» Poetry

Witness to a chain of bursting

balloons filled with chirping finches.

I liked to make things up in the dark, bright

yarn spider webs, name your electric

mood disease a super-power. Instead,

the nightmare of your mania:

constant smell of burning feathers,

last year’s untouched dinners. A ghost

now buried in moss, now gone for days

in the snow, coked up and knocked up,

your exquisite moth chocolate eyes,

mimesis of a child who was a little prone

to trouble. I could hardly remember you.

I learned to sow the medicine, delicate,

and learned how someone doesn’t die

but fragments into hydra,

rakshasa or Ophelia,

minister of mystic meth-trips

down the silver-tunnels of the soul.

Sister, the day you walked out of

the labyrinth and into the kitchen

was not a day, but years of impossible

breakfasts. We used to joke about

you breaking dishes. What marvel

made apocalypse stormed through

you, what storm always in you,

what storm you

held.