i know her because her hair drags with homesick stars
& her hands are rough like a sailor's.

          i know her loneliness looks like a fish struggling
in a man's net & her freedom

When they carved the desk, a necessary place
to keep paper from molding and aging,
they cried as they stripped curves

The summer Mom died,
I summoned you
From vulture feathers,
From discarded cicada husks,
From car-wrecked armadillos,
Legs surrendered to the eternal, burning sky.

In my dreams, we’re burglars

Our fingers ooze through castle walls of toffee and cloud
like a warmed spoon through the toffee-walnut ice-cream I churned on your birthday

Softly lift the tools of your secret witching.
Make no noise your mothers will hear, no telltale
scrape of knife on stone; keep your setup silent.
Answer no questions.

My cousin invites me over for dinner the evening before my flight. While he and his wife set the table, their daughter lifts a lizard out of its vivarium, cradles it in her small hands, places the creature gently upon my outstretched arm. Claws dig soft craters into the inked planets beneath my skin as the chameleon climbs up to my shoulder and drapes its tail around my neck, swivels its beady eyes towards me.

The hermit kneels inside his cell and prays.
Here two roads meet: and at their crossing stands
a sacred guard for all the kingdom’s ways.

chasm: i fall knee-deep into the shallows.
             after you, the stars shut their eyes—

the dark earth like algae flourished inside me.
             my body: haystack in a farmhouse—

You’ve written your last words; you will not speak them
His spell would not let you, anyway
Not now; after years of wielding tiny pins—
too small for dancing angels—

Here is a bed of downy clouds on demand, yet free to us all,
next, a mouthful of sunlight to measure this blossom of late
November, cornflowers, a pretty pop of blue at the corner
of this end of Roundrock Road, the way to elicit care is color,