Diurnal

From the achilles’ heel of winter
you are watching me dream
the ceramic of my name chips
against the pillow, a fettling knife

I would wake a new, fired shape
if I only slept through the night

instead, I am the same clay body
day, after day, after day

in the soundless light, you hold half the morning
listening to me cry
fixed on the skyline, watching towers disappear

a trickling dark V of geese flying south
swerve in perfect form
around ghost structures

I am a flickering map of loss, love
a dissolving dream of grid and steel
circling the diurnal city of hope
with no courage to descend

and when you wake up first
and witness the violence of my kindness
in the jaws of never enough

you become an emptying

whispering to the blinds’ shadows across my back

thinking I cannot hear you:

you are the moving body of sound
memories must come through
before taking root in the teal string spirit

sometimes you spill
and gather
with the same two hands.