Dear Sylvia

Dear Sylvia,

i read your life so carefully

i tried to navigate the death drive

tried to squeeze love from what was not love

& survived, the stop point of my life

i came so close i could taste it, licked the echo

chamber where dying was desire’s great wing

it has only been my mind i have been afraid of

here in this place of: the great stones stacked

so we room & who owns us now

to say i have tombed in the maw of surrender

a stacking of bee wings collated to glisten

under dew, the harping of sound we caught breeze

whispers so true, my heart leaped, and i am

i am unaware of how to travel

forward in time any longer

when coiled to the back of me remainders

once i was ordinary, oh a woman hollows

you told me to sing until my voice hoarsed

under a gritting & the world now it is

none of us can pretend, every stain

doom mark, more terrifying, we spell

till love’s shadow creeps upon the ledge

where we still, where we teeter, i had thought

to throw this life away

i had thought: all night it seems natural

and the blades tumbled into my tongue

lilacs of shame color the dreaming, and the stars

sway slightly in the breeze of never was

& that is the gift, i was given

by sibling, to be amid the hectic fire

and to not be the one who burns

[redacted] is my l_v_ language

i mask so fine the brittle hinges

the hand that sweeps it letters and the voice says to me

a window opens, i forget time moves               i'm writing just to you

tell me i'm not insane. i think about a day & realize i am hardly

i was wearing this mask all the time          for you

i'd cease to live but there's the pain, i'd have to hand it all to you

i think maybe you feel the same

instead we write these routes to clues

tell me you understand the song: under every gesture i was wrong

                   [don't say this part out loud]

i must be in love with suicide because it's all i think about

           be in love with suicide               it's all i think about


                in love         suicide               it's all i think


                    love         suicide                          i think


                    [EXIT]


to pull her up to speak [we must]  be that sick, we must be that sick
tell me how you border the safety of a mind always at work to undo
so you talk to me about love,


                   she doesn't exist her[e]      i couldn't feel     i t    anyway


and now you couldn't hear me too

      there was nothing i could write that would ever reach into you