There’s an unexplainable warmth
of the moon
of the bottom of the lake

Where we hang elegies beneath the water
for the trees cut without a sound

There’s a magpie that sleeps alone in the cherry tree
adorned in sterling loneliness
A raven that steals lines of conversation
back to its quietest nest.

There are the candles of our voices catching on every curtain
The boiling of sap beneath our skin.

There’s a comfortable torture
of being apart, of being together—
a violent indifference to the forest fires
beneath our feet.

Too many things axe-to-wood split
between us.
So many things axed
before they could be said.

i.

After I had another thought of you I
Buried it in my backyard / a
Corpse of all the days we could’ve counted coerced into
Dirt / decomposing with half-dead fruit flies / destined to 
Eat at the earth beside them /
Each thought existing only through
Fever dreams / scenes where you’re fastening your seatbelt to meet me at a
Gas station / 10 years from now / the gravitational pull between our bodies
 	going / 	going / 	gone

ii.

How do I tell you that hatred handed me a fruit 
And it rots / in every room I carry it into
	I swallow it 	(stone and all)
Teaches me that you can be held by the love of your life 
	/ yet feel nothing at all 

Inside my head I built an empty table
Imagine dragging knife to fork through all that nothing 
Imagine ingesting each fruitless action
Should have known I didn’t have to plate them up
	just to prove that they were mine 

iii.

All I asked for was an unconditional love 
That wouldn’t violate the lack of conditions that we loved.
Wishful thinking is a dead animal in the yard 
	and we’re too old to be convinced it’s only sleeping
Waking it anyway / watching it crawl guiltily into its owner’s warmth
Please exile it back into the ground when we part 
Please forget the fruit that didn’t rot and 
	please know
	I am trying 
 Not to bury you 
	with me