Better to be scarred by beauty

and stranded in this world

bleeding streams of unanswered letters

than absent, abstract and subtracted

from passion

protected by shells of ice

static in a rift

between worlds.

Here, a fleck of light

on a blade,

the ground jumps

and collides like a lover

with bones, with heat

and the heat it seeks

in the hornet's nest

of her darkening hair.