you rent me. i collapsed into

archaisms; i was born to make

drapery of grammar.

the commas i hung on bedposts

were uncomfortable with your

pall-bearing. they splintered,

muttered and ellipsed my

wanderings—the wet streets

and the eyes that followed.

i pretended many things:

not, this time, forgetting,

instead, put-on stumbles and judgment

sputters. the sheets were tired

and i was rumpled in the mornings,

though you didn't see: too busy

folding shirt collars and

making dicta crumble.

you're so good at splitting marble,

at mocking parables into falseness.

the poems i carved for him are

absolutely wrecked: they went down

on a raft of bergs,

dragging boats with them into

book bound crevasses.

so i wrote you this:

it's a mess of anxieties that i

tried to knit and

wring into un-valleyed brows, and

i'm sorry. you deserve better.

but i'm not capable of more

because you drained me and

still leave my letters

beneath the table

unopened. and all i have now is three years

of breaking and days i can't conjure

because they slid into an angry spring,

a head full of dreams that chase tales of irony

and screech at halting endings.

i can't remember a

time when i didn't want a

ship to commandeer and

sail away from here.