and the buoys have sprung to time, trailing out against the snow. Having lived there once, I want to return to feathers, flunk their violet tease as my hands divide for scriptures. In that lantern of pipe dream I drew weeks, months, years on my child’s face to smudge the cage. But the mapping was wrong. It rusted into cider, maggots of a heart at the doorway. We had kept our time. We had prayed for coasts, without treads, without each other. Alone I will birth ghosts beneath waves, out in a placid ocean.

and the brightest hue is not her body, but a bird, a swirling fireball of fur and lonely feet. I wonder who cued her nest, or if she taunted cactus-shaped pedestrians on her way to the bridge. Someone must have mistaken her for the translucent bird that carries voice wafts from the church. A crayoned faceless man, in search of fire.

I wave for the froth inside her, but she is dead and has no memory of crest. It drains me into hollow limbs of the bridge. Breaks my surf, this winter sun.

In deadly company we prune our disguise. We are the meteors smashing skywells, gulping wanderers like angels scorched on sand. Or we are the wounds spilling onto wrists, blood trails heaving tornadoes at the end of an infinity pool. Such frivolous inventions: badges for love’s firmament, inaugural ribbons, eyes dropping onto the ground outside a shock palace. A soundless scream clashing through the stave. A bullet shot through the ocean’s introspection. Let these bodies glide into the abyssal. On vigil, we couple up, mortal as ever.