The unending swallow / A mash of hope, gut-stuffed in the snow / 

[we smear tears on the lawn, smell lives of distant unity]

And we're a cascade of laundry lines stretched across eyes. 

[taut, soft to the touch]

To be clean. To pretend love is not a torn nail -- a clenched shadow. 

[do you remember my face?]

And night streaks in whimpers and jitters, dry tongues and accidents by the window. She didn't stop moving. And our luck is a wet groveling, a wiped floor of memory, streaked memory. It's been ten years. Eleven. Tear open the envelope. Let the cash flutter to the kitchen floor. Your knees are a flat stomach. It's Valentines Day in California. What a lovely mess we've built. Is it too late to be forgiven for the crated hours, for the silence and the stomping.

... If she could only see. If she could only contort herself into air like a balloon tangled in the twines of a child's hair.

The gurgled fever / A crown of tears, blood-welled in the bed / 

[dance across the snow]

And we're pretending innocence is not universal. A curse of fortune. A wrench to the eye. 

This is how we live with doors locked and hands flushing fur down drains in the morning. And what remains after you're gone to the flames, ground to dust, dear girl. May we breathe you in to our deepest lung-tomb. May we admire your patience and how you loved, always loved.  

It will be too late to forgive.

Maybe you already have.

Or will. If time is not as we know it. 

If lives are dreamed back into being. 

When the injection stops your pitter-patter heart. 

And you rest forever.