342

It's too tangible to live so high in the air.
I think it must come down sometimes
but never when it's late at night
and my arms are out, ready
to break its fall

341

I'd frame you for a murder,
put a gun in your hand
and watch you figure out how to hold it

if it would make it easier to look at you
when I say I won't be back for a while.

340

With the trees so still on the white sky,
they could have been made of steel
and a hurricane could have been coming though
until a bird shook one of the thin branches

339

One day too late for changes,
I learned the sky had always been wrong.
Then it was easier to watch them take down all the trees
that had lived beneath it so long.

338

In the waiting room, no one would tell you
what room your mother's in.
Everyone is lost but no one quite as lost as you
so stay until she's long dead anyway-
until they give you a room of your own
and can't remember why you even came in the first place.
They'll hand you a fresh blanket and you won't have a word

337

If you have to be missing an arm
for me to reach the peak
so high I'll have to drop all my things on the way
then you will, or at least I won't ever
help you look for it.

336

You never used the furniture,
said the living room reminded you of growing old
and I agreed until I mended all the tears in the curtains
and took down the dirt infested shades.

When it was all done, I invited you in
but you took the other hallway to the door.
Now you can't help but walk by it every once in a while,
I wish you knew like I do how the light reflects off of the floor.

335

It used to make me sad to think
about dying so I stopped
thinking about dying so much and was
happy for a while.

I think it can only work so well once
like the rock you didn't think would skip that far.

334

The worst was returning
from the moon with nothing left to do.
The first time I couldn't be amazed
by the sunset from my backyard.

333

The first people to notice me
knew me as the
little kid on the tambourine
behind the wedding singer

and I didn't know then
that I'd never meet another kid
who had to do that

Even the bride's mother
though I was a sight

332

When we woke the air was dry.
Our torn skin cracked
when it touched anything but itself

Somehow I was surprised when the outside
didn't cure us immediately
and the first thing I tested it with
were your hands

331

I never liked big rooms
empty but for me and you
or heavy with hellos,
But I was born in a small room
in a small town that you know
because you were born there too.

That's what I think of
when I think of you,
what you've done, what you can do
and your steps echo in the high ceiling
over the big room.

330

Small square windows in a row
give glimpses out to the outside trees
for prisoners to use sparingly.

Between the boxes of flat branches
hides one who got to the other side.
His hand lies just above the frame
where the other half of the sun is cut off.

329

It must have been a month since you last loved me-
I can't say I've changed too much all year.
Maybe you got buried underneath the snow
and closed your eyes and saw me
because there was nothing else to do.

If that's what happened I wish
you'd had your harmonica
and the sound had gone in you
with nowhere else to go

So when they dug you up
and lifted you and sent you back home to me
I'd be waiting on the couch
right where you left me

328

Even when I come home in the
early morning through the
hole in the roof I never
told you about, you'll never be surprised

You'll just roll over in the bed to face me
like each time before
when I would come in through the door

327

I fed my dinner to you enough to know
you weren't really fixed

As my skinny arm would bring the fork to your mouth,
you'd look at me as if to say
sorry, but it has to be this way

326

You sounded so pure when you said all you want
is something that's no matter what
until I let you know you had it

and then when I called you from the kitchen floor,
you made me wait until I loved you more.