houses where we mend
worn-out hearts,

their ages are bent
out of proportion.
I am dislocated,
a crooked arm
placed on love
and snapped with indifference.

Flat yellow skies
greet me in morning lull
their afterglow
siphoned from the stars
and other hurt things.

a pond of silence
a wave of abandonment
a graph of profits
eating out of innocence

I am stuck
in a vortex

where sorrow is a way of life

and smiling
seems unnatural.