cuckoo

Struggling from my shell

Wings still wet and new

I can’t help but fall for you

A tall glass of water on chapped lips

A surreal morass of time slips through our fingers

Weeks slow to molasses as hours trip hastily past our quips

But I don’t know how to fix what’s been broken

I fumble with your pieces

Cut myself open to

Try to escape the solemn tone

Although I know it won’t ever be enough to knit the sinew to the bones

Time alone can do that

And you refuse to leave the house with hat or scarf

But brave the snow, bare-necked

A lamb freshly shorn that’s lost the spring in your step

And last night

You wept for all the jewels of your past

Lost and locked away in underwater caves

Glittering in the deep dark maze of razor coral

You praised the beauty of that distant dimming light

But looked right through me like a window pane

Stared at the rain falling past my head

And said

Nothing

Just turned back into a wall and went to bed

I drew the constellations on your skin

A map to guide myself in

Homeward with kisses on each freckled star

I wrapped my arms like linen for fear that I would break apart

I feign distraction

Act as though I’ve many other interests that

Are far superior to

the taste of every inch of you

To the way your forehead wrinkles

Or the buzzing in my veins

Our twisting conversations

That melt the frost inside my brain

Instead

I read a book while you pretend to rest

Fight with every syllable of text

And wish that we could feel the joy of

Flight which seems so far away

When falling from the nest