" – ,

eyelids drenched in the tears of your lover:

a space carved in the sky for your bones to fit,

he will visit you in his dreams.

He will imagine you with flushed cheeks

and a finger that has not yet been pricked,

and a heart that is still in your chest, because he

knows that someone's god has made a castle for you

from clouds and glass.

In the Heaven he has built for you to appease

himself, you put stars in your tea kettle and

always wear socks to slide across the hardwood floor.

You are never cold.

You whisper poetry into the freezer and leave it there,

maybe he will find it when he opens the door

wherever he is.

You tie empty soup cans together and

throw them out the window, hoping that this time

there would be a hole in the cloud,

that perhaps your words would still be stuck

to the bottom of the aluminum by the time

it reached him.

He does not realize that even in this Heaven you will

miss him as much as he misses you.

You will sleep in a bed made of his name,

silk pillow a mirror that only reflects his body.

The sheets are a casket because he cannot imagine

you spending forever in a perfumed box.

The walls are painted with your name so that the sky

will not forget it.

He will remember your name long after he has forgotten his own.

You will sleep, slow and heavy, thick as southern

heat.

Sleep is in the sun here; it is in the moon too,

each ray of light a melted caramel dream that soaks

into the pores of your skin. Dreams will keep you

alive in a way that your body could not,

in his Heaven.

In his Heaven you will never have to say goodbye

to a summer storm, watching from the porch swing

with your bare feet against painted wood.

Hand outstretched and palm cupped to catch the rain;

you will drink it though you are never thirsty.

In his Heaven, you got there the way a poem ends.

There was no pain for you, only ceasing,

right when the words softened to a blow,

the curve of a spine. A hole that aches,

a missing piece, there will be nothing left for him to

do except remember.

As if he could ever forget.

As if each moment was not already soaked in you.

As if he does not open a door and hear your voice in the turn of the hinge.

As if this castle he had built for you was ever anywhere outside of him. "