Alkaline

You flayed me open
And hung up.

Talking to you left me
With an alkaline aftertaste.
For days I had been thinking
How my capacity for joy
Comes from you,
How when I laugh
Your throttle bounces
Off the walls of the room
And sinks in me,
How I jab at life
With your jokes,
And how my voice echoes
With your cough.

But just as you bestow the sun
You absorb the sea.

You refuse to hear my laughter
If it doesn't ring in your fields;
You only see a mouth open wide, a yawn,
A hole muted in anticipation.
Your skin doesn't shiver from its chuckles.
You suspend me, you know,
An orphan in a cold cloud.

But I will paint you
My absence in pink and green;
I will hold the moon
Fixed in the sky
For you to see my shadow.
I will pull my veils
Colored and wilting
Across your brow
Until you smell the heat,
The fresh laundry and the snow,
The leaves staining the windshield
And smoothing under our feet.
I will hold you until you miss
Yourself like I do you
And then rest your case in mine
And your head in my lap
That I can braid your thoughts again.