The air filling with blue smoke and blue horses whose breath

stokes the kindling, hooves upturning earth, they’re running

again through the streets and the back road paths, towards

 

your house with the faded wisteria creep, lilac and amber

in the rainstorm and you’re running out of cigarettes, left

your car window open again and someone’s cat has climbed

 

inside, warm and soft red seats reminiscent of a heart, how

many times we’ll walk next to each other through the pines

before your heart turns and burns into a crisp in the bonfire

 

your friends are cooler than me, wearing gold bead bracelets

necklaces layered and chokers coated in crescent moons, well

water used to reflect my eyes, now everything is green, soft

 

as satin goes, your faded elbows in your late father’s coat

I pretend to be your mother in the dim light of the kitchen

I am your sister and brother, too, your cat with the tuxedo fur

 

I am the company you keep, the worry at the back of your neck

we reach the deck close to dawn, the horses have turned into

swans with blue feathers and algae-coated beaks, did you know

 

the willow tree is an ecosystem feeding the edges of town

how long until you tell me you don’t love me anymore, who

do I think I am easy to be cared for, am I the host, maybe

 

hound with its muzzle dipped in the ground, problems with

teeth at my neck and my back memorizes the bark of a tree

we extinguish the farmer’s candle gardens, we climb the roof

 

we are daring and young and chain smoking deep into Saturday

I wish then daylight was around for long enough to save my

life. I wish I could outrun the river, become soft and sedated

 

the kind of being you’d leave and think, they’ll make it on their

own, their body fits perfectly into the doorway of evening and

when I finally disappear, all those years later, will you remember

 

to write to me, will you read my letters, here’s another, I try to

reach back through the legs and the haze, can you hear me

across ribcages and dry ice, buckets of headlights broken and

 

collected at the side of the road, amber rings the dead deer’s

head in a helmet, hooves so similar to that of a horse, antlers

shaking and coated in beads, I am reminded of the women, I am

 

reminded of the wounds, the city with its stretches then hums

when my family was still alive they would wave at me out the

balcony of the fourth floor, crying and letting go of their satin

 

handkerchiefs, the expensive kind, tucked away in the pockets

of guests and mourners, we are at the funeral for the animals

I want to bully myself into shrinking, I want to run across tracks

 

and turn into a dragonfly, maybe a rope, a promise, a crate of

oranges and peaches, messy and blessed as flesh, sour, stings

the place where you insert the dagger, this isn’t a song or a

 

secret tossed between ex-friends, this is my life force perched

on the edge of your windowsill, this is me clawing at the phone

booth doors, I’m already raging and ready to race, cross stables

 

fields of blooms, say it, how you prefer ravishing gardenias

even if I wanted to would I curb my face, cure the heat, sticky

flip flops of my youth discarded beneath plastic lawn chairs, we

 

throw streamers at the party, eat meat down to the bone, stay

up too late, do I tell you I miss you or do we collect smooth wet

rocks and small seashells discarded from the mussel mud, must

 

I sculpt the altar by myself, I don’t know how to make a priest

out of squirrel jaws and telephone wires and we all grieve them

the deer with their stories and points and stars, but no one knows

 

the real reason they keep running out into the road, even though

there is a history of danger and hitting, there is a consolation prize

there is sorry-sorry, a loss space inhabited by flower bearers and a

 

bishop from the next town over, his heart is a chamber where hide

liquids and bottle caps, enraptured cats, an entire arboretum and

then some, then we have to say goodbye to the horses, someone

 

must braid their manes, someone must take out the screws, soon

we are singing and losing, I am drying my veins out like frog rocks

you once told me to save my life, I couldn’t protect you even if I

 

tried to tear down the ribbons at the intersection of the statues, so

many words for sea and moon, not enough for loss or carve my

dear, save the bones for me, save your prayers, your shawls, your

 

sorries, I will slip in the secret space of love, I will rest until the

earth turns green and hot, screw the evidence, save me the ashes

from the rites, remind me that I can survive tough stuff, violence

 

and such is the crown on the head of the eldest buck, all red stains

but whose car was it and what happened to the river water, well

where do I return when the lights go out and the barn is sealed.