empty-handed:
& we knew it would come this way.
chasing after your silly ghosts
a past we could never confess to,
not to them.
i shared too much with you
and over-looked how you soaked me up-
your warmth i mistook as affection.
your gaze, mistaken to mean something.
i am still such a child
unable to see you as anything less
than perfect times three, my
HEART: is just like a broken toy.
she says little boy the fire trucks are all
gone for the night, but i hear
the wailing snaking around the buildings
in which you kissed me deaf blind dumb.
i hate
ice cream that tastes like you would taste,
breaths that are like drinking your blood in,
thick and suffocating-
asphyxiation: what a way to die,
tangled up inside your rigid hands
my thin white neck
on more instrument of torture.
no swan song bid good-bye.
let's just keep pretending, honey,
my skin doesn't smell like you still &
that eight months have not elapsed.
open melt drift and know
my lifeless body lies just where you left it.

(2001)