pieces of me: 11/9-10/06
i found the rest of you in the basement earlier
tonight—sought your painting out in the back
room with my fifth-grade flashlight, sweeping
lines & moons around the dusty dark as a clock
sang to me near the steps to the door

i found you when i was about to leave—or so
i’d like to think, because lord knows i could
never leave you behind— & you fingered my
jaw as i caught your eye, drawing me in to
where you stirred up soil in the shadows

it only makes sense with you, to love & hate
simultaneously, & as i pulled you up you
forced my shoulder to the doorframe & struck
me cold & silent, just like old times

& as i helped you up the narrow steps i locked
the door behind me, knowing that you would be
sleeping in my bed from now on

& i leaned you up against the kitchen cabinets
& uncovered my eyes & unleashed everyone
else’s guilt as i lay you down on the chipped tile
& looked away for the sake of your dignity as i
knelt next to you, in two pieces on the floor of
my mother’s house

& i took a rag & began to dab at the disease that
dotted you like continents on a map, where you
are the ocean & i am the dull sand under your
weight like a thousand murky waves

& as i stitched your wounds & closed your sores
i remembered when you had first brought this
painting to me—& then the several times you had
called to ask for it back to lend (along with your
mind) to someone a little prettier & not quite as
weak as i tended to be in those days

& you laced your fingers like petrified wood into
mine & broke my wrists as a way of saying thank
you & i knew enough to ask for more; so you
smiled & let your disease out of you & onto my
skin & the kitchen floor, & my hands began to
turn the color of the ghost of you & i could smell
the chemicals rising like dead skin into the air

& i smiled neatly at you as the secrets fell from
my eyelashes onto you, displacing paint in saline
circles of an apology that no one ever deserved;

& i dabbed the moisture from your clouded
surface & looked at where you had signed your
name on the back & expected to see my own
printed next to it but found nothing; the wood
had swallowed me by then.