Connecticut looked more like a jungle—
The man blew the ash from the tomb, raised it
with the strength of a million palms,
and brought her here—never to close her eyes again.
I listen to the rainfall—the pitter-patter of typing keys
being hammered in. Desks in neat rows down the church hall.
I imagine myself the artist—tracing her marble grooves—
watching them funnel through revolving doors.
But my hands are twisted behind my back—victims
of the monk’s Catholic pen. He visits in the brisk night
to take the dreams—and drink the tears she still cries
like the fountain of youth.
Lately, I’ve been yearning to obtain
the graceful sorrow of La Pietà in my painting.
The marble shone like a tear.
I have been believing in other myths...
If you look up through the windchimes' wooden tunnels,
you will hear the ocean
and the little boy who steals buckets from it.
And dashes away. And hides.
When I am in the open air,
waves come down upon the shore and mold
into the hands of prayer. The nails,
the pale wrinkles of the tide,
dig into wet sand and beg for penance.
My paint has dried before I can lay it. The ocean
chases the boy. My brush frayed, strokes messy,
and the painting is muddled into a single shape
that melts from the canvas like an old candle
long abandoned in the good night.
My feet tied with ice to the wooden floors
like Emily Dickinson. An investment estate
in Amherst, Massachusetts—clean and Protestant.
Like her hands. Washed twice a day in the ice.
Because it was soon to be spring—
everything melting or being baptized.
And I trimmed the grass to impress the prophets
visiting in clouds of snow—
in the shapes of quivering doe—
moose who dragged their ponderous reflections—
chained down.
My blood clots and slows—pours
onto the tabletop and sears an imprint
(the shape of a cross, some
harbinger of deprivation)—
pools in my empty stomach.
What prophets could we be one day? Our two minds
soldiering on—well-made machines
with gears that dance as one, slow and practiced,
when the weather comes to be right.
At least I am not the robin who hung by his throat—
tangled in the branch that was also long dead,
how he swayed in the April wind.
Before the water was too polluted to make clean,
the scent of chlorine burned in your nose,
your eyes—unprotected.
Between the rose bushes, you prayed,
watching the leaves cast shadows across the ground
until the coves of green resembled utopian cities.
This is how I imagine you grew up–
in close conversation with the sun on summer days,
with the weeds and old sculptures in the garden.
This is how I imagine a life said to have once been mine.
And it is impossible to believe…
Because no one looks as they did then;
the fruit trees are not so vibrant.
The wind has forgotten its sibilant song.
What child could I have been?
For by the time I returned home at dusk,
the youthful good had all but escaped my palms,
and it was a cold winter,
and the rain seeped through me.
Some text..
Sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco.