There is a thin slice of glass in my foot
I cannot see it
but I know it’s there
at night when
the fan whirls like a dervish overhead
and I play the xylophone between my legs
a storm blows in
like a warning and a representation
of everything felt and bottled up
old trees hold on, their roots tested
by the metal of young wind hurling
all order into chaos
we stand in our night-clothes
looking over fences
at destruction
she has a white line the length of her stomach
he has a scar hidden in his throat
mine is without and within like
a snake who cannot decide
which part to digest first
we three are the wounded lovers
with our perpetual thirst for
promises to ring true
devotion to stay where it was first placed
by the window in a jar of water
to bloom and scent the pulse of night
but such things rarely obey
wont of humans without power
the storm and her threading fingers
lays waste to our belief we control
even the tiniest morsel of this crochet world
…(l)…
when he married her
he thought she would obey
the tick tock of her laboring heart
stay steadfast by his side in the howling wind
but she was a maelstrom of her own
making
soon the wedge in their marital bed
was a dry river without resurrection
…(ll)…
she wanted
her husband to save her
when the doctor said C.A.N.C.E.R. and she turned
to the eyes of her children and they
looked away in painted terror
but he only knew how to put out fires
not the slow melt of all safe things she had
taken for granted 33 years
so they diverged
like a split oak touched by
lightning will remain
upright yet stranger to its mate
…(lll)…
and she was the string
between the wounded male and female
her own heart hollowed out
murmuring at night like a singleton
by the small hands of trust and promises
unkept
it was as her grandmother said
a poor thing to imagine humans
to remain steadfast
after all, the storm blew everything
even our very best intentions
whipping them into the air
until they were fragments of themselves
transformed what we knew
what we were familiar with
lending no safe harbor
for the weakened need to have surety
the only thing keeping them
upright
was their conjoined pain
a frayed ribbon between three houses
in the wildfire dead of night
where even
creatures who prefer darkness
stayed in their nests
for it was only then, in the tempest
they felt themselves capable
of surviving another moment
only then
shouting their grief into four pursing winds
writing pain along the narrow margins
of life and death
they lived another day
and on that day
wrecked and emptied
found succor in the equal fall of others
bending to pick up the debris of
their former selves
rent into splintered pieces
unrecognizable and sharp to the touch