Water swept back again and again
Licking out the dark scar across my heart
Like blood caressing a wound.
I was stabbed last night.
I wouldn't speak of it.
I will choose to be that white tree
Baring her bones out
Coming from nowhere
Going nowhere
In the darkness of a wet winter evening.
The moon, carefully honed, was open.
Tantalizing the dry leaves
Which moved round and round indolently
To nothing.
I was declared Not Dead.
The coffee beans marched at once in their tiny darkness
Disrobed from their chrysalis
Before my unready eyes
Spread their wings across a wet sky.
Fireflies!
I was sleeping inside a cloud
Running my fingers through the weeds in my dream.
My mother came on a horse back,
We sipped coffee and shots of vodka and played scrabble
Till our fingers turned to jelly.
A spell broke last night
Uninhibited. Now lost. Only
A dull incantation of time echos.
Morning tells me, Not Dead.
The hole in my chest hides inside my jacket.
Not Dead, it is.