Why do the words I didn't say
speak the loudest?
Why do they shake the walls,
brood, repeat and
become the cracked glass I breathe, the
cast-iron cave I wear around me?

I could have said them when we were
bodies, interchangeable,
and an essence, undivided;
when everything was beautiful because
you were everything;
when we defied the sneering sun
to outlive our fire
while we tumbled in its molten gaze,
and all around,
the green sizzle of a world in love
with light and just being.

You left glorious ruins I'll sift through
all my days as I try to sketch a
world without you:
distant hills, a rough outline of
some profound truth or just the
spills of powdered ice-blue they
used to be,
and I'll clutch, unrepentant, the
dwindling spool of your memory.

Don't dissolve into the sky or be
like footprints in the rain or the
flowers on your grave or floating peace
like the smoky hymns of evening.


A spritz of light appears between
the pines. A sound like wind

or words

or pouring sand fills the world.


Patricia Joan Jones