you may never know.

she carries crooked years
tucked neatly in both pockets

hands full of hard lessons
trailing behind like crumbs

she is not lost and
does not beg to be found

she will feed you and quietly
watch you sleep on her pillow

with splinters and hope
she will be gone by dawn


© 11.19.16 heather brager

things I don't say.

whether or not
you comprehend, I can
see through the beautiful
skin stretched
across your chest
to the cells colliding
behind your rib cage.
you think you
control your heart
the direction that
blood flows, the valves
and complex mechanisms
that make you stand
here in my kitchen
wondering what it
is that you want
my fingers long
to slide behind your
ribs and wrap
themselves around
feel the gentle pulse
to solve all of the
mysteries of
this moment
but don't worry, I will leave
it there because it
doesn't belong to me.

© 11.15.16 heather brager

everything you pretend to be.

why would he hesitate

her flesh beneath

the quiet beauty 

a quivering projection 

from somewhere overhead

without a forest floor

emptiness left downwind

skeletons reduced 

to pieces in a puzzle

his face turned south 

abandoned structures 

neglected grass calling  

shadows of canis lupus

her coat pale in moonlight

protecting his throat

© 11.11.16 heather brager

color.

now she may not be convinced that

you sense or observe the world

with the same spectrum of longing

though she willingly would

have taught you to breathe in aqua

and weave cerulean blue to the

rhythm of the salt lamp and vinyl

stroking the brilliantly acute contrast of

your skin deeper than marrow

she may have even come

undone and drifted a scarlet

bird over rippling water the

leaves fluttering close to autumn

though she was not persuaded that

you understood her language or

could grasp burning alchemy with

your soul tangled in the mires

of acceptable mediocrity

now she may know stories that you

never hear and see the complex

unraveling tied to choices that

have not yet come to be

though it will never truly matter if

the strands of her hair slipped softly

though your fingers and

the forgotten cerise mandala

never made its way into your pocket

© 10.27.2016 heather brager

siren.

I wish I knew that song
the one she played you like a fool
fabricated irresistible notes and bent
time in a gravity defying arc
that speaks words I have not learned
I can only offer my hands
knowledge I have gathered to my chest
an armful of autumn wheat
gentleness I have left
like pebbles to the trail home
so keep the pieces you have saved
the bucket of curved shells and 
lifeless flowers slumped dry
now that the water has evaporated
while I send another song

© 10.20.2016 heather brager

no.

was it home at last
or another version of
my wandering soul

give it up (because...simpatico)

three times she left the house

hand prints ultraviolet, smudges

on the face of a ticking clock

following the blue line back, because

everything beautiful is broken

how quickly she forgot that

the music was not for her

his soft pulses of confusion

now misery personified, but

the walls will remember,

and watch him from now on 

"don't give your magic to the undeserving"

his words murmuring a loop 

past the graveyard in her chest

and out through empty hands, the

quiet remains of her spread 

delicately across his comforter 

she is simply not enough, but 

that dark pond was a mirror  

reflecting her light more

than just once, failure

oh failure, follow the thin blue line

© 10.5.2016 heather brager