FrostedHarbor

The frost-bitten air of a windless night Acts as my refuge from your song That sings to my forgotten soul, Forgotten by all except by you. On this ashen path, I walk the night. The cold, I hope, shall cure this blight As it has encased my soul so long— Too long since I have been whole, Whole to you, who I walk from and to. In this fashion, I walk the night. The icy chill that blinds my sight Is that which I, for now, belong— Far gone from your love's sweet toll, A toll where no more fees are due. From this passion, I walk the night. For the breeze of autumn began my plight Whispering to me all I have done wrong—

Plumb the slick interior of sweaty ringlets, boa-constricted around that quivering fourth finger. Let the death rattle seep in so absolute that waking moments are perverted by cycles of dreams stuck in the unconscious haunting. Pluck the biting glass from denim blue, shouldering the responsibility of shatters while a lifted head responds to no stimulus. Note the scramble to trace back and imprint beyond doubt the specific timbre of vocal chords. Procure from vaulted border some wild insight, definite in its perception of sealed providence. Sleep with the transition between fading and permanent, where form and blinking eyelashes

Around here, the ghosts give compliments freely, and I don't shy away. I wait for the fun house of Anna's mind to right itself, which comes after she intentionally shatters a pot of coffee on the kitchen tiles. She sits on the floor with a handkerchief on her head. I tell her the lock on the bathroom door is broken. The nest outside hasn't chirped in two days, and I think the Seattle wind got the best of it. Nostalgia keeps me, but the nature of my days with her turns faded moments slowly bitter. Four nights after then, she says she could cry if I gave her something for the pain. I only hear her a little. Anna wanted to be a dancer. Leaning

PROLOGUE Finn McCauley had never forgotten how Wyoming smelled of deep sage. When he was a kid, the thick scent and the heat of summer would chap his nose raw. He would taste the spice of it in his dinner and would wake up to it with heavy breaths. He had thought the sagebrush was all there was for him, but a mind like Finn's had won him an acceptance letter from a college on the East Coast and a job as a consultant for the last fifteen years. Now, he didn't have to deal with it except for trips home. He didn't hate coming home, and he didn't hate the sage, not anymore, but he did hate returning for this. Finn dropped the cigarette he was s

Where are you tonight, when the knot tightens around my stomach, hanged and spine-broken? Body, my own self, snaps in half—half to dangle, half to stare out into blank neutrons; gone, gone: you. Are you coming and then as spectator to see the missing, my loss of it all— it; all? To see the misted real suffering, the audience you fade into to feel it all you do. Will you claim me, to say your wreck-crush deeds, the epitome of crimes to risk villain and take the cords and junkyard scraps and the spandrels stretching through the lobes of my brain—or, will it fade, passing fancier, to the stage curtain

I know things. That's pretty much the best way to put it. My kids think that I know everything, which is true to a certain extent. It's handy; I essentially know the answer to every question. Someone asks me something and I know the answer. This is a fairly recent occurrence (if only this had happened to me while I was still in school), and my wife thinks it happened because I willed it to happen. I did always have an inclination to look up tidbits that eluded my prior knowledge, but when she asked me if that was how it happened, I knew that the answer was no. On the whole, I'm pleased with it. When I go to a restaurant and the waiter asks, W

Jade stood on the treetops looking down at her feet. They were her feet, but they were also her mother's feet. The smell of California fire was still fresh and the ash and cinder clung to her shirt. She ignored the sensation to go back for shoes. Blitz, her Rottweiler, had preceded her into the smoky ruins of the forest, and he needed no shoes. She didn't call his name, but she listened for him. Time kept away from the forest these days. The smoke blotted out the only hour glass in the sky. Jade took shallow breaths so she could continue. Her bare feet, her mother's feet, eased their way over charred logs and scorched underbrush. She heard a

Nothing in the universe, I, Not a person, an instant, A fraction of a sigh From some celestial giant. Clipped into a wedge of a mosaic Piece, unseen from afar And chipped from the archaic Landscape of a cosmic star. A brush with space-time is all I get To throw my rock and hope it skips So I become more than a subset Briefly eclipsing until forever eclipsed. Still, there is no niche to be found Where the galaxy calls resound.