Secondary similes roar in the dark,
leaving vestiges of civility behind
like snipped topiaries.
No one seems to notice
but still the winds shift subtly
and a storm knows it’s being summoned.
Flayed feelings of regret and confusion
have no place in the new world,
where questions are set aside
like abandoned principles,
and color matters more than taste
but less than the song about it all.
Whatever monster makes the dark its home
cannot hold sway
over a tree that bends and returns to standing.

They’ve begun to turn you,
those reflections – shimmering
grease and insect carcasses and rain.
Somewhere below your field of vision,
the place you know you belong
but deny its existence waits
to claim your sweet decay.
Filth is comfort, pain is familiar,
knowledge is a luxury belonging to Eden.
Open, friend, and swallow the air
such as it is- it doesn’t get much better
than the alley after a rain.

Air becomes heavily laden
but won’t let go of rain.
Her back curved
beneath harsh light
with no tenderness
to temper the lessons.
His hands itched
miles away
with no direction
but inward.
They are so lost,
it’s sort of beautiful.

Open wider
than you ever have before
to light the darker corners
of your mouth
as it lets go
its burden.

After collecting dust balls
from along the baseboards,
I couldn’t think of anything else
to do on my knees
so I sat back and looked out the open door
to a rolling vista that looked like
whale flukes on parade,
with leafy trees fluttering along the edges
forming double-helix bursts of soothing light
as the sun filtered through
onto the floor before me.
If a grimy girl can sense a prayer
amid nonsense, this was such a moment.