty went to visit the Minister’s grave, she found no marker, presumably because no one had known who he was.  Its absence only heightened her sense of unreality.  Not for the first time did she wish Jack could remember his trip there, if only for someone to validate her experience.  But she seemed fated to just forget more and more about the Interior until, somehow, it would cease to exist in her memory at all.

When you are a 

vanishing star

            a galaxy stuffed into

my little heart

In the cold

Where is                                  here I am        

gone home without you

when I would rocket from the world

out of an ocean so impossibly asleep                                     

is the rain your final call

because I am wondering what this was for

           

why you ever loved me

why you do not anymore

there is no witness here

only ghosts of words that nudged into breath

the shape of a fool      shivering and wet       

your blanket thrown over the bed one cold night too late

 my eyes, heavy with dreams 

but you—                  

very much awake

how I welcomed the chance to be wrong

to never ask why you had to leave

why you had to come at all

was it to drift away from this eroding shore

or was it

not wanting to be sorry

not wanting to be felt sorry for

one last secret for memory to keep

Now our half-truths ship out

under cover of a cloud-filled sky

the sun you once spoke of

never any friend of mine

                                   

can you feel it rain

can you?          

Wisdom, and the lack thereof

2013

Your heart has become their most deadly weapon.

I don’t know how.  Who in this world ever tells the truth?

before the knots of existence 
come undone
please 
just once

tell me I have done enough

Heavy is the head

2013

Well, then.  Calm down, will you.  No wonder you are sent to live in the closet!  Learn how to behave you insufferable child.  No one wants to hear this.

            Go to sleep.  The angels will be with us.

Because predictability

is a lucky thing

A coin with two heads

or two tails

as the case may be

Echoes

Do you need me now

                                could you hear me if you tried

not quite alone

not quite within

                straddling my own dimension

                                in time

               

what does it mean to lie

here

                the place you fell down from

                                                was the air so pure up there

                                that before you could warn me I

might find you

                                                                in the rustling of the trees  

you lost your breath

                and I was trapped

                under this avalanche of leaves        

                                nowhere                

to know you

do you need me now

                                                could you speak if you tried

the story that binds me       to you

a balloon floating up into the sky

                                                                               

                when there is too much to hold

go ahead                               say it was supposed to be so

                That the color of light would blind me

                And the mystery of this starry night would deny me

                      the reason why I loved you

more than  snow on my

birthdays in December

Too close for me to show

                                do I need you now

could I hear you if I tried

could I speak the words to kiss this rumbling faith                      

        goodbye

Prophecy

All of the followers had gone, sucked up in the girl’s funnel cloud.  Everything lay on the ground, broken.  The restaurant would not be serving again.

I was wondering with a pang of regret where Marietta had gone when a dishevelled figure with a lopsided purple hairdo and an old face limped over to me.  We just stood and looked at each other for a while, until she said, “You think you have won.  But the spell is broken for you, too.”

“I know,” I answered.  “But at least I can live with myself.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied.  She then disappeared, rather against her will, I thought, into a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

The clock

            is a lie that

                        I must keep

                                    unwound