When it rains there is a blackness between each crease of the skin on my fingers. I ring so many doorbells I am be able to see through the grains of wood. Sometimes I have to hang up the phone and talk like an accident into your ear. You say THE WHEELS MUST ALL TURN TOGETHER. The oil smoke could burn all night. I want to keep this warmth in small jars. I want to save these jars until my breath is full of frost and I can no longer cause traffic delays.
I come home dark and crawl under our sheets. I hear your sleeping heart whine.
When it’s cold and the tires grow raw against the freeways you say YOU NEVER STOP TRYING TO KNIT MY INSIDES INTO THE SHAPE OF HEART. Later, while I touch your face with the side of my face, you touch me with a pretty finger stretched through the cloth of a pretty glove. I think about a densly patterned heart growing damp with all the messy mush inside my chest and I want to tell you how soft I want my heart to be. I tie my first two fingers together with a piece of string, I say I LEFT MY BOOTS TO DIE IN THE CORNER.
Sometimes the garages are made to look through shadows and sometimes I cannot move across the driveways made of careful street.
Sometimes there is too much light and the brittle leaves are crushed across our linoleum floor like tiny grains of dried skin. I fold your dough into itself on the counter and whisper I AM GOING TO TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT IT MEANS. Your eyes watch the strays chase children across our lawn. Your eyes know what it means to sleep through the smallest hurts.
I get so hot I take all the hairs off my head. Each tiny knot a joke my grandmother will think is a mockery of her cancer. You know I will come home late in a strange vehicle, heat escaping from my face in simple breaths, a strange sound humming like an artifact that glows golden brown. I can’t hide you like a knife, I can’t hold your shiny glints inside for long.
