“Diadems–Drop–”

The place has carved out my sleep. I walk it every night.

On moving here, there were old sounds,

sputtering meter at the end of a cab ride,

or the back of the ferry, its engine like the

low-end keys of a baby grand,

like a whale, centuries away.

Then too I believed the beauty of things I didn’t have,

an evening shrug. light blue, dark red stained-glass windows, staged

and elaborate.

The noun <<cicatrice>>

that sounds more like it,

the citron glow of a scar, still there, the sour of the word,

the softness of the word ruins, the softness of inward ruins,

my signature.

We still measure how long we will live.