The Tower

“Nathaniel” is such a pretty word for waking up and finding me alive beside you wanting to feel it over and over again, until it stops feeling like anything at all: until I’m so accustomed to you and am finally awarded the pleasure of waking up some other morning far from here and being caught…

I’m sitting in a chair at the salon listening to a man declare you ruined: “Feminist Icon; hero” spared integrity in a hard-won victory at the hands of an errant writer– Lo–! and you, behold your ignorance here in Forgetting what became her; little one with the bigger brother. I declare your right to sorrow…

The paper blossoms like a rose and I wonder where the flame goes, crept quick between folds left in the pages; marked the moment we left off for lack of all our trespasses. What have I left of a mother’s love but a dirty doll’s blanket sewn with immaculate care? Nature waits not for our…

The kisses are like a flurry of notes, written with a single word and bundled down by bailing twine tied fast upon my body. I am a record of peace made last between us on the day I met your cat; a brief repast between the bites of meat long cured at another table. “Please”…

I want to write again to say how things are as if that makes them so– I want to find you newly formed and naked like some kind of Dr. Frankenstein, examining the property of turning flesh I bled from out old wounds and kissed you ‘til your eyes made out of wishes finally open…

The future is a place we live together now, for lack of a better option. We are playing there like bears in the water– beautiful in a graceless absurdity; certain of our right to be here. When the mountain men appeared at first, we found them ruthless– they couldn’t see the way the world was…

I threw you off the top as if you didn’t matter– was tiredof keeping you warm at night; of taking your head fromout hands as you wept. Your demands are not in keeping with a free andfast-enraptur’d heart and so I take you to the rooftop:the flames here cannot singe me; licking tips catch on…

There was once a sailorwho had seen every corner of the earth covered by the seabut never stepped on land. When asked why, he repliedhe had only ever heard of it;caught wind of it on the airdrenched by the strange scent of beasts less free than he was,land locked as they were byfolly and a…

I am tight and hiddenin a covetous woodgnawing at my ownankles; waiting for the crack of sapin the spring andice on the lake breaking in wavesagainst the shore. I am an avalanche ofintention. I know just what youare.