(no subject)
You Will Never Again Be
As Beautiful as You Were at Seventeen (12.08&26.2005)
how we grasped our hair from dark root
to very split end
to tie into a strand
one knot for every death
that sighed under tongues -
how we stepped firmly
splintering glass between our teeth,
fierce and lovely,
all bone,
sharp-edged and fine-fingered.
how we hissed between curses and lullabies half-defined
our refusal to plead
or to be forgiven.
how we sketched our tap-tapping
on window and mirror
aligned with the half-formed and breakable,
indelicate and dilated,
a thousand needles in our eyes.
how we struggled toward ghosthood unknowing
the real burial lay
in the arrest of violence,
in the thickening quiet of age,
of refinement.
how we wept to find, no,
there is no life after death -
there is only contentment.