with a head full of storms

and lightning in her fingers,

she shuts the door.

she told him once, “i want to fill myself with rainbows,” and he said nothing, and so she will, from october-colored cylinders while he watches from his lay-z boy, never speaking, only crying tears that gather in his splayed palms like marbles because She’s dead, and even though the space beside him is occupied day in, day out, it’s not enough, and so she’ll go where She is, because heartache is no place for a saint and church bells sound like her Mother’s screams.

with a chest full of gnats

and spearmint beneath his tongue,

he waits for Her.

fearing the best but knowing the worst, always looking but never seeing, he peers into his own spiral, because there She is still able to blink but out here She is the aurora borealis, a billowing expanse of color that exists only in the blue of her irises and the bridge of her nose, and the true cosmic joke of it all is that he can tell his daughter wants to go but he can’t talk her down because he wants to follow suit, into a place where Her jokes can still make him laugh.

 

with her wrists intact

and clouds behind her eyes,

she falls asleep.