after Olena

sometimes, there are things to do with our hands.
the smell of your skin is heavy on my sleeve, sometimes
there are stones on the ground, gravel in the backyard ready

to be tossled about in a wind.
and the sky roars as if seeing you for the first time. outraged.
white, white, white then blue-inked. delicate tenacity of vein.

i talk to someone, sometimes, of the fragility of happiness and i know
that they must think i am speaking of my childhood pets. the room, slinks,
breathes defeated under some bustling human's weight of body, the stairs (shaping

themselves as stars),
creak. resigned, molded to need,
soil growing against windows as if

insistence pounding. the glass holds stubborn, speech slight. tremble
against the frame of fading winter, how else,
do we love. could be held, i imagine, as if your palm a soft expanse of water.

in a dream, betrayed by responsibility, the kettle begins to whistle.