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Maybe I needed your sail, your compass. Beacon leaking my own small speaking. Small and weak and windbroke breathing. All the clocks reset, worn in loud rooms, strapped to stomachs like unplugged bombs. Maybe I needed your floating dreams, arms like snakes to lick my face. Arbitrary angles we drew like flight paths on maps of stamps and hard holes in empty Alps. Justifying the dying light, a new rage-fed phase to steam our envelopes open. Maybe your song still plays, your music stays in the air. Yelled like lists of last words, old regrets, tired flags stained with surrender. Maybe your laugh still stabs sidewalks, the worms learning how light burns. So much afterglow, my own light flickers, stunted, then billows into banished blazes. I stood for photos afraid to smile, smirk, scream. I went missing and waited for the right time to return. I hid in tires taller than me. Vented to old overalls, skimped on situating my sins into empty film reel tins. Garbled, a bird plucking pieces of string, wood, glass to build a new nest. The kind of whistle that could kick a hole in your heart. Maybe I need a new chamber, a maid, a disastrous sense of a game well-played. Maybe I am coming unglued, bright as a holly berry, graduating into first thirst. Maybe cactus cuts can’t heal.
