…it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways…
–from Mary Oliver’s Song of the Builders

–for c.

if i parse out my hurt
into couplets, throw

it a title in bold, will
you be able to read it,

then? the picture frames
stand empty, the lust

poems all curled up into ash, soot
smeared on the back of my left hand

like sad ink as i reach
to light the last of the candle.

the government is selling
off lighthouses, up East

in Massachusetts, out
West in the Great Lakes.

maybe you
could find beautiful there.

we have not come very far, here,
after all: the same lonely feel

in the upstairs window,
the same lonely matching scars.

i can’t afford a lighthouse.
the child’s tower built from old brick

in the backyard
has nothing of beauty,

is no house for light.
if i unmake it

and hand you back the bricks
one by one,

i want you to know
what they can mean.