for c.

for c.

you remind me that we are pieces of picture-puzzles, edges ragged and jagged and frayed;

that we are, maybe, cosmically, all meant to fit into our shape,

but the cosmos did not account for careless hands, did not account for ill winds,

and so our edges are broken, bent back, before we can lock ourselves in place.

now we are thrashing our hands and feet around the keyholes and no one can tell us

why we have the wrong key, why the formulae do not work; why we do not fit into the system.

"i could not be real," she says, as though she is a failing;

as if it is she, not the universe, who has failed her.

"i could not be real so i was unreal," an absence in the shape of a girl,

bones and skin describing something missing.

i imagine jigsaw puzzles, pocked with countless holes:

those who have been lost, or have left, or still shiver in the box.

so here we are in the half-life, grasping at a misshapen space,

cardboard crumpling against the external dictations.

"i could not be real so i was unreal & now i know you" --

we watch the puzzle unfold, the whole and unwhole;

we sit in our outlines, impotent, kicking our feet.