MANTRA:  You’re such a fucking martyr, Ginger.

[Misuse

 of the word martyr here.

                 My own happiness is

                 my only cause.

                 But OK]

What would make this real for you?

You're a big girl. Figure something out.

            FIGURE:  You on a stump massaging your arches,

                              your crimson rucksack curving my back.

            FIGURE:  Ivy choking the wildflowers in our garden.

            FIGURE:  Trauma as coin of the realm

                              & you wearing out the arms at nickel slots.

You need a fetish for your failures. I am that fetish.

            Perhaps we’d better not bring up the sex.

You’re such a fucking martyr, Ginger.

    [Oh, I get it now.

                     You’re Jesus & I’m Rose of Lima.]

I forgot how pretty I was wearing your thorns--

I’m trying to get your attention.

I’m trying to lie on my side and pretend I asked for it.

I asked for it in a barrel over Niagara Falls.

I asked for it with my hands on fire and you trying to blow them out.

My hands, like birthday candles, marking the passage of time.

Like birthday candles, my eyes flaring up and going dark again.

Again was the only word in my vocabulary for seventeen days.

Seventeen days and nights I repeated your name down a ventilation duct.

Seventeen days and nights no one answered.

I was lying on my back asking for it.

I was trying to get your attention. 

this town     its mess of bricks      this granite ledge.

        The river is the only thing I’ve ever come

to terms with       & not even the river (which has a name)

             but the water passing through.

Dust to dust makes sense, I suppose, if you’re digging up

            graves to make space for fresh dead—

(which begs the question: who will tie my white hair

       around his wrist when the time comes to switch

the houselights off for good?)

  Why bring death

into the scene at all, except that my mouth

is unusually dry

& my intelligence mostly water

& there is a mirror at the end of the tunnel,

we were told

                                    that justifies these barren days.