We once knew a girl
Polite and cold to the touch
Icy slopes that called her home
Still young and yet to unfurl
Words cut short saying so much
Died in her sleep writing a poem

Passed through a dream that night
Angels lifting from the blanket hug
Daylight came and she couldn't wake
Greeting father rose to the morbid fright
Grasped her hand and began to tug
Cried a hymn he just couldn't take

Friends at school didn't know she was gone
Laughed profusely 'til the deafening announcement
The intercom obituary stuttered and hallowed
That the golden lock girl had moved on
Pulling the threads of most at that moment
The closer of them mourned and bellowed

Noon grew somber and tears were of many
The girls held each other so firmly
The boys grew silent and shed what they could
Plans were made to remember the memory
A lot one over glistened with suited formality
I didn't attend and I regret as I should

In a flash she went there
In the flash she'll stay here
It's all flash after all....

Doth lead to dark doom,
when it is given room.

I was your cure
but you were my disease
I was saving you
but you were killing me

I want to forget,
To restart.
Another high stakes game,
With my duct taped heart.

My body heaves and convulses
while tears stream down my face
blurring my vision
like a camera lens in fog.

My mind was sick.
I had just watched the movie
The Pianist about the Holocaust.
The Holocaust was sick.
A man in a wheelchair fell
from a tenth story window,
dumped out by the SS.
Sickness.

My body was sick.
I could not speak.
I could barely cry for that matter.
All I could do was sob.

My spirit was sick.
I hadn't prayed in a whole month
and God and I were floating
farther   and         farther            apart.

My soul was moved.
I heard the real star in The Pianist
Wladyslaw Szpilman play
Chopin's Nocturne in C# Minor.
(that is NOT a hashtag)

That was when I broke down.

Do you remember that one time we both just happened to stay up until 4:00 in the morning?
Or that time you tried to walk past me but our small talk got too big and we ended up sitting separated by four thousand miles and an electrical outlet?

Do you remember that one time when our elbows touched for almost a second at dinner, but neither of us said anything?
Or that time I felt like watching that TV show you love and accidentally left my door open and you felt like watching for awhile and punched my arm when I pointed out how a terrorist wouldn't be able to activate an atomic bomb
from
like
four thousand miles underground?

Do you remember how your voice shook with laughter when I told you I was flirting with you?
How it shook like a seismograph on the white cliffs of Dover,
How it shook like a tambourine
Like a dreidel
or a top?

Do you remember how the fire leapt and the mountains slammed and the thunder clapped more fervently than a bunch of liberals watching a mariachi band?
or has my imagination gotten the best of me once again?

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.