I stare at my signature,
the gentle loops and flourishes. Trace
my finger over the soft O's and I’s.

I wonder if my pain is written there,
all the frustration and anguish
of my 51 years,
the rare, ineffable moments
of pure magic and joy.

I search the delicate skin of my wrists
for signs. Faint, hesitant scars
where I once tried to die.

The doctor asks for the clipboard.
I hand it to him
and smile.

Sleep, my child, sleep deep
as your mother waits to die
and the music swathes you
in such glowing arms.

You stand at the gilded open mouth
of heaven while tenuous voices
descend to torture and impale
my molten core,
my heart like one bleary eye
grown weary of staying open.

I have seen the splintering
vision of rose-veined glass
in a church where I wept
at the incense of his remains.

I have savored the ghostly
helms of gondolas
gone swaying in their inexorable waters
where all my children drowned.

Blackly metallic waves,
pearly and gibbous as silken moons,
lulling and caressing the tranquil dead.

And I have learned nothing new
except the ineffable flutter of your lids
softening a rhythm
unto paradise.

A Delta Break-through shatters the sky
in a six-point flower of smoke.
Even your mother is rendered dumb
by the inexplicable beauty of flight.

My eyes are seduced by twin flames
of thunderous eagles. Your gaze
mimics mine, hungering for precision
of angles, rhythm.

They're inextricably linked
as light glints off wings,
some forgotten child's skipping stones
rubbed smooth and clean.

He hurls them across a field of blue water.
Diamonds crest the speed of sound
as music from engines
rattles the bones of the dead.

She's run out of things to live for. Teacups and shoes, a hint of collarbone through his shirt. All day, the taste of longing in her mouth. Waiting for him to pass, to giggle hot like a schoolgirl. By midnight the world's diminished to lights caressing the tollway. Signposts that sing of a desperate paradise, his cologne scraping the car's interior. How she yearns in places her body cannot reach. Desire crackling the dash, slicing the night like a scar. The skyline sutured and frayed, his textbook she drowned at the lake. How every moon on a bracelet corresponds with a bruise.

Maybe I can't get over
this blue dialogue of mouth to sky.
The way sadness tastes
like a wet cigarette.

Leaves resemble wilting *******.
Only the flies offer my bare arms
their flittering touch.
Your skin still eludes me.

I would have you rustling inside me
as the hologram flickers on the wall.
Though infinitely unreal
it still looks, shimmers like love.

I'm the sad girl in white Mary Janes.
Who ties herself to the railroad tracks.
Mama won’t let me pick the black carousel
horse, that filthy thing. Oh her velvet
ribbons, vanilla throat. She says  
I’m a fury of satin. Paints Daddy
a pretty picture, sipping Constant Comment,
fevered by romance novels and grandfather
clocks. The sad arc of my arms making
the darkest hole, the darkest hearse.
The man outside my window breathes smoke
and ice onto the panes. His brackish
outline. Here all the dolls have watery
eyes. The terrible shadows their lashes
make. How it begins as a taste. A gnawing.
The white, delicate breath while darkness
aches in my teeth. I dream of a funeral
fit for a queen. The coffin filled
with the loveliest pink fish. Always
the tree branches scuffing my shoes.
I'll perch there all day, watch the house
from afar. My sister's face pushed tight
against the door frame. The lace
of my dress falling towards death.

She’s haunted by a sense of futility
in everything she does. I wait
to be told I’m worthy. You knew
we could never escape, caught
by our hair under glass bottom boats.
By our parents’ white-knuckled grip.
I was drowning in the emerald music
of fish when you pulled my body
from the rocks, their song
a shivering green. Mama always taught
me to fear boys like you. To flee
the delicate danger of my own ankles.
By June I’ll succumb to the language
of bruises. The yearning for the
blue-haired girl to tell me her name.
How she strings key chains
into a necklace. We’re a little
too much in love with objects.
With hurricanes and bicycle spokes.
Tonight the air will be soaked
with honeysuckle. With humidity.
The sound of mothers pinching
terrified little faces. Of fathers
who never wanted their daughters.