Between Us

We hack at sheets of black cardboard,
hold them up against artificial light,
and gift each other those fake starry skies.

We gift each other real useless nights.
Thank you for the stars on your dress.
Thank you for dressing your in prison in tinsel.

All that I’ve wrapped myself in to show you
keeps me alive, the tidbits I’ve stolen
to somehow reach you. Draining the pus from the wound

felt like dying. Nothing I did made me more than human.
A withering flower drops seeds between us,
inedible, hard on the concrete floor.

I crawled toward you to give you my eyes,
but you stood at strange angles; the moon’s flat disc
on the water kept shifting; the sand that we stood on

was full of hidden fossils. I woke up inside you
with empty sockets, palms wet with glassy,
vitreous humor. I don’t know the limits or size of the world.

I can’t recreate how you let your hair fall. Oil
drains from the bath into pipes, sinks in the ground
of the trail in the ditch.