ClamShellHeart

I’m curled quite deep in this cavern, Hibernatory and safe, Cozy in it’s floral pattern And the languid, ever-shifting space. When dreams fall away, there’s no clatter, I hear movement not too far away, And though the cold is a hazard, I creep quietly from my domain. I linger just over my mountain, You’re stretched and exposed to the dawn, The plush landscape shifts, but we’re grounded And your breath comes to me like a song. Underneath we’re tectonic, Fault lines and roots holding strong, I’m encircled and you are surrounded, I’ve been wrapped up in you all along.

Brush the stray webs from my cheeks as if they were tears, Keeping threads and keeping quiet, avoiding wandering ears, Roll the thread into pills, then shape them like a dough, Spin them out into yarn that I can weave or sew, Or turn them into paper if I set them to a boil, Cut pages into strip and then return them to the soil, Or I can make a fabric square, milky and un-dyed, Embroider it with thread so pale the words blend in an hide, It will declare all the hurt and all the un-shed tears, And you won't ever see it, though it's spelled quite plainly here, So let this be a lesson, even though my eyes are dry, The pain will scream out so

the home rots from the inside out; infection of floorboards and drywall. addiction and addict crumple together. the heart beats blood but the brain lets the feeling fall upon the vitals instead of locking it between the eyes, to stay buried among the roots. bare cheek on black laminate, or body sprawled across a king sized bed, or halfway to paradise on a summer beach, it doesn’t matter. each storm groans against interior walls without crossing a threshold or gazing towards window panes where the drying sun lingers, and sinks.

The last day of August hovers against a membrane, water exhaling into beads. It never happens all at once the way the words suggest; hours stretch to fill their spaces, quietly bickering and bartering in even strides as they pass. Moments stack into well-oiled months, but the wheel always catches right before September (muffled gears shake free the debris and tick true). Summer's song is water, beginning with snow and ice and ending in sunlight. Autumn promises wind on the other side of the glass and as chill ripples eddy down to the fingers, a new song buzzes in the blood of the restless.

The front door stands open. A twelve gallon garbage bag, transparent and full of mushrooms leans on the wall behind the security desk near a pink tower fan and a water cooler. A cleaning woman sweeps the tiles with a grass broom; piling meager dust and a deceased dragonfly.

The window screen used to lean on the back steps of the brownstone at home in Ohio. I dip it, and pull, the second-hand mould sliding above the thicket of clouds bringing them closer. The wrong tool and awkward in travel; but still I sift a patch of blue sky from the season’s grey sheets. With my fingers in the sand, I pan for seashells on a rainy day.

i. introduction        The air changes around        weathered roadside crosses,        sneakers ring around power lines, dirty        teddy bears,        and sinking balloons.        There is no permanence;        memories are not something I fear. ii. Wisps of spirituality lurk and snake around The Buddha’s ankles; footsteps settled on the many shores, and sliding with the sands in the Gulf. I am illiterate, but “ghost” is not the right word for those golden, glittering houses with incense and wasps circling an offering: sweating bottles of soda and fruit. I know because I have asked, and this woman, citizen,

The locks don’t latch behind you as you leave; four keys, three doors, one room, a wardrobe, a bike lock. The ease of the fist-sized blossoms, (Dad’s fist, not mine), beneath the bridge and well above the surface of the water are the difference in drive between eleven time zones of jetlag stretched tight across three months and a language barrier. The perforations in the prescription blister packs section away days; I punch through the foil to cross them off. Consonants tangle in my mouth, dead lotus necks braiding beneath a bridge.

I was delivered into this headspace, filled with it, cushion stuffed with cotton between my ears with it; Mold belly-crawling through a maze, crept into ridges until twisting into a brain. Blueprints speak concisely; even the bridges that bend and break were printed on pithy paper (tensile strength notwithstanding). Pieces won’t fit together until they are side-by-side, the dimensions distinct from that assignment of utility. Trees grow without it. Bees still go to blossoms reliably. The thermodynamic trial and error stretching of nature is held aloft, an assumption of free-wheeling perfection, a messy yarn that only artists try to

A mermaid near the fireplace, in what was once a home, she floats about the wreckage and picks between the bones, She lingers at the fireplace, for flame to her is drink, but even if it it could be bottled, it would never sink.