I miss the attic that doesn't have a ceiling. Face streaked with white,
we ascend into the clouds, blue stains swirling like a cauldron of sight—
these days,
I no longer have dreams. I walk to the edge of the earth & stay there, legs dangling,
the iridescent sheen on metallic beaches catching light but never reflecting.
these days,
i no longer hear my name but if i walk far enough, the sky will remember who i was
and give me a star to cup in these fragile oars.
yet if i open my eyes, this trance will part,
because in the mist between rising and falling, a heart is not as much a vessel as it is an aesthetic:
a screwdriver emptied and spinning towards light, never meant to be caught, ignited, or filled. divinizing the sun in pursuit of magnificence, we lose touch with loss, so smooth and bounded,
pressed by the backs of our hands into a being not object or form, not gas or liquid, not human or god, barely sterile, barely floating, but alive.

in these moments, i wonder what you would say
if we were still in the glass house, the attic without a ceiling/the ceiling without an attic, a house
with no walls. i miss the way we were glued to light yet nowhere near accepting it. i miss the flutes
and slurring violins, the optimism of seeking imaginary heaven,
anything beyond reach to call home.

& now tip toeing on the crease, sky splintering before me, if i had a dream,
how much would I run to meet it?
how much would i believe the impossible could be immortal
for just the second i need to love it?
my mother used to tell me if you close your eyes, the remains are your reflection, but what if
you could never see?

& as the mother of all things once ephemeral, what do you have to say to the opening
that's not as much a beginning as it is a hole, what do you have to say the second before the waves resurrect you to a being light and high, so far from your shadow but not human enough to touch, dangling in mid flight—

& in the waves, do you see the person you made or all the splintered people you left behind,
covered in snow you convinced yourself were diamonds.

i wanted all this to be something like light,
but when i stand under the northern lights at nightfall, i wish there was another way to see,
that existence could mean just as much as essence without the two having to intersect.

the bridge made of rock dipped in evocations, i raise my hand and the world falls silent,
i open my eyes, and there's no breeze to believe.