i want to write pretentious words that might make you laugh, but tonight i can't find your ghost. i want to say the things that might heal something someday, but i can't find the threads anywhere. i passed through the same mountains that i passed through a hundred times before, and the strings that i made from your hair, braided with nine different colors of glass beads, and ribbons to catch the eyes of the dead, they were all gone, and the only reflection i could see came from broken bottles. and the sun gets brighter every day here.
i want to tell you that you can capture part of my heart in a bottle, and hang it from the tree outside your window, and you can talk to me here like you might talk to olokun when the night gets too long, and morning still refuses to show herself to you. i want to tell you about reverse spells, of mirrors in bags, and the way to make it so that when you think of me, you won't see me walking away any more, but you'll see me coming toward you with petals in my fists. i want to tell you about the things i hold in my hands when i'm trying to remember you, but i can't find your ghost.
tonight even the sea feels far from me, and i say the things i want to the floor of the desert, where the ocean once loved the land beneath my feet. tonight i remember some of the songs that we like to sing to the dead, so that we can spend some time in their oceans and rest before returning to the living. tonight i am giving in to the pull of the underworld, and settling in for a few more weeks of the kind of winter that can only live in the broken heart of the summer. tonight, the only thing that breaks my heart are the same rocks that still refuse to budge, the cold stone heart of fear in the heads of the living who don't want to lose any more than they've already lost in the course of a broken year.
the same sea that once gave me your name when i was drowning tells me to go under, and let the feeling of drowning continue, because after a short while, it will become important. the same sea that introduced me to the mirror where i could see glimpses of your heart tells me to go to sleep again for a time, and let my head rest on the laurels of the cemetery's residents. the sea reminds me that when i let everything fall from my fists, i wake up with shiny objects surrounding my head, and life begins to repeat only in series of fives. three is the irish seal, but five is the key to the underworld.
i want to speak those secrets that might tell you why the channels turned so dark and furious, so that you might have a map to find your way out of this, but my tongue is locked, and the key is around the neck of a ghost i can't find tonight. these things happen, the bisexual goddess at the ocean floor tells me, these things happen to the living as often as they happen to the dead, and your obligation is not to clarify the gossip of the living or the dead. your obligation is to whisper my name, over and over, until it comes true, until you can see me in the middle of the dust storm, until you see me in the broken glass on the desert floor, until you see me signaling through the flames, these thousand and one signs we send to let you know that you have our attention.
i want to whisper to you at the edges of the water, speaking quieter than the waves, so that we don't wake the neighbors, so that we can talk until the sun comes up and circles us again and again and again. i want to whisper all the blood out of my mouth, until the broken glass under my tongue is washed out and i am too tired to whisper any more. i want to whisper long enough so that i can start to hear your whispers through my breath, and your stable and graceful ecstasies can announce themselves through all the walls of the world, and wake the neighbors, and wake the roommates, and wake the sleeping dogs lying at our feet, and wake the things that we can't see at the bottom of the sea. i want to make ribbons from your whispers and tie them to your waist, make drumheads from the dew on your thighs so that your song resonates through all the fruit trees of the underworld, and sew rose petals from all of your expenditures to line the paths that only the dead can walk.
i want to say the things that only have one meaning, that can only reflect the truth, but my tongue is locked, and all i have are words of longing, spun from the same cloth that decorated your head before you entered this body. i want to write the story of a textual love that took place on the tongues of the living, but the dead keep entering into the narrative, and demand perfect lyrical reflections. i want to write the very last perfect word, but the words keep flowing from my locked tongue, blood seeping through the fissures, salt water covering the endless nights of longing in a body that can't forget, possessed in equal measure by the ancestors and the spirits of the sea, who just keep singing, and i can't help but keep listening.
i want to tell you that you can capture part of my heart in a bottle, and hang it from the tree outside your window, and you can talk to me here like you might talk to olokun when the night gets too long, and morning still refuses to show herself to you. i want to tell you about reverse spells, of mirrors in bags, and the way to make it so that when you think of me, you won't see me walking away any more, but you'll see me coming toward you with petals in my fists. i want to tell you about the things i hold in my hands when i'm trying to remember you, but i can't find your ghost.
tonight even the sea feels far from me, and i say the things i want to the floor of the desert, where the ocean once loved the land beneath my feet. tonight i remember some of the songs that we like to sing to the dead, so that we can spend some time in their oceans and rest before returning to the living. tonight i am giving in to the pull of the underworld, and settling in for a few more weeks of the kind of winter that can only live in the broken heart of the summer. tonight, the only thing that breaks my heart are the same rocks that still refuse to budge, the cold stone heart of fear in the heads of the living who don't want to lose any more than they've already lost in the course of a broken year.
the same sea that once gave me your name when i was drowning tells me to go under, and let the feeling of drowning continue, because after a short while, it will become important. the same sea that introduced me to the mirror where i could see glimpses of your heart tells me to go to sleep again for a time, and let my head rest on the laurels of the cemetery's residents. the sea reminds me that when i let everything fall from my fists, i wake up with shiny objects surrounding my head, and life begins to repeat only in series of fives. three is the irish seal, but five is the key to the underworld.
i want to speak those secrets that might tell you why the channels turned so dark and furious, so that you might have a map to find your way out of this, but my tongue is locked, and the key is around the neck of a ghost i can't find tonight. these things happen, the bisexual goddess at the ocean floor tells me, these things happen to the living as often as they happen to the dead, and your obligation is not to clarify the gossip of the living or the dead. your obligation is to whisper my name, over and over, until it comes true, until you can see me in the middle of the dust storm, until you see me in the broken glass on the desert floor, until you see me signaling through the flames, these thousand and one signs we send to let you know that you have our attention.
i want to whisper to you at the edges of the water, speaking quieter than the waves, so that we don't wake the neighbors, so that we can talk until the sun comes up and circles us again and again and again. i want to whisper all the blood out of my mouth, until the broken glass under my tongue is washed out and i am too tired to whisper any more. i want to whisper long enough so that i can start to hear your whispers through my breath, and your stable and graceful ecstasies can announce themselves through all the walls of the world, and wake the neighbors, and wake the roommates, and wake the sleeping dogs lying at our feet, and wake the things that we can't see at the bottom of the sea. i want to make ribbons from your whispers and tie them to your waist, make drumheads from the dew on your thighs so that your song resonates through all the fruit trees of the underworld, and sew rose petals from all of your expenditures to line the paths that only the dead can walk.
i want to say the things that only have one meaning, that can only reflect the truth, but my tongue is locked, and all i have are words of longing, spun from the same cloth that decorated your head before you entered this body. i want to write the story of a textual love that took place on the tongues of the living, but the dead keep entering into the narrative, and demand perfect lyrical reflections. i want to write the very last perfect word, but the words keep flowing from my locked tongue, blood seeping through the fissures, salt water covering the endless nights of longing in a body that can't forget, possessed in equal measure by the ancestors and the spirits of the sea, who just keep singing, and i can't help but keep listening.
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