Arsenic Snacks

My best friend eats
apple cores
and drinks coconut water.

She says it is
economical
and healthy.

I say she is
dreaming
of foreign lands,
long trips on clipper ships.

Nested in Myrrh

I have long listened at doors in empty hallways, with only the faraway sound of clattering metal and the gold-whispering dust turning in the light. It is beyond all sense now, to dissemble, too late I have warned you of scars in bone and sinew, but I tell you now; if hope is a thing with feathers, its carcass is on my doorstep. Wild, unnameable things have torn at it, now it is a ghost of gut and wing.

I kneel, hope it has nested in myrrh.

I have never had a listener, a reader. Especially not one who waits for each word, wants in silence until I speak.

If You Follow

If there are words, they are as yet unknown to me. I have spent hours spinning spells, invoking ghosts long since settled, but those fruits have left my mouth sour, my eyes shining and wild.

Against good sense and sound advice I find a narrow path; I seek a darkened sun. I bear my burdens alone, often in a world with too few dimensions to support life.

I have not known kindness, and I do not speak to trust, not here. Those are words spoken low and whispered in foreign tongues.

It was easier, I moved from consequence, I drew demons in sand and sky and moved on again. If you follow, if all my stories are told; where, then, will I go?

It's Not About Robots

I hope time and isolation have not done damage beyond repair. I hope your heart has not grown silent, but instead was waiting, in stasis, or that you were finding your way out of a labyrinth of your own making.

You are careful, and those words are so new, and still strange in your mouth. I wonder how you could know that I smile as you struggle to find your way into conversation.

I would unwind you from those many long nights alone, if you would find me beneath so many layers of ice and wind.

I am tired and worn ragged on the rocks, having missed the lighthouse by some miles. I would undo whatever brought me here, but if not for that, then I would not have your name or your secrets. I hope you are patient, even if my language is dense and foreign. I hope you have a way with broken things, with nervous and unsure things.

The Likelihood of Happiness, Heartache

For RJH

I work out facts and figures, the likelihood of happiness, heartache, each on an actuarial table with signs and symbols previously unknown to me.

I invent formulae of such complexity the variables become unmanageable, publish them in obscure journals in languages I do not speak.

I have no reason for hope, but it burns bright out of cracks and fissures from a poorly repaired heart.

It is the first time I wake to think of you, the first time I think of you and laugh, and wonder if you would laugh to know.