cold, unpitying sun,
dropping in through the windowpanes
sullen as a truant, cast-off and browsing.
the light is unwelcome company,
revealing your face like
a well-kept secret,
white and masked by a cup of
oxygen –
you are suckling again, overlarge infant,
crooked in the lap of the bed,
eyes pacing slowly
under your dream-rimmed eyelids,
like sleepless tyrants.
with every breath, you expel another moment,
another muttered minute, and the
O2 tank plucks it up
sharply.

those daisies
aren't lasting long
their heads drooping like idiots:
squint-eyed, gandering from the lips of the vase.
their brown-touched petals
fall in such abundance when you breath
so I keep replacing them
and you keep breathing.
they are nodding, weary heralds.
dipping, the sunlight pushing among them
like a boatman.

your face, collared blue,
your eyes retreating like a snails, shellward
until they leave only catacombs, ghastly chambers.
you don't cry anymore – I do it for you,
and you turn your head away and your hand
grows stiff, scaffolded with an index of loose bones,
hollow windchimes;
the quietest most delicate promises.

you
are a facsimile
skin sticky and color-changing, depending on my mood –
amphibian. cold, light-winded priestess
I bring you news of the outside world:
the blossoms are bowing their heads,
a wake for autumn, and the trees carelessly
toss out their leaves like hand.me.downs
south-bent birds unzip the sky
but somehow
the new daisies are holding out

but
only just
barely –



they
emancipate their petals,
weeping for the loss of your pretty hair
mourning for the white choir
of your bones under
the bedsheets.