lies about midnight

the mannequin’s chipped and hollow hip echoes
the left breast, broken open to black. you wonder
why I need you to grip me there, why your hand
slips inside my chest easily as a fish hook. most days
busy keeps the falling at bay and nightly you
and sleep patch the bones back to fiction, whole;
what does not kill us sometimes kills us. the streak
of blue in your dear, purchased optimism
comforts me. my ragged feet defy all attempts
to keep the body from the poem / we should
celebrate. another season of breathing, another year
without tumors, I watch you sleep and the ants
quit their itching, the flies settle into corners,
I think it might also kill me to be happy.

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