The best place we ever lived
had a really big tree. More than five stories
shadowed the backyard.

At first they were short
and simple: moralistic fables or fairy tales

Watch as I tend
these ice-blue flames,
poking and prodding
every faltering gash.

Through the blinds of my ground-level apartment
I see the flash of red taillights; someone’s car
backing into a parking space, sending forth a
sudden claret flare like aliens landing in the night.

I run out of ways to keep you urgent in my mouth,
stomach your shouting relic.
so, when grief comes for an unburial, unearthing you into the forgotten,
I stuff you under my tongue.

The moon is a ghost, a god.
She is a white rabbit of silver
Eyes and whiskers.
He is an ancient demon, a teething child.

In the small hours, under the wolf light.
my best friend throws peanuts
at my window. It is the nymphs.
They are migrating.

In my mind a butterfly catches pneumonia:
Flap flap the world is changed.

There’s a second life but not a first,
there’s you and no there’s just me—

dot the j and cross the seven.
upcoming in neon, in oppressive heat
we dream with night-opened windows.

The forest lands link earth with heaven,
spruce-tree tips like dendrites of elder earthen gods.

We are crowded sisters
with roots that tangle and quiver
in the wind. Our roots cling
onto brittle pieces of shattered ...