Splitting

I thought about the math exams I’d missed, the classrooms I couldn’t find.  Then there were the times I woke up in a library, with only a few days left to write some year-end term paper I hadn’t even started.  I never knew how these crises turned out, because suddenly I would be here, on my way to the restaurant to visit Henrietta.  She never asked where I’d been.  She was my friend.

Between

Oh how I loved you

more than the tides could ever

love the moon

But now silence mocks the faithful

as I ripple with the green grass

go blind from the apathetic sun

Walls

My head hurts.

Hmmmn, says George.

Yes.

Sorry,he replies, but I can’t 

help you there.  

Have you seen the statue?

What statue?

The statue, he says impatiently.  In the

middle of the courtyard.

I don’t go in the courtyard.

I suppose not.  You don’t

really go anywhere.

No.  Neither do you.

I’ve got the dolls with knives to 

worry about, he reminds me.  

What’s your excuse?

It’s not just the dolls, I answer. 

Everything has knives.

With the Angels

I remember how something could
break every word you 
spoke
make you sound like you  
were choking
as I
I disappeared 
at least one million miles into
your stratosphere
like a bullet that has no mark
shot stray into a crowded night

May Day

Because we can and because

we want to

Because our tired hearts

are begging

are forgetting how to bleed

Stopped dead by the same undercurrent

of jolting disbelief

Echo

Whose truth will be accepted         as war rages against my memories            I cannot say for certain what I expected          or even what I thought I believed      but I am jumping off the cliff into this pillow of air              while you are a voice warning me from the canyon floor                   because this is where you disappear               and where I wish for something more

Tomorrow

Despair rose up in me like a flash flood, so quickly that it had almost reached my heart, when I heard a snuffling.  The dog who smelled like cake shuffled out from behind an overgrown bush.  “Are you real?” I asked her.  “Or are you going to disappear, too?”

She cocked her head and bared crooked teeth at me, as if to say, does it matter?

I dropped down to the ground next to her.  When I wrapped my arms around my knees and began to cry, she butted her head against me until I laid a hand on her back.  The setting sun was hot on my neck.  “You won’t be safe here,” I told her.  “You should go back into the woods, where’s it cooler.”

But she wouldn’t move. 

Tiredly I leaned back against the damp, cold ground.  When I closed my eyes I heard some more snuffling, and then felt her fuzzy head against the palm of my hand.  We will be safe tonight, I thought to myself.  Tomorrow was anybody’s guess.   Absolute safety would never be mine to have.  It simply did not exist.