You leafed through bits of paper,
discarded starlets,
fragments of others’ hope.

 

Blue swan, opaque rhythm,
perpetual dance.
Stroboscopic saints
were numbered, pigeonholed.
A doll was your mother;
trees grew beneath her dress
when she became a flower.

 

Planets and lace,
a house in your palm. 
The grid across the water:
vast, impassable,
as if rippling were the unity.
The parachute girl
could not land on your heart.

 

The glass cracked by your own hand,
boxed-in child appropriated,
your dreams the skulls of birds
crying out for cohesion.