text: Sky spinning, trees leaning in and one bird swoops through all the crooked wood. I am lying here in sunken dark and death kneels over me, whispers penance in my left ear, pounds smartly at the throb of 2 a.m. blood on my knuckle. A long time ago you could have shown me how the sky looked catastrophic as the sun slipped away breathing fire. A long time ago you could have let me fall in love with your angled good looks, your swarming lies of art and people and pale, tortured love stories. A long time ago you could have found me chain smoking behind the library and told me my eyes made you weak. Instead I found your breath at the back of my neck, cool against my skin flushed with other people's body heat. You sank into the cozy sway of a crowd dancing. Said two words. A along time ago you could have kissed me on the top of my head, laid me down carefully and listened to the whistle of my breath as I slept. "Hey you" and I was tucked into the curve of your jaw, I was singing cheap rum and silence packed your smile. I was kissing brick and you cradled me well like I fit into you naturally. All I could see was road slicked mercury light and a dim sketch of your face straining, the feeling drained prickly numb from my legs, sky hopping up and down, up and down in your soft, strange rhythm. And after everything you brought me here, where I've spilled blood before: my skinny eight-year-old knee on a sharp shock of ground; climbing trees cat-like at twelve, reaching up then shaking at the height; sipping beer cross-legged on a log trying to impress a boy. After everything you stood useless at the foot of me, eyes shifting like two hands moving in perfect sync, like two hands clasped in prayer. An ease in your quiet. Everything swallowed in black, all wrapped up neat in night blindness; it's winter so there is no green to frame your face, nothing to soften twitching branches needling up and out. You are on holy ground now. Don't let the trees bite you on your way out; don't see my glazed eyes in yours as you make a mirror check. Don't notice the murmur of me in the dead air of your apartment, microcosms of dust swirling like small galaxies or flecks of ash falling. *Better to have never loved,* you might say. You don't want that hurt clinging in you.