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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Dear Ilana,


Your toes are cold in just slippers
as you stand outside and watch

the ardent orange tongues,
lap up your tangibility. 

They squirm through crevices in your floorboards 
and kiss your clothes to ash. 

They kneed and scream and crack. 
You know you lost. 

Before you can stop it, 
The North Wind cups the fleeting embers in his palm 
and tosses them
into the molasses sky. 

He whips them around tall buildings 
and lets them settle on street signs. 

He nestles ash in old, abandoned, pizza boxes 
and in the fur behind the ear of a stranger's cat. 

And you still standing there, shivering.
with bleach in your diet coke 
and rocks in your pockets.
and I'm scared. 

I wish I were there,
to wash that shirt
you've had on for days,

To braid your hair 
and fix your make-up.
To make sure your still real.

To make sure you don't burst into dust,
and join the fragments of your 
favorite Bob Marley poster
between the cracks of worn-out cobble stones. 

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