Obit.

the yellow sink houses
a quartet of frogs

and below my bed,
crickets meet.

gossiping hummingbirds and troops
of bees

stir into the air
a current of buzz, unmatched by
electricity.

elephants cross my bed
en pointe

and a horse’s mane
drapes over my chest.

dying moths spiral down
against the starlight whispering —

I’ve called late
on gentle sleep.

I am infinite
but the sink is backed up with bits of newspaper and orange rind
(thanks Hannah).
She said as she was peeling the orange,
I want a guy with big forearms you know Disney prince kind of arms,
and I looked at my skinny arms
and thought of palm trees rattling.
But I am infinite
and yet
I can’t stop thinking about what April said,
You don’t know everything so stop acting like you do,
as Hannah drunkenly bites into my shoulder
and unzips me,
presses into me,
wets me,
warms me,
all I can think about is April’s hateful glare
and remember the cold silence after she slammed the door.
She left her scarf
and I can see it on the couch in the other room
because I am infinite
but Hannah is biting me and pinching my nipple
and telling me to grab her
here
and she guides my hands and I absentmindedly do.
I am infinite
but I am picking out the trash from the sink
and noting how small my wrists are
and wishing I did know everything so I could look at April and tell her
whatever I should’ve told her
and would’ve held Hannah
as I should’ve held her.
I am infinite,
right?

4.6.2012

The tide rising up the naked sheets making heavy,
the pillows, and forget about the alarm clock —
the metal tinkers ratcheting worry, invariably,
to thoughts more tangled than your legs and mine
but it is fine for we’ve suffocated the greatest of our sadness
at the fixed embrace of our eyes: Dear Sara,
I looked from so much quiet, b/c, I longed for what we had,
and I felt your joints by the knuckles of my hands
imagining for once I could graze my bones on your bones and
the hunger will go — but you whispered by the furrow
of your eyebrows and the clarity of the circles that form your sight,
two golden stones finding at least a temporary home
behind my irises of sapped brown, still gilded by sleep,
We dreamt the same dream, didn’t we? —
you dig your big toe into my sock and press close,
knotting fingers to hairs and binding neck to lips,
and you breathe though my skin, the tide rising,
and like wet paper, we become transparent, fragile,
existing only in the stillness of our bed in the eggshell room,
Yes, we dreamt the same dream, but we do not talk about it:
the fissures, only after we say we want something, and
in a blink, time comes back to life, the afternoon,
gasping and clutching with the throat.

I live in you, and on my walk beyond the invalid house
where the leaves crack and they mourn in sharp whispers,
down from the hill to the city where the skyscrapers are draped
with sheets of bluest white, to the bridge where I stand
and glare at the refractions of the light born on the waves,
I dig in my pocket for, I don’t know, for anything to hold,
maybe to study, maybe to throw in the water—

but then I think of you, with no hopes beyond what’s been done,
rain falls and glides down your neck, your chest, the dirt rises
from the ground, the flood and the earth coming to be, embracing,
embracing what was to be our embrace, this city dies with you,
it has died with you, I stare across the bridge to the places we’ve
been, and there is the winter hanging in the air, I search my pockets
for anything, I don’t know, anything, anything to hold.

You sat next to me at the wrong moment,
mouth agape,
I swallowed a bumblebee,
the bumble bee was dreaming
of a baroque church stripped with painted columns
of gold and black,
it heard an enveloping gulp as it went
down down to death,
with the logic of infinite terror
it buzzed and shook its stinger and said
what a beautiful way to die,

you gave me a piece of bread,
here swallow this,
a lump went down my throat,
then I opened some wine,
I spilled it to my mouth and yours,
we got drunk on that bench until you asked
me to cradle you in my arms,
I will die if you don’t hold me,
but you came at the wrong time,
you sat next to me at the wrong moment,
I will fall
down down to death unless you love me,

it was the month of the bee,
I opened my mouth to tell you away
but the bee came out and back from death and
landed on your bottom lip,
stung it purple
and all your skin parched
as wine leaked from that little hole on your lip,
but yet you still had the strength to whisper,
death is nothing,
down down to death, death is the last thing,
death wears black, death prays,
death is nothing,

you sat next to me at the wrong moment,
mouth agape,
I swallowed the bumblebee again.