That maple leaf shows on your ribside;
a fallen hand, outlawed
from heaven. Do I believe
that she loved you? — sure, but she was young,
and we’re all stupid when we’re young.
You plucked its stem
like country from continent —
flew to Australia
to live in a van,
& made of it a council
of bristles. Covered your credit card
details with the shade of your broke-ness
& painted yourself
a friend with a guest room.
Shaved your long hair,
blueish black, like a fish in water.
That shoestring necktie
that fits you like a ferrule around
your collar, crimps
when you laugh. & when you still wore braces,
God knows, the Orthodontist hammered
wear your goddamn elastics
into your teenage head, so you’d know
how to use it as a nail —
that rhubarb eye, the fruitless
sun & the chaos below it
now hangs in our parent’s house
& I wonder how my truth
has always been an act of disappearing
instead, dreadful and still
warm. Last summer you pierced
an eardrum
of paint with an electric guitar
& the sound
was beautiful.
& when you told me about a man
who injected himself with E Coli
& directed his breath to black out
the windows
in his veins. When you told me
there wasn’t a shadow on the wall
of his stomach, I endure
another heartbeat. I believed
in the snow
slit beneath the tyres,
the arrival at innocence
without melting it. I drove home
just to have something crawl
underneath the headlights
& back into the woods.