My brother finds comfort in calculators
He assigns every number a name
He believes that they add up to certainty and he is upset with fractions that remain
So I examine these maps with my eyes and at best I can trace with my
Finger all the way to that town where she went an attempt to forget the cracks and the lines of my face

So Jetsabel cleaned out the closets for me and she piled the boxes in the hall
Tomorrow when she wakes she'll come take them away and they will never haunt me again
But it is still hard to sleep with the moons heavy beams
I run barefoot to the backyard, just to freeze in my place by the wrought iron gate, too afraid and ashamed to advance

Today I walked through the snow and found a field of headstones
They were in rows like the weeks on calendars where each box is a day that you can never escape, without pills or the poison of sleep
These memories leak from these faucets that weep
Hot tears splash against the shower floor and I stand in the steam as if inside a dream--
I can see her again by the sink from behind the bathroom mirror she pulls a thermometer and placed it under my tongue

She said "you are as pale as a sheet, you look awful my sweet lay down and wait for the sun."
So I stayed in that bed. She brought me water and read each night from a volume out loud
She whispered soft poetry
Her favorite was Anabel Lee
And those words, like these drugs comforted me
But the clocks kept waving their hands and she could not understand why my temperature would never drop
And although she promised with tears that she would always be here I heard truth like the sounding sea

I said, "My Arienette, oh how soon you'll forget this house will never be your home
And you will leave in the fall when the trees become graves and their color lie dead in the grass."
Gold and green torture me like the lies I believe too easily
Oh my Jetsabel, look at this hell that I have made
If you want maybe drop by sometime put some flowers on my grave
So that I will look beautiful in my silent sepulchre
Yeah that's fine throw those dresses away I don't want anything of hers
For the moon never shines and the stars never rise without bringing me dreams
Haunted by the ghosts of those bright eyes