fragment

eyes deep in dark poisonous pools

she stares straight ahead as if blind

but if you speak her name,

she turns her face to you

winterwhite and ivory

your question writhes beneath you,

across the floor and as you wish,

it scatters away like a many-legged thing.

you have lost all sense of truth;

if her face is that of the crone

or your lover.

you seek and she turns her head

a crimson shadow
a hank of dark hair shudders,
her breath fecund,
a whisper resonating in your shell-like ear.
It is her only gift,
whistling and low.

Your Wasted Voice

I wake and find the past has fallen over the room like wet gray snow. I turn my head and all the sweet names you called me under your breath fly into the air to sting my eyes and rest on my lashes. Moving the comforter over, I discover the feeling of your hand in my hair has crusted icy and thick across my legs. My feet are bare and aching beneath a spare and unfailing promise of love. Have I not mourned you enough? A glacial ceiling of white and blue formed from the sharp crystals of your disingenuiously warm hands slithering across the white expanse of my back. I lie in the cool circle of your wasted voice calling, calling, calling; your fragile wrists shaking beneath the weight you pretend to bear.

Everything they said was a lie.

Everyone here is amazingly kind.