This landscape is best read slowly.
The growing season here, notable for its absence of color.
Some leaves turn black once they learn to fly
and their songs
rest gently on few ears. The bones of trees lie thick
across winter’s first hour. Their music doesn’t wait
on the warmth of the sun, but makes its own
beneath cold skin.

No leaves or roots belong to me.
My stripped spine‘s made of steam and
the forest knows this.
Autumn rises -- a thick flock lifts
in one swift movement
sent off in collective response
to my memory~

You thought an empty doorway
stood beside you. I stood there.
It was me. You felt discolored
stories: their definitions of me
that did not define, passing through,
and sought to shut out that breeze.
I was hinge-less with nothing to hold closed.
Not all doorways have doors. I passed only
into myself where you always, already waited.
You. Open fisted -- spilling autumn and
fragmented verses with room
to grow.