I’ve blackened the window with asphalt,
tarred the sash —
            
                more flammable, less visible —
                to catch you better. Crumbled in my hands,

your tongue is the texture of detergent, it could clean
lies from my tongue. Chase the ghetto from my mouth,
spit in my palm. Shut my eyes,
   
    they’re crowded
    with throwing knives,
    stained with neon,

refract the air and taste
like trouble. When I’m told

       there’s nothing I won’t do.

 

                   *

 

I’ve filled the space between arms
with crusts of bread,
                     winnowed
breath. I won’t stand for this
breathing, proof
there’s a right type of humidity,

          one that pools in the cove under your feet.

          You may be a lightning rod the way you tempt
          weather, ignore every instance,

advice and moonless predictions. The wrinkled tinfoil

                      of an almost-built skyscraper is your eyes
                      searching my eyes for a picture of you;

a maze of lines, a connection of dots:

my numbered days.

 

                        *

In static
       you see your face. In my face,
your face. In every window

I watch myself swallow; wait
to lick fingerprints from glass.         I’m sick

          from the smell of bread baking in bones.

The jet-spin days where I wait for you and you’re gone

except for the eyelashes on the counter, a loose thread in the rug, candle
on the sill with the last wick you lit and snuffed and left

          for the breeze.
          No one lasts long here.

 

                      *

 

My marrow’s an oven
       of broken glass
firing while I tell this story,

figure out
    how to bait you and bake

you in. The mostly white residence
of your eyes, a cove carved out
in a snowless city waiting for a breath

                jetstream to loosen eyelashes
                free from roots. They land,

balance on a knife tip, fall
to formica in a pile of powder;
the ash I pinch and push
down the barrel

             when I put down
(pick up) my gun.