a day of love and war i spent wrapped in a dream, weeping, constant weeping, for you, with your skin like a map and your arteries and veins all opening and closing like the mouths of hungry birdlings.
you kept me a seedling, pounding the ground down over my head with the flat of a shovel. in the fall you would cut the wood for the winter and then spiders would get into it. i was a girl in a fairy tale, in a tower, but i became the haunting. haunting myself i crossed lintels and sills. i left scratches on the panes but they showed only when the glass was fogged.
i am in danger now so i have to leave. just keep in mind how much i wept for you. and stop punishing me, because the asparagus was as thin as a rail and it was too expensive anyway. it's all nonsense anyway. there was some blood on the windowsill, just an old stain, and the words in the glass read
i love you too much to let you go
but it was nonsense, as much nonsense as breath.
and the asparagus got all salty-red-wet.