Fault

10.29.13

I spend an hour
with my eyes closed,
picturing myself as a kid
playing inside a house that wasn't mine.
Later, I hike in the cold
and sit on the cliff over the big empty valley.
It's windy.
There are just six people down there
who don't think they know better.
I come home to the dishes and the dark.
The squirrel eats the pumpkin on the deck
before it rots.  Everyone wants to tell me
what kind of daughter I am.

October

10.15.13

Clouds lower tendrils
into notches in the mountains.
Relentless skid
of windshield wipers.
We're pretending to make plans.
Write a poem, you say.

Years I've been braced.

I want you more
than I have ever wanted
anything else real.
You're turning away.
I leap.

Grieving the thing that's still here

10.2.13

Screaming all night at the tormentor.
In the morning, white calcium appears,
the buck velvet eaten away.
You are just a body.

In the street, rocks fall.
Cascade of sound like the river
after the hurricane.
I lived on that river.  You
are just a body.

Without a finger, though,
you held me down.  Without
a finger, you instructed me
in violence.
Now I reach to strike,
my hand slides through you
like water. 
Screaming turns
to gagging.

It is not like the snake
shedding its skin.
The velvet was the living
part.

It's fall.
I still need everything.