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Description
Prologue
Planets are large, but he is patient
Heat is thick, but he is a strong fish, and he swims
The girls around here are shadows, always quiet, holding hands
Finding echoes of joy in hearts that are black and blue
And they only speak in quotation marks.
What would the tigers and trees think of us, anyway?
This is our world now.
He’s been awake for so long
He’s forgotten what he woke up for.
Letting her thoughts fly like straw wrappers,
Like recycled Valentines
Out the window of a red car on a hot day

Chapter One
Look what you’ve done to my world:
God gave up on the fifth afternoon
There was never any need to eat apples and anyway,
The wise men would have followed the wrong star
If we’d gotten that far
I have this sneaking feeling you could have been more
Than the green door on Orange Street with
The gleaming brass knocker that aches to be handled,
Dirtied and sullied with fingerprints like slumped spiders.
Somewhere soon I’ll be an m&m the color of your eyes.
Somewhere marginally farther, I already am.
You tell me everything I’ve ever known is wrong. So tell me.
If I blew up this building, say,
Burned this scale model of some symbol of order
Lovingly constructed of toothpicks in a lonely basement world,
Would that get me into your heaven?
And would you be there?
I want you to know: here & now? You can’t keep me forever.
Here and now, I am a candy cane the color of tomorrow.
I am my own kind of ninja.

Chapter Two
Above us, the stars are laughing.
Muffled, as if through a blanket of fog
Or as if from a great height
Come their deep, throaty chuckles
Until fingers of rain drown them out
With their steady patient drum on the window.
I have spent a year carving
Out my place under your wishbone
And now tonight I crawl in,
Into the warm red light shining through your ribcage
Curling around myself, falling asleep
With my back to the natural curve of your spine
With my head against your steady thudding heart.

Chapter Three
I am feeling like a garden
Made toxic, like seeds dropped here
Could fall all the way to bedrock
Without finding a resting place, like
Something came and killed
All the soft benign earthworms. A million tiny curses
From a million angry neighbours have
Found a mark somewhere in the aquifer
Under my island and they
Poison the water for miles around.
May your joys become obligations.
May your habits become addictions.
May your flowers wilt.
May your new seeds rot
In the belly of their mother the beast.
The greater part of love is knowing when to surrender.

Chapter Four
I arrive at sorrow much as I had left it
In the unassuming state of startling grace
That moves in behind anger and just before forgiveness.
Today I am worn down by the beauty of ordinary things
By the infinite glory of the trivial.
I am tired of noticing.
There are so many tiny glinting shines,
So many intricately crumpled tin cans,
So many bike wheels that scatter street lights on misty afternoons like this one
So many battered shingles highlighted gold by sickly orange porch lights;
Sometimes I have to shut my eyes and turn away
Block out the shadow of a lily on the sidewalk
Turn off the perfection of bricks on the post office wall.

Chapter Five
The past is slowly bricked over with paving stones
And every piece of every vaulted ceiling
Eventually crumbles and wilts into the sidewalk
But in your eyes
Remain a hundred gardens and green sanctuaries,
Edgeless and boundless and ever expanding.
Across a bitter earth I can trace your path
Of yellow post it notes and black felt hats,
Broken strings and bread crusts,
Coffee grounds and orange peels.

Recapitulation
You think you know how erosion works
But I’ve seen rivers detach and reattach
And others, much like you,
That failed to find their way back
Every night, my dream’s the same, because
When you leave, the light changes.
About incandescence: you are my candle.
About sunshine: you are my only.

Description
Prologue
Planets are large, but he is patient
Heat is thick, but he is a strong fish, and he swims
The girls around here are shadows, always quiet, holding hands
Finding echoes of joy in hearts that are black and blue
And they only speak in quotation marks.
What would the tigers and trees think of us, anyway?
This is our world now.
He’s been awake for so long
He’s forgotten what he woke up for.
Letting her thoughts fly like straw wrappers,
Like recycled Valentines
Out the window of a red car on a hot day

Chapter One
Look what you’ve done to my world:
God gave up on the fifth afternoon
There was never any need to eat apples and anyway,
The wise men would have followed the wrong star
If we’d gotten that far
I have this sneaking feeling you could have been more
Than the green door on Orange Street with
The gleaming brass knocker that aches to be handled,
Dirtied and sullied with fingerprints like slumped spiders.
Somewhere soon I’ll be an m&m the color of your eyes.
Somewhere marginally farther, I already am.
You tell me everything I’ve ever known is wrong. So tell me.
If I blew up this building, say,
Burned this scale model of some symbol of order
Lovingly constructed of toothpicks in a lonely basement world,
Would that get me into your heaven?
And would you be there?
I want you to know: here & now? You can’t keep me forever.
Here and now, I am a candy cane the color of tomorrow.
I am my own kind of ninja.

Chapter Two
Above us, the stars are laughing.
Muffled, as if through a blanket of fog
Or as if from a great height
Come their deep, throaty chuckles
Until fingers of rain drown them out
With their steady patient drum on the window.
I have spent a year carving
Out my place under your wishbone
And now tonight I crawl in,
Into the warm red light shining through your ribcage
Curling around myself, falling asleep
With my back to the natural curve of your spine
With my head against your steady thudding heart.

Chapter Three
I am feeling like a garden
Made toxic, like seeds dropped here
Could fall all the way to bedrock
Without finding a resting place, like
Something came and killed
All the soft benign earthworms. A million tiny curses
From a million angry neighbours have
Found a mark somewhere in the aquifer
Under my island and they
Poison the water for miles around.
May your joys become obligations.
May your habits become addictions.
May your flowers wilt.
May your new seeds rot
In the belly of their mother the beast.
The greater part of love is knowing when to surrender.

Chapter Four
I arrive at sorrow much as I had left it
In the unassuming state of startling grace
That moves in behind anger and just before forgiveness.
Today I am worn down by the beauty of ordinary things
By the infinite glory of the trivial.
I am tired of noticing.
There are so many tiny glinting shines,
So many intricately crumpled tin cans,
So many bike wheels that scatter street lights on misty afternoons like this one
So many battered shingles highlighted gold by sickly orange porch lights;
Sometimes I have to shut my eyes and turn away
Block out the shadow of a lily on the sidewalk
Turn off the perfection of bricks on the post office wall.

Chapter Five
The past is slowly bricked over with paving stones
And every piece of every vaulted ceiling
Eventually crumbles and wilts into the sidewalk
But in your eyes
Remain a hundred gardens and green sanctuaries,
Edgeless and boundless and ever expanding.
Across a bitter earth I can trace your path
Of yellow post it notes and black felt hats,
Broken strings and bread crusts,
Coffee grounds and orange peels.

Recapitulation
You think you know how erosion works
But I’ve seen rivers detach and reattach
And others, much like you,
That failed to find their way back
Every night, my dream’s the same, because
When you leave, the light changes.
About incandescence: you are my candle.
About sunshine: you are my only.