brio

the middle of the day falls
upon me like a crease forming between
my eyebrows, prodding until my mind
opens, and I think of open spaces
like an open room where a girl used to play
clumsy, beautiful things

her spirit hung down, low by the
ankles of those who walk by,
eyes flighty,
carrying
the drenched weight of opinion:
one part contemplation, everything else scattered,
rearranged, prancing like lemonflies dancing, wetly
                                        over the puddles of fact and fiction.

                                            some people get awfully good
                        at marking down the truth though.
they could probably tell you a story
of

fifty soldiers getting shot because their
bodies blocked ammunition intended for a city
of children picking paper off the ground.
that a handsome fifer blew Beethoven
            from twenty stories up
            maybe that someone wanted to kill him
            and that the elevator was broken they could tell you

that
words do really stay in your
veins like heroin with no side effects. that just
by writing, your heart would become sanitized like
            clean hands, and wipe away ash
and rubble and glorious runny noses
you would never be sick

or maybe other slippery things will slip out
from underneath their tongues, descriptions
of storm, of firework, steady stories
that you desperately want to believe
because you don't
and shouldn't
want

            to become jaded,
and realize that even ugly things can be open
that bandages ran up her arms like
smoke, she was not lonely or young but amazingly alive.
that real fiction is just composed of
dischordant things close to the ground, of
wounded hands
                                                              playing out their piano