someone says smile to take your picture and you turn to face the camera. you are not alone but you are the only one turning. and when the shutter snaps you are caught turning away from those that love you.

doing it again, on the porch, out in the world. chill but bearable, like all things. we get used to it. slower now, too much thought, just do it. the doing and the saying, nothing ever makes it to the page. the words get lost. no translation, just loss, total and complete. but there is a moment of clarity, a string that finds itself, threads through. hang on to that string, a life, a rope, keep it from being a noose.

two once into nothing. grains between the skin and the quick, nails parsed and rendered swollen into a thickness. had i dreamt, had i slept, the denial waking in the belly. and there on your knees you cannot face it. there on your hand you spit it out. roots of withered grass once green and heaving rough dry wads of knotted brown roots. i can spit it all out but changes nothing.

bricks and teeth. these things repeat. hands and thighs, like a cavalcade of hoofs pounding the earth. it bares repeating. jaws wide open until the tongue waggles into the wind. broken and bleeding, twice more, once over, not stopping. shudder and speaking, flail loose, frayed ends of fingers looking for a grasp. and the road, the night and a sun that yields no warmth.

break halves into words and words into morsels of salted meat for thirst between fingers before gently opened mouths hungry for one kiss more. two hands tired of breathing on hips longing upwards and we both dream living. and time stops.

and in this there is the soft patter of the rain, an incessant thing that does not leave me alone. What a terrible comfort.

lax and cracking, like a painted petal falling apart at the seams. she needles and threads through another day while her spine unravels at her children’s fingertips. i sat solemnly on the porch waiting for the sun to bring some warmth to these bones. a dog across the street mangled the hedges and my neighbor lost his mind throwing cartons of cigarettes at it. these are the things dreams are made sour, she said, and rolled off the skin from her elbow down to her wrist like a glove, bloody and thick. between the veins and bones i saw a pulse and then could not see anymore. to be blind in the heat, i whispered, to be simply blind.

hanzel and gretel went up the hill to fetch a pail of humpty dumpty’s eggs but they came upon the house of the three bears where the first bowl of porridge was too hot and the second too cold and when they were about to eat the last which was just right grandma came down the stairs and they both looked at her and said, my grandma what big teeth you have and the wolf replied, all the better to eat you with! and tore off the grandmother disguise and chased throughout and out of the house where an old witch was stopping by and threw a poisoned apple into the wolf’s jaws and the wolf fell asleep just like that in the woods but the seven dwarfs found him and they were stricken with sorrow and hearing their cries the beast came along and kissed the wolf and suddenly the beast became a charming prince and the wolf awoke with such a fright that he ran off to hide in one of the three pigs’ homes.