A hunter’s heart, a stone, then water
here for a feathered breath
then gone
with the mourning doves’ call
through the window at dawn.
Yellow roses land in the bathroom sink,
sweet sailors on the wind-
the ones who bleed milk white,
whose green stems snap
and turn to dust,
sphinx-eaten beauty
and how we stay soft
even after death,
the preservation of the gentle thought
that everything had its rightful place at the table,
long after we’d said goodnight-
safe under glass,
pressed between pages,
a cricket’s funeral and the ocean at your front door,
how you shocked me with how solid you felt
as if you became real under my fingers
as we walked the notes between planets,
each step an octave higher,
until the sounds became a frantic symphony
of wild horses tangled in our hair,
with hooves that bruised our willing limbs-
the discovery and the betrayal
of the delicate ones
who could kill
if they needed to,
sent out to sea in their tiny boats,
rowing through the spines of ancient books
rising from the water,
records of all songs and sorrows,
sweat, screams, tongues, & touch,
enmeshment,
and her voice’s echo down the hall,
reaching past all the birds and blood,
disintegration
and flowers on every surface,
a heart that beats for those lost beneath the waves,
hands up, sinking,
breathing in new ways now-
how lungs sprout roots,
architects of every pathway home
from eyes that never opened-
relentless adaptation
and the illusion of order,
still as real as skin on skin
and our names in your mouth,
behind curtains that keep no secrets
except the ones between them and the wind,
whispering:

Climb down now child, build the the ladder as you go. The Tower always falls
 before you are ready, 
and fallen feathers 
scatter, singing 
to the stars–
The happening waits for no one,
 just fly.