We read our storybook beneath the pink–satin sheets bending history into fable, jester’s bells signaling our journey’s end Plum lips parted, I drink your madness from every creek bed that sings, string seasons ‘tween the spells we spend as shadows in this attic bed Your white nightgown and my quiet bleed–our sweet, wild ecstasy My wonder-why and I, we find you everywhere–poor dragonfly in amber, I dedicate my earth to the snowed-in gods of your midwinter temple, your rabbit on the moon, your body splayed ‘cross that old dog’s altar, that patinated machinery that forges your heat, your factory fire, your rough-sea-stumble from sleep, your chrysanthemums, your perversions, your dreams, the half-dead spiders you watch writhing in the corner, your purple rain boots, your otherworldliness, your obsession with the earth’s end–my apocalypse historian, how will we survive this? On the attic floor, your shoebox–a pair of striped stockings, a clear glass fawn that once fit in your palm, your baby blue spool of hair ribbon Another reverie of raising our child, another barrel to my lips I reach the deep end of the lake, I touch your hair, I dream us beyond this place–past the point of bodies, past song or memory We are a field of ivy and tenderness, your hands–my artifacts in this empty museum we’ve built and failed to fill with anything but the dark, after-sun musings of the loneliest jazz club in the South The music’s too much for me, Alice