I.
I’ll bind her appendages to her sides and paint her clear, globs dripping into her nostrils and gluing her heart inside her chest
indefinitely.
Because I’ve seen her fall into pieces before, but she wasn’t pieces,
she was dust
exploded among the cosmos, sprinkled among stars, but stuck
between black pepper against the light and
waning moonlight against the dark.
And I stood under her, grasping desperately as her molecules slipped, slid,
fell through my fingers and collected in a million
tiny mountains on the floor.
And though I fell to my knees with her, loading her dust on my shoulders and climbing her craggy faces,
there’s not enough superglue to mold her back to who she was who we were.

II.
I count her vertebrae and she counts with me, breathing in with each point of a finger, speeding up and speeding up,
faster faster,
until inhales are indistinguishable from exhales and her chest isn’t heaving by frozen,
static
and I can’t breathe.
So I darken her eyes and soften her lips.
We start over.

III.
She tells me she doesn’t need, she doesn’t want, and she flails
and I lock my elbows and my wrists and my knees and she fights and screams and
can’t sit stand lie be still.
We turn around, as I fight uphill and she slides down
down
down.

IV.
Hold me closer
and help me make me let me breathe so
my exhales and my inhales will travel with yours
past dust and screams and wooded nowhere.
Past this.
Past everything.
Let me paint you silver.
You’ll glow with light. And when I let her go,
we’ll float.