clutter in the attic

If you are like
this half inch of snow
now covering my quiet world
(like a duvet),

if you are like
the clever, clawing voice
of the bird now sitting
on my windowsill,

if you are honey-gold,
bright, blinding, fueled 
by the incessant creation
of this giant old world,

if you are a reader,
a writer, a singer, a soother,
a moaner, a joker, a runner,
a dancer, a kicker, a hippie,
an animal, a shy one, a loud mouth,
a peddler of thoughts,

a satisfied dreamer,
a downtrodden cynic,

a devilish winker, a tarnished soul,
a sinner, believer, atheist, god,
an ancient and aching old bag full of bones, 

if you are alarming, comforting, cold,
if you’re weird or wired or wild or witty,
if you have the feeling
this isn’t for you,
that no way, no how,
could this bullshit describe you,

if you can’t be bothered
to read this nonsense,
if your life is too crazy
to care about poems,
if the phone is ringing,
if your brain is dying,
if your heart is breaking,
if your muse has left you,
if the ice is melting,
if the world is ending,
if the people you love
need you more now than ever,

if everything seems like its ending or starting
and nothing’s important
or everything is, 

then just know
I wrote this for you. 

You blister my skin,
tear the heat away,
and replace it with agonizing chill.

I am afraid of you,
and I can’t get close enough.
You smell of honey and flour,
you make me want to scream. 

I want the taste of you
on my lips,
the soft of you
under my fingers.

There is a fire burning here,
a radiance that can’t be doused
by the wriggling of your nonsense words.

Destroy the fury,
the tactless, the crazy,
your synonyms/logic
can’t kill this ache.

Turn the silence
up to blasting,
blink away
skittering, slithering silver.
 
Hold tight to your rib-cage
that burning harmony,
the edge of fear,
the twist of tension.
 
Glimmer more the
glummer you feel,
blur and blight the skin
of a magazine model. 

Immerse your smirk
in a blaze of attitude,
and rant and rave
against your supposed
insignificance.

It ends with a crash,
with a shatter, a moan,
a fragile I’m sorry,
like threads finally breaking.

Eyelids fail—
fingers fumble and fret
to make sense of the mess
spread across the linoleum.

A couple dead insects,
a few scraps of paper,
the fine mist of cobwebs, 
the gold swirl of dust.

Comb through the silt
for the wreckage (the pieces), 
the shards of an heirloom,
what’s left of her life.

This is mine—
this weather
it wakes me

and I am burnished,
bright and blooming.

My skin is blushed with
the brighter daylight,
my eyes are unfailing,
their irises wide.

Shadow freckles
fall on my face—
the patches, the points
where the sun can’t touch me.

It is calmly, persistently strong
this weather.
It rocks the trees and flagpoles.

It gives to me
one sunburned leaf,
and I hold it in my hands all day 
to feel its silk
against my palms

and watch
its small life fade.

Balanced on the edge
of a bottomless sky,
we mumbled and whispered
our favorite wonders.

We curled our fingers
in the graceful peace
of cloudless starscapes
and the earth’s sweet skin.

We marveled and thrived
on the slow-swelling birdsong
and the pink hint of dawn
as it tinged our world,

and silently, reverently,
entwined in our stillness,
we watched the sky bloom
a new shimmering day.

We met when suns rose high and still,
and birds made glassy, half-throat
noises that seemed to
come from everywhere—
and never quite died down.

You gave me flowers shaped like stars—
you touched my cheek
with silver hands,
and told me Autumn could never blur
the etchings on our skin.

Petals, blossoms, drifting by,
pools of blushed hues,
calm, and thrumming—
alighted on our sun-dried hair
and stung our skin like bees.

I held your hand and felt it shake;
electric, charged by a thunderstorm.
You rushed us through
the flirting days
and kissed me— blueberry— sweet and sour.

Each day we cooled, we burned, we glowed
our eyes were wide, our voices soft.
We loved like a bottle
of oil and vinegar—
shaken up, we joined together.

But leaves grew frail,
their silk wings fraying,
flitting to earth with a crackle and sigh,

our soles softened,
our limbs grew still
against the hardened soil.

Never have I seen a Summer
blaze so bright and fade so fast.

The birds flew South in a capital V—
left behind an empty pond,
and the softest, smallest, snow-bright feather
resting on the ground.

You stooped and gently scooped
it up, it danced across your calloused palm.

You placed it in my darkening hair,
kissed my cheek, touched my waist,              
crushed one last flower as you crept away—
(as if to say forget me).

A gleaming sunset
complements the branches—
dresses them in taffeta and lace.

The cooling shiver of air
expels a sigh,
and leaves a smile
in the corners of my mouth.

I have lingered,
backbone pressed,
against the softening ground,

but never dared to feel the summer
fading from the air.

It was then,
in the twilight of my own
softened senses

that I heard your breaths
in the stretch of your ribcage
and saw you grow older
one second at a time.

And I thought that this
might be our perfect—
breathing together
and unraveling memories
and watching time slow down.   

I wilted against the
palm of your hot hand,
and felt close to the velvet hewn
sky pressing down.

Smaller bugs with bigger bites
made soft red welts
on your uncovered skin.

Pink lightning flicked against
the ache of the stars
and scorched summer into me,
a deep simmer and hiss.

You burrowed me into
the softening earth,
your hands full of my
arms, hips, shoulders, collarbone, thigh.

I felt the sweet stick
of flower stems breaking
and cried out, muffled
by the pounding of
blood in the both of us.

Your eyes were shut
to the blossoming rage
of the storm and the sky
and the heat finally breaking.

But I watched with my eyelids
as wide as they’d go,
and felt the air become icy
as the first drop fell.