Little Rocks

Double-paned glass should be transparent, 

but this particular window,

the antique kind, 

slowly melts and waves for the sun— 

the other side breaks into a bended vision 

as though heat rises from the ground. 

This vapid room, once new to us, seems 

erased 

the end of a pencil, 

and now dust remains in the spaces our things once lived. 

I dizzy myself with my lies inside the places

Where I’d like to be honest. 

My words expelled like gunpowder, licked by a hot tongue. 

I ruined you as impersonally as I could.

The hateful source of heat,

A mine. 

Deep underground. 

A rogue fire burns, 

Hidden and unextinguished. 

Vulnerable intervals between us, like performers. 

The scenes get shorter, I’m duller. A colored-paper craft in the window too long. Peel back the layers to saturate. 

But there is no one left to unravel me. Deservedly abandoned. 

A red trinket left in a jar, this side of the glass. 

This echoing room, its tomb. 

Sparing souls and running a dim beat. 

Heat visions of a man’s hands grasping a tired hammer and a modest herb garden in this window.