In the static before the storm, I floated like a thundercloud of smoke through the window. A loyal bird. A lost bird. I burrowed into your bed, and it was too bright to open my eyes. We played show-and-tell in your plasma-ball which charged our hands with lightning and began to burn.
Where are you? What did you look like… Like the butt of a burning cigarette, a glowing cathedral. Or is it the scar that shines? The skin where you crushed the flame.
I let the memory fade into everything every time it rains. Where we are, washed away from a shallow grave. Electric shovels wake me up in the morning, reminding me how I was dug up, and my fingers tingle with fear. I get dressed in the attic and prepare to fall through the floor, because I carve a hole for you everywhere and I never know where it is or when it might take me under.
Where are you stuck? Like that: in a thick, mud pool which sucks boots off bare feet during storms.
Those dormitories — you called the Barracks, so I loved you like a soldier. I remember blood flowing like cheap beer, bones clinking like a toast, breath panting like the end of a song. I crawled back the other day to look for our reflections in the wall. All I found: the poster that I peer in to do my makeup.
Where are you? On the tip of the thick middle finger or tucked in angry wrinkles or hiding in the guitar? I thought I saw you tracing the C-A-S-H.
I brush my teeth alone now hoping I will excavate some rusted truth: an answer. It’s there I know, stuck in my molars like a leaf of loose tobacco. I face the sky: the light dims in the height of day, and at night, the leaves dance around the moon like squirrels playing in the shadows of bare branches. If I see one, I chase it through subterranean tunnels to a locked door. I peer through the rusted keyhole. Maybe if I open my eyes this time, I can unlock it.
Where are you? I search like the dirty lens of an abandoned telescope, tracing the ground for fallen stars.
I can see the thunder before I hear the lightning, but it’s too late for either. I never understand why some weathers are harsher than others, and I still don’t know what I look like when it rains. The squirrels tell me I’m pretty, pretty like you. Damn squirrels! All I have left, my only gracious guests. They sneak between you and me, passing old secrets in a wooden chest. The one hidden under your bed, where you kept winter sweaters, boots, gloves. Hats made from animal tails…everything except socks. When it rains, I unfold all my clothes and arrange them around me like a nest. One day I will make it so big that you can see it from the sky. Do you remember how we dressed up so that we couldn’t see our hands? The space disappeared between our fingers, and I thought we were going to fly, so I jumped out the window. I turned around and you were gone.
Where are you? What planet? What icy space?
The other day, I followed a squirrel to the locked door, but found it gone; in its place, a rocket, crashed comfortably in the dirt. Smoke, like incense, rises from its plasma engine, so I know it is the future. I know it is death. I look closer, and yes, nested in the broken glass of a tiny, orbed cockpit is a severed bird. I turn to the squirrel to ask what happened, but I see the blood on its whiskers and understand. I pack all my clothes in a wooden chest, drop them in the earth, and prepare for winter.
