what words  would you use? if today were a letter you  penned & I were the mailbox: how would you have  shaped the story? Dear baby,  We’ll go one day— this rocky mountain thunderhead / fourteen thousand granitite feet / elemental rebellion; gravity made obsolete.  god, how you would have  loved this. no unknitting of our fellowship / trifecta of feral beasts; you & me & the wilderness—one of us always leaving & setting  the rest on fire.  Dear baby,  I just couldn’t stay— & what could we say to that?  almost as as tragic as  eastbound I-70 or the cigarette we might have split,  breathing deep at dusk  in cordilleran shadow.  god, how could you  miss this?  I won’t guess, I mean; about the words.  you are a dead language &  I am a living gospel; cumulonimbus howl over perilous heights. dear baby,  this place is yours.  roadless expanse on the back  of my hand / or thigh /  my rear view mirror.  & your ghost in the passenger seat; what you last said washes  out the open window  into Coloradan night  & this time  I don’t ask.

I feel it in chills sent running down my spine in the repulsion in my stomach the hot shame in my face the fear in my heart and the desires that bring it all up again A long-lasting limp I hear it in the sudden snap, splash, slap the vacuum of breath, autonomy, and innocence The doubting whispers and condescending silence The muffled cries for hope and echo of feet on the floor I taste it in the salty sweat and tears the blood in the back of my throat I smell it in my bear masking everything but my horror Sending my mind and body far away Funneling feelings, fucking, fighting through breathe in and out, in and out In and out and in and out and in and out The rhythmic pulse pulling me away from everything I know I see it in glimpses, flashes, darkness bags under eyes a feeble frame an anger unable to be tamed I know it in the absence of light the inability to transcend its shadow in the moments I feel so small I could disappear and in those I’ve tried to I know it in hope in the knowledge that Darkness does not win in snow, the crisp fall air, your toes dipped in in patient hearts sitting shiva with your pain I know this is real ...but it will not last