he mountains and alley facing my window put up their palms, not to petition mercy, but exasperation: “the wind sings pretty songs and the trees all dance along but we are bound” and i respond: “i want a cigarette” crossing our fingers as you spoke, you and i were androgynous, apocryphal a terrifying metronome: open on all sides, not knowing not caring at all all the pretty things that embroider the castellated trail left by your fingers on my countertop have gone away, leaving little but apostrophe and a petition. so we dance into shoeboxes and thrust our palms into gloves or pockets preparing for minutes of piercing scalding cognition i told you last night that if you locked yourself in a box for six months, the last thing you would miss would be me. and you grinned (it spanned the width of delaware) as you said: “the wind is not the least of our fears, and trees are not the walls of illium anymore”, a sentiment that echoed into every backseat crossing over the colorado border. the rain outside your front door is a map-maker, tracing silhouettes as kavan and i left your house for the very last time, and all our terrible deeds were undone and all your imperfections were unmade. if you were an apple or a rose petal or a bent nail or a lyric you would lose twice your value and all of your flavor. prettiness, fleshy cunt and all. we counted off silence like beats in a symphony, and slowly, cassandra crept out from behind the altar and slowly fourteen bullets ripped her apart, each one a grace note, speaking, singing: “oh god oh god oh god” running through our friends with plastic knives burning hair and slipping in priam’s sons hope is the greatest of evils and we are just attention i was looking for you in the surface of my photograph paper; i could only see my reflection. and i’ve been alone for the last year, but if you could see how much i’ve changed in the last four days i swear you’d be proud of me. and i think i know what it means to say “a man’s room is his kingdom” culled and called, a canyon holding vigil over strip clubs and strip malls makes haste to his position;
the candlelight murmurs that he is late, five minutes too long but we are so certain of everything