mud

grief makes
your heart
sick
not sick
enough to stop beating and
kill you,
just sick
enough to suffer

grief makes
the veins collapse
makes them sticky,
so they
punish you
lest you forget
what you have
loved most
and lost

lest you forget,
as if you could
when you feel your
blood choking you
again
and you wonder
why you
are sentenced to die
so slowly.

do you
reach out
to silver
your fingers
or burn
their flesh
do you
open your
delicate mouth
to receive
perfect
fiery
light

we
obsess
reaching out to
the sky
but when
the sky
comes to us
we shiver
hot-cold
scalded
by something
too pure
too powerful
for mere
skin

teeth

two rows
sweet, straight, together
they belong to your mouth alone

no words
are available in language
to describe such utter loveliness

visible only
after exchanged words
and sharp intakes of breath

a small price
for lifetimes of pain
the gift that only we could know about

gone quickly
fleeting like rain
but sealed in memory
languageless, kept forever.

alone now.
sea air is a knife,
but a clean blade brings purity to skin

icons are dead.
nostalgia is a knife,
burnt and stuck in heart of existence, before

dream is wrecked.
this city is a knife,
sweet and sharp caresses down trembling sides of lovers

together once.
love was a knife,
carved perfect patterns into the history books we read to others

still alive.
I could be a knife,
on the right hand, aiding divisions, set neatly, for need or want or standby