The dent in the car is shaped like a kiss

i will befriend this animal, baring his teeth at even the sight of skin  he is starving but can’t let himself  eat out of your trembling hand

you’re staring at the white light of your glowing empty page and you are startled by the cold, a place in me that used to be warm, feels cold. 

in a book i read as a child, they say once you are made Real, all of your hair will be loved off, and your eye missing too. 

so i tell myself that this loss is only a result of love.

i read a line of a poem as an answer “the vocabulary of loss is the dictionary”

the language of joy is not language at all

rather than your body– i keep books on the right side of my bed

1.

i act like im trying to solve something every night now, floss between my teeth i am wiggling at the gum of an answer and biting down on anything in between my teeth. 

quiet children have strong jaws, i hardly spoke until the second grade but on my chest is my giant heart beating too fast and loud. how something can be precious and wasted is maybe why they are all writing songs. stories taped twice over, so as not to forget.  

2.

i mutter my grandfather's prayer and wonder if he sees a face on the moon. 

relief slides its hands over your shoulders, to think of someone other than yourself.

longing, like something tender begging to be prodded.

wanting, someone to stay. if you don’t remember ill try to remind you, but my body is biting down on itself like an enormous jaw

3.

starting to feel anger, collecting all the spoons i can find in the kitchen and making myself a silver nest. i have nothing to sit on. flowers have always died, the difference is I keep the petals and you don’t. comforted, now by some red blood on some large screen and someone else’s fear. most of the stars in the sky are already dead, some others might be planets. one mourning dove sits on the power line- like a small god touching only the veins.

4.

some small soft animal touches my cheek, i can hardly hold the loss so im writing letters to you

(i cannot forget the poem i memorized for you) \ i grind my teeth together in my empty bed, chew up the parts of this that i can remember fondly, and swallow it all with whatever tears my eyes can spare.

digging my hands in the dirt– i imagine i will somehow find my way back to you, then i think that might not be true

5.

( it is unfair of me to pluck these seeds from the ground and will them to grow with no soil. no organ playing, no candles lit. just the shallow dull hum of a radiator, the moon, just moon, shining through the window.)