my million pieces, my puzzle, curiosity arousing me over and over
the horizon of this sparrow’s eye,

my perfect, my storm, I am wall-eyed and hooked wallowing
in the night so young an infant, the day still suckles with

my revelation, my special–burned into, an image, cloth
buried in a broken body

my mouthwash, my goodnight, I may never brush my teeth,
and gum your neck at thirty,

my lion, my lamb, doodles on the page became your name,
the softest thorns of the vineyard snag my skin,

my friend, my lover, your experiences, story, and knowledge
poured over an altar for me.
and all you get is I
will love you more than knowledge,
more permanently, more pertinently than life,
for life, for you.

He’s sucking the film off the water, she writes
and collecting it inside a small container that reads “We Suck Pool Service.”
(sounds like a bad porn)?she jots in the margin.
moving between the shed and the house he disappears.
Where could he be?
Is he stepping up the stairs to the door that the husband carried her across when the house closed? (Is this clich?, Stephen?)?she continues imagining the rapture of a one-hour stand.
the film would remain:
when he leaves to pick his motherless child up from day-care,
that night when the husband (help!?need name!) would arrive home,
the next day when he (hubby) wants to dive in the pool.

The teenager knocks on the bedroom door.
She allows the wood pulp to soak up her fountain ink,
before she removes the tip,
love always, your wife?she scribbles and leaves the open journal on the bed for me.
“What was your question?” she asks.
“Ma’m, did you all request the steel or composite Multi-Cell Pressure Filtration System?”

crowded with the crowd into locked rooms,
as if taped up doors ever stopped them.
afraid to be forced do anything (or anyone)
to be in control I must be out of popular circles and 7-minute heavens,
being unconventional at high school academic conventions
when they called my name,
I wrote, I wrote, I wrote.

I don’t see much of you,when I do, we don’t talk.
I’m running–I promise I love you
and I would tell the pagans this–
if I saw some every once and a while.

dipping in hydrokometes, comatose in simile
smiling arrogantly, the thought drives the wheels
into synecdoche
Bound–hand in tablet, tightly
the Whole
becomes my fire-bearing part, but only partly:

Instructions for suicide
1. Grip pen firmly.
2. Release pen from hand.
3. Extend index finger and thumb.
4. Place gun in hand.

Instructions for salvation
1. Grip gun firmly.
2. Release gun from hand.
3. Curl in index finger and thumb.
4. Place pen in hand.