Daily I walk my loneliness
towards the edges of the shore. Some shades of sky
remain this way: abandoned
as the plush chair
on the side of a metropolis’ unpaved road. My sorrow’s shape
is the faint crack in the field: this kind of haunting
that rests below the barn’s window, the hooves of calves. In the
outdoor field, a widow’s dress looks best coated in ash. I too
want to notice
more colors: my grandmother’s saltshakers; the sweater of the woman
who once walked her goats
through my hometown.
Pastoral; echo; stifle. Words come to my chest
quickly as disembodied faces. I want to sing the chimes of the blue jays.
I want my butcher
living in the mouth. My own self
livid as the time you left my bedside. Once, I told you, loneliness
is fatigue’s displacement. I told you, all the oceans of this earth
are dying. Which felt true
enough to wake me into scraps of horror
and bits of ice cream all over
my long white dress. This will not
be my wedding day. On my wedding day,
I will have slices
of praise for the whole of my body. I will have you
singing my name in a voice
that might one day surrender to fits, to thoughts,
to desires that come to me naturally.
Note
The first view is the original version.