when she walked in
I saw the pain dripping from her fingers like wax
falling off of her like some
burnt up figment of who she hoped to be
15 years earlier.
feet dragging as she walked across
tile: littered with left over dreams
with a clearance tag marked over the stars that fell.
when she sold her clock
and gave up on wishing at eleven eleven.
because words sell for less than
it takes to fly, she said.
so in the presence of ghosts
her skin was more wrinkled than the sheets
she found herself at home in.
when home. it had no place.

then, I felt
her feet kicking up returned hopes
and heartaches sold for a pack of smokes. and she walked
with a sense of self loathing.
I wanted to break television sets in her name
when I saw the way her eyes played static vision
and her arms looked like race tracks.
she stood with a steady ambition.
knees on ice, it seemed. wearing verbs around her neck
like a noose, she seemed ready to fall
like the stars.
when she used to sit on sand and wish at the ocean
counting breaks between songs like the waves
when hurting made life
bearable.
so she stood there
like a cardboard cutout of herself in 12 years.
ready to age, but so unwilling to fold.

and when she spoke
I felt trapped in a box of my past.
and she said
"look here, boy, I ain't what you see"
and I said,
"ma'am, I don't see a thing"
she broke into heart songs by tapping morse code
on the counter top.
I heard the distress call
so I sold her vanity in paper form.
for a bit of something lacking substance.
and I told her here.
I only deal in broken dreams.
and she told me
she only lives to break them.

so if you were to ask
if she melted like a candle under the heat of
a raging horse.
I could safely say
I don't know.
I never knew her when she was able to stand.
I never felt her presence
without the impending sense of
neglect.

no.
I simply knew her in horror movies
when she treated dreams like mirrors.
and her eyes.
closed. they shattered
to the ground.