In the silvery tinkling of storytelling
Slivers of Mars jewel my hair,
My clean and gorgeous fangs,
the navy satin of my bedsheets …
I’m tuning my senses to dreams.

Behind my eyelids
Below the ceiling
Are wintery worlds, palaces of ice
Dim and disappearing
Not seduced by anger
Not seduced by shame or pity.

No,
Too busy constructing new gods
Decimating the old worlds
In my body of memory,
The haunted houses
Ruled by the shady and melodramatic
Spirits inside them.

When they test the blade, it bleeds them;
When they bellow the hearth, it burns them;
Sometimes the whole house becomes ash.
We pack our cases and move to the hills,

Watch atop as lazy lovers burn alive
Cowardly friends
And every god I ever worshipped.