The paper is old and wrinkled
Tapered along the edges like a fairy’s carpet
Billowing outward, flowering, creases unfolding in waves.
Rising off the words is the scent of brown sugar, old parchment dancing on the kitchen island.

there is a gentle pulse on the other side of forever
when Mother Nature’s whisper grows hoarse
and our two hands hang limply in the space between us
leaden feathers dragging on the corners of fickle consciousness,
the laughter drying,
morphine for the pre-dead

In his head, he is
beneath the stars,
that are shimmering
but silently so,
quiet in their
overwhelming beauty.
They reach out to him
despite being held
captive
in the sky’s embrace.

i was raised in the house that neither of my parents built
although my mother was the one that raised me
she took a home not built yet and filled it with daughters
and when her husband left
he took his paintings of french women
garbed in robes with eyes grinning into the sun