Little rhymer

He found her in a cafe, drinking a cup of tea,
her breath filling the window with a fog of frost.
She had bags hanging just underneath her eyes.
She said, "I didn’t realise I was lost.”

He asked her, "What are you carrying?
With all those bags, it must be quite a lot."
She spoke to the glass instead of him
when she replied, “All the places that I'm not.”

They looked like crescent moons to him
but he couldn’t tell her of her fate.
“They look heavy,” was all he said.
“I’m not surprised anymore of weight.”

He wanted to tell her so many things
but she didn’t look at him for a while.
“It’s like being at the bottom of a lake,
now something feels slower when I smile.”

Not once did she show even the hint of a smile
so he decided to try and outdo her.
But it seemed like this was one he couldn't win
because his words just went right through her.

“You are a foreign land. I have a compass.”
“No magnets. My grandmother lives alone.”
“My sister has stopped playing piano.”
“I’m afraid to answer the telephone.”

Her eyeline had woven its way into his.
“I like the sounds it makes as it rings.”
He asked at length what she’d do with the bags.
“I will learn how not to break things.”

Fragments.

Sometimes people ask us the wrong questions
so we can't give the right answers
and that's okay and everyday for everyone
but it is not okay when we become those people
and we ask ourselves the wrong questions
because we are just afraid of what we know
and of hearing the right answers.

Rooms partially lit, yellowing

as evening seeps into night

and then it's morning, 

one spent ignoring

the tsunami as it taps 

a warning. 

There is still ash on the sweater I was wearing

the day that bridges started burning. 

Terrible things happen to good people everyday.

That is why I don't mind so much 

if I'm not one of the good people.

I'll be one of those terrible things. 

You told me to look the universe right in the eyes 

but I am not brave enough,

at least not yet,

because I'm thinking of what you said you found

when you looked and you saw

only the distance between the middle of things,

the nucleus, and all else around it,

all the feral electrons,

and how everything you thought you could hold

was slipping away from you

between your fingers 

until you finally felt it,

the universe,

the emptiness of space.

the Morning After

Here it is.
Here is the little hole in your warmest socks.
Here is the emptiness of ice.
Here is the sound that loneliness makes.

There it goes.
There is the sun drunk with days whirling.
There is the delirium in sultry fever.
There is the aching overwhelming, blood returning.

That was the anaesthesia.
Here is the morning after.

Look, listen.

If you can, just listen.

Listen to me, now.

Since you last took a look

I have already been changing

so you are not in the place

to decide what I can be.

Stop speaking of me 

as you have been lately. 

You’re describing a ghost.