stem

I hardly recognize myself today. Melanie. Mel. Melancholy.


(the taste of melancholy is rich in my mouth
but burns down my throat and becomes indigestible)

scissors stabbed into the door. violent. lonely. lovely. and i think i've just taken my first deep breath in weeks. i'd forgotten i had it in me.

here's your throat back
thanks for the loan

remember you asked.

lost in time; lost in meaning. the regression of a feather on my skin and the progression of loneliness.

remember you were. remember i was.

all and all and all. the wild promise never kept. the accomplishment of flexion: hearts that bend must first be softened. the action of bending or the condition of being bent; i strive for action but ever and ever achieve condition. please. please hold my heart in your mouth a while.

I am a wolf. Worse, woman thinking she is wolf; woman trying wolfishness. False eyes. No true wildness but rushes of self destruction, self deconstruction. Worse. Worse.

Wolf? Who and where and when and why are nothing. How is everything.

it's that i think you know what this means and what this has meant. this is not carapace; this is not avarice. the tongue softly struck still stops the sound of the word and the grace of its meaning. i eat fire every night, bare my head and restate myself.

there is a place where only i know you. it is dormant between us and i see it in your eyes. ocean between us that flows between us, into and out of you, into and out of me.

there is a place where only i feel you. it rests in my hands and i think you see it there.

longing to feel it she dove from the highest places. stones to her spine and all her angles. with rapt attention making that out of this.

dreamed your hair over and around the way it used to be sun satin and mothwings shadow of taste not everything named not full nor fear not not part nor

dreamed your hair over and around sun satin and mothwings summer and winter the heart of the matter and longing to feel it she dove from the highest

dreamed your hair over and around summer and winter vines and versions knowing the things that i

pared down the heart. cropped one side of the hair. walked. felt nothing. dylan just moves across and starts singing. "you can be in my dream if i can be in your dream," he says after. began to think. are we really either being born or dying? behind eyes womb's creamy darkness? behind thought unknowable death? and where is and why. walked. feeling returned sweeping and thunderous. it always does. and such weight and the sense of immeasurable breadth. walked. the hair is good. what? walked.

wind shrieks a thousand tongues i almost comprehend. i am larger than the sound. i remember how our mouths used to fit together: one always larger. i disintegrate a little and maybe i am shrieking, not the wind. maybe i turned my back on a small part of myself today. maybe it was a thousand parts, a thousand betrayals, a thousand days.

there is one word to soothe me and no one to speak it.

all the places where we heard singing. we couldn't sleep, and we couldn't stop dreaming. it always began that way. the places grew up around us, weaving limbs in until we were bound.

came a time when a place needed work, when limbs needed sleep. i didn't, and didn't, and dreamed. threadbare then, dirty and fell away. one day gone, and i was the one who knew to tell you and break you. it always ended that way.

my heart. i didn't know but i knew i couldn't be company. i walked a while heat heavy then fell into the tree and its shadow. everywhere lit but here held close and secret. cream-black i cried until i stopped. as my back and the tree made something new of each other it became calm. came expansion from spine through ribs until i could feel my heart again.

as far as it takes. i have learned to look forward. i am learning to use what i have, and i am learning that i have a lot. my eyes are as prehensile as hands: they take and hold and stroke and destroy.