--UP THERE, THE UNIVERSE STANDS AROUND DRUNK

Her Birthday

At breakfast eggs

run and congeal,

the coffee incriminating

and artic,                                      

bloated snails

clogging our throats,

breathing now a

lost art form.

And me I recognize

the dead weather

in your eyes,

how it becomes a trapdoor

that drops you into

a desert with our names

written on it.

Every few seconds

the wind wipes us away,

into oblivion,

only to return at once

and rewrite our crime.

Everything we love

is out there

in the backyard,

in a box,

buried under

the useless evergreen sentry.

Most afternoons I sit

beneath the shabby branches,

stabbing my eyes with

pine needles,

swallowing cone after cone

till my throat bleeds

as your screams ricochet

off the walls of an empty

bedroom upstairs.

The thing we’ve learned

from all this is

someone needs to be

punished further,

and so I no longer

believe in accidents,

and I don’t dig up

that box,

but instead I say

her name over

and over

and over

until the last

puzzled starling

flies away.