When There is Mourning, Please Don’t Knock on My Door
When There is Mourning, Please Don’t Knock on My Door Annie Blake
don’t leave me cut flowers they are dead too
i want to wrap my house around my body congregations
are people sitting in stacks like bricks inside the ribs of a room
sometimes i want to take off my clothes
unrestrain my ego’s collars undo my eyes like buttons
lie on god’s altar for the chants of fire
to drip petals of blood i dreamt they would turn yellow
rise in a rush like spring confetti in a tunnel
made from the burnt legs of trees
sometimes i don’t want to kneel down
public performance is an exsheathment my mourning
is not for funerals i see the concave cheeks of my morning curtain
sucking in the light
when my eyes wake up to the wall it is the fingers
of trees are they lashes or are they thorns
i don’t want to remember you with someone
i will never see again
i want to learn to touch my child through the lying stone
i need to find the door myself
my child doesn’t need wood or a photo
he is the earth in the earth
my body inside the paint of plants and rock
i didn’t tell him he was going to die he still stirs tinned fish
inside the sea
dying is people in debris scurrying like mice
down a wide flight of stairs intersecting each other’s shadows
like knives death is flying it is the curtain breathing out light
like the belly of a balloon it fills me like fertility does knowing
the altar can be a spire sculptured in the woods the fire softening
the imprints of my fingers when i am cold
when i sink into the lake let me breathe with gills god is
the sand gurgling when water learns to mix with air
i don’t need to speak to you
you can feel my words renovating in my mouth i don’t want
to hear anyone talk
the water from the lake is shattering like glass