Fall Morning
My body lying down, compressed
with sleep and hot blankets, I see space
as a huge O written down to show
my mouth's shape: Oh no, oh no.
You're gone, spreading out in sleep
somewhere new and distant. You
have become like glass I can only press
my temple to the outside of, the way I lean
my cheek against the cold metal box
of a Ferris wheel, alone at the top
in August. That month ends the fair,
and summer love is swallowed up
like cotton candy, then churned about
on the Tilt-a-Whirl until it no longer
resembles love, but some queasy
disorientation of space. Nothing
is lonely like the fair in August.
It's all wood and oil, always
chopping and frying. The desperation
of freak-show acts, nowhere to go
but together, no shot of that lasting.
The claustrophobia of red
funhouse walls closing in,
or getting stuck upside down
on the loop of a roller coaster.
I look up at the stars to help,
but that space bears down too.
I think of contortion, of you
willing to bend your body in half to fit
into the space I've hollowed out for you,
though I was a chest of drawers too full with old sweaters.
I purged for you, so we wouldn't just close and smooth
our hands over the wood as we parted.
My mouth is dry with silence,
with the quiet work of scrunching
toes around wool trying to fit
inside you. Turns out, you aren't glass
after all. I learned how it's made,
how many people touch the sand
that makes it clear and solid.
There isn't that much life
in this vacancy you've created.
Not even when I saw you through the glass
of my bedroom window. Not when you
threw a rock and shattered it.
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