let's just pretened
that that ankle doesn't have that incision in it
that I can dance like it's 21.12.13
that we are free and summer-ing

that there's no time or place
except for this week

that there's only coffee and yahtzee
or else sunsets and lakes
and vans parked in places without mirrors

you

having stood on my own two feet for so long

and suddenly,

   four..

four as in wheels

four as in weeks maximum

and four as in for

and for, and for...

for us and for you -

for me,

having stood on two legs so long -

four causes anxiety

how does one balance with extra limbs

how does one, 

how does one...

and with all the extra weight 

and lack of 

and lack of

I wonder how one dances

when one has an extra body to hold ?

from some time towards the end of last year

by accident I

    caught
the veins of his arms --
 they felt like
                  your scars

I felt the salt coagulating in my eyes...
        Still briefly;
 maintaining

(found on the back of a receipt inside a book I never finished)

"Some things, once you've loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go... They only circle back and return to you. They become part of who you are ... or they destroy you."

- Kill Your Darlings

courageously

I've a habit

for ones 

looking too close to themselves

the ones shaking those little 

cardboard boxes

containing perforated trays

I've a habit 

for labyrinth 

minds, despaired dreams

unpaired electrons

whizzing around

and yet,

you are still 

more mine, more us -

you are old and new

you are me and myself

yourself, and yourself

and here 

are words 

dahlee

there I was, falling asleep

in Arthur's valley

trains for lullabies

not knowing that within a single

drawn-out

week

my valley would come to me

and four months later

"train wreck", she jumped -

"waiting to happen", spat

and yes my incessant need for busy

entertained the idea

but my body was quieter...

my Heart

- my actual, organ-flesh heart -

in its stillness

knew.

I'll be sitting here a while

and I'll become patient with love

revival

My body stopped
around the same time my words did.

My body put its foot down
down
through the floor
sinking sideways
guilty with pleasure
crushed by the weight of myself

and of him

not the perpetrator
but he
who I gained, and lost, in breaking

felt weak from all the serving
from all the holding of dinners
at the sides of those
k, ok- gestures
to the profiles of persons
and having woken every morning for five weeks
shaking
how could I expect it steady?
Poor foot.
I'm sorry.

Poor foot... poor, poor foot.

so poor it emptied my bank account
all four thousand dollars
I had from
waiting.

and after I lost my blue stone
in the back of the rental car
my throat stopped, too
Stoppered up
or maybe it's because I
entered my third year ...
no, I think it's because I
broke myself, silly.
Or rather, was broken
by forces within and
without

myself.

she put it
right,
her hair in braids,
she said what I'd not yet thought
but felt:

When the dancing stops
so does the speaking.