She wrote,
‘Happy New Year’

I stared at the words
long enough to feel
their weight.

So I wrote back,
‘You too’.

But I really meant to say,
‘Happy for who?’

Not me.
Not you.

She doesn't need to feel
the weight of poems
on her already weakened body.

I want to give her space
so she doesn't feel smothered.

She makes a bad, bad prisoner.
I know that.
Yet I can't help
but dream of prisons
where it's just me and her.

I will walk to the end of the world
and find the harshest cliff on its edge.
I will enter the darkest, most hidden cave
and crawl through its narrow passages
until not even I can find a way out.

Then, in the deepest halls of earth,
where no one has ever been before me
and where no one will ever be after,
I will finally say what's on my heart,
what has burdened me for centuries.

I will whisper it softly at first,
then say it out loud.
And then I will scream it
until the ceiling starts to crumble.
Until it buries me with the thing
I had no one else to tell.

The draw, the pull, the quicksand,
the rope around
my neck, my ankle, my soul.
The cosmic powers
tearing me apart.

The pressure, the push,
the everclosing bear trap.
The hiding in a secret place
and then the screaming
until there is none.