My brother finds comfort in calculators. he assigns every number a name.
he believes that they add up to certainty and he is upset with fractions that
remain. so i examine these maps with my eyes and at best i can trace with my
finger all the way to that town where she went an attempt to forget the cracks
and the lines of my face.
So jetsabel cleaned out the closets for me and she piled
the boxes in the hall. tomorrow when she wakes she'll come take them away
and they will never haunt me again. but it is still hard to sleep with the moons
heavy beams. i run barefoot to the backyard, just to freeze in my place by the
rod iron gate, too afraid and ashamed to advance.
Today i walked through the snow and found a field of headstones. they were
in rows like the weeks on calendars where each box is a day that you can ever
escape without pills for you poisonous sleep. these memories leak from
these faucets that weep.
hot tears splash against the shower floor and i stand
in the steam as if inside a dream--i can see her again by the sink from behind the
bathroom mirror she pulls a thermometer and placed it under my tounge.
She said "you are as pale as a sheet, you look awful my sweet lay down and
wait for the sun." so i stayed in that bed. she brought me water and read
each night from a volume out loud. she whispered soft poetry. her favorite was
anabel lee. and those words, like these drugs comforted me. but the clocks
kept waving their hands and she could not understand why my temperature
would never drop. and although she promised with tears that she would always
be here i heard truth like the sounding sea.
I said, "my arienette, oh how soon
you'll forget this house will never be your home. and you will leave in the fall
when the trees become graves and their color lie dead in the grass." gold and
green torture me like the lies i believe too easily.
Oh my jetsabel, look at this hell
that i have made. if you want maybe drop by sometime put some flowers on my
grave. so that i will look beautiful in my silent sepulchur. yeah thats fine throw
those dresses away i don't want anything of hers. for the moon never shines
and the stars never rise without bringing me dreams. haunted by the ghosts of
those bright eyes.