under summer pines

Your hair,

Coming out in clumps.

The drain was clogged all summer,

With yellow strands from

Your delicate skull.

I know because

I watched you decay

Beneath the pines and

Under the sky, too clear.

The skin of your face

Became sallow and lips turned blue,

As nothing left your fork,

As everything left your heart.

When I came to you

In the sticky, warm night,

I was afraid I was going to crack you,

Snap you in half like a sentence.

You breathed hard into my ear,

And I never stopped,

Wishing all the time I could.

I was born a bird,

You said on the lake before

morning.

How did you live, all those hot days,

All those loud nights?

You looked like a wishbone,

All bowed and white.

Hey, we used to lay naked in the

Grass, feeling the blades against our thighs—

I’m not like that anymore,

Before I got carried away.

Don’t I know;

all your skin is pale and hollow,

I can’t touch you anymore,

I’m scared of being stabbed by

A rib or a hip or a wish that you were you

And not just a picture on my dresser.