Plotting Escape

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1.

He put her on a shelf with other jars.
At first glance her jar looks empty.

She had no intention of getting caught.
Thought she was invisible
against the overcast day,
debris filming her eyes
she could no longer see,
but knew the captor.

Each night, when all falls still
she climbs out of the pollen bathtub
(packed solid the grit caught with her)
tries to deny that when all is said and done,
it’s just filth. 

But she passes
time soaking in condensation,
the slow seeping down
of then and now.

2.

Plotting escape
she wedges herself,
legs propped against the
curve and flow of glass
scratching with fingernails
at wax edges
(the overflow sealing her in).

When her nails break into the wax,
and tear from cuticles,
she leaves them embedded there
until the next night when
she carves them free.

She’s building a storm.
She’s a day that wants remembering.

She’s almost taken the seal,
weakened and moved pieces from lip of jar,
sculpted a divan,
a vanity,
a stool on which to sit.

Boltless, smooth wax is secured with nail shards.

3.

She’s grown tired of this place and will leave.
Sits in white robe at the vanity,
puts on diamond earrings                                   
(her face the color of cocaine).

An ivory comb awaits hair still set in curlers.
She raises red lipstick to mouth,
wants a return of color.

She looks in the mirror working to make herself;
the mascara, like it doesn’t belong,
has already begun to run from opal eyes—
pale and opaque,                                                
glinting red from beneath.

Tonight, she’ll summon
the winds from within other jars. 

They’ll hear her scratch glass,
rub wet palm
along the edges
making the jar
hum out hollow
reverberations, pulsating.

If the seal does not break, she’ll puncture
the walls with fists,
forehead,
elbows,
heels—
but not knees. 
She’ll need those for the journey ahead.

4.

She’ll crawl forth from this lacerating prison
until she remembers what must be color.

She will crawl on all fours across greenest grass,
fields of moss that sink and slurp beneath her,
through orange desert sands and dried river beds,
to the north where it’s cold. 
She’s grown weary of the heat.

She’ll become a huntress—
prefer pelts to stoles,
but satin above all.

She’ll lay nude on a polar bear rug,
Hips pushed down deep into fur.
See how color changes.                        

She’s been told
polar bear fur is clear,            
reflects white of snow,
of sky,            
of iceberg.

It will reflect her absence.

When she feels like dressing again, she’ll wrap her
limbs in dark hair and sinew.
Ribbons will make slippers look pink against ankles.

Her fingers will grasp and feel their way into fur.
She’ll long for firelight on thighs,
to make her skin look like soap,
smooth and new, smoother with use.

She’ll wear a fang necklace,
a pointed tooth in the crook
where collar bones meet.
She will sink into the fur, trying to
feel back to when it was alive.

Cycle: Riots in the Sheets, Slow Smear of Disaster, the Universe Folds

1.

She hung a bell above the balcony.  He brought it for her birthday.  In the salt wind it clapped luck to you, luck to you.  They used to sit on the balcony, bare feet against pebbles and shells (the mosaic of them), left on that balcony for the next tenant to sweep to the ground.  They used to watch in the morning.  Watched fog wrap around trees. Lovers like fog—bound to each’s other like a breath, all parts fitting as they lift and roll along the coast. But fog got the nuisances of you and me, always reaching for yellow tinted glasses in the morning light—glasses to cover eyes made for lovers that’ve forgotten reason. No paper bag big enough to hide in, so she takes cover in riots of their sheets until her back aches and posture sags. She senses his eyes still move the way hers do, when dressing in morning light. Her eyes trace physique like fingers lacing through a suitcase handle.

2.

He says, let me play a song before you leave.  Watching like an obsessed suitor in his eroded grey t-shirt.  She’s on the balcony wrapped in swollen eyelids with glass splinters in her feet.  Doing what they can they create rain storms of songs from warped LPs going around and around and the needle needs replacing. Slow smear of Velvet Underground displaces the day. China plates and martini glasses hit walls.  She picks nails until shards of red polish collect on her shoe laces.  Imagines disaster: trains derail (could be hers), drowning, unable to reach for shore.  She imagines mercury rolling across cold morgue floors. When the light bulb goes out she still knows his physique in the living room where he gives her bedroom hair on the couch, tells her black eyeliner and combat boots are the stuff of rock and roll. That’s all she wears at the time.  She’s not there for the music.

3.

7:00am snow clouds moving in, stirring coffee until it’s cold. When she finally speaks, she says You are no priest, but I am homesick and I will confess that to anyone.  He tasted of malt and hops the first time she took thirty hail Mary’s from his lips, his tongue her communion.  When she got to Paris she found they wouldn’t meet half way, the Metro smelled of piss and pancakes. She rode east, regardless, because they were in a race to see whose heart could reach the finish line first. She thinks of the time the room smelled of stale ink, blank pages.  In that hotel they entwined limbs while Isle fishing boats harbored in a glance.  They spoke in sweat, tasted salt on fingertips until morning rolled outside the window ready to fill her curves where his body missed and connected again. But she kept moving, even after they walked to the harbor, split a roll and coffee—broke the bread barrier between them, watched the crumbs fall into nothing left to say.  Now she keeps him in a box someone brought from Mexico. Fits in her broken hinge palm opening and closing too often. Inside, a scrap of paper with words scratched onto it: don’t forget to remember (at the time it must have seemed profound).  She wedged a train booth photo of them into lid’s frame.  The picture reminds her of the time he said: in our universe there are two black holes on a collision course.