the space above my ears.

Court Jesters in Their Truest Forms

You're the mountains and I'm hiking every inch of you.

I slip on the sand sometimes, but I've made it this far living off canned peaches and sleeping on rocks, so I have faith.

You don't have any, but I forgive you for it. I've got enough for the both of us.

It's a ham sandwich of a story, frankly.

Edible, but no one dies for it.

Sounds like you.

No, maybe I couldn't get you the polka-dot slippers you wanted for Christmas, but I gave you myself.

A thank-you card would have been nice.

You breathe in once and it's steam rising from the kettle, exhale and it's coal dust.

Breathe in once again, only this time it's the winter fog. Exhale, it's frost.

Your left eye falls first and then your lips and then your right ear and right eye at the same time followed by your nose, then finally your left ear.

You're just dysfunction incarnated, aren't you, little one?

You come from the planet of cooked carrots and pasta.

The civilization where everyone's walking around with buckets balanced on their heads and how much water is inside determines their worths.

There are carriages instead of subway trains and everyone goes to sleep at the exact same hour.

All the buckets are empty now.

Those carriages caught on fire, carried away by the flood of molasses dreams where the skeletons talk and the wine doesn't fall right through their bones onto the floor.

Dad said it's better when it's real, but that's too much work.

We'll settle for the sample shots. We'll settle on the boundary halfway between happiness and psychological warfare.

You believed in something before me.

Correction; you believed in something because of me, but stopped believing after it was over.

It's like the little electrical conductors in the science experiments I did for you.

Do you see them?

Of course you do. We're both alight, so of course.

I'm still traveling, now underneath the sand dune eighteen and a half yards away from the lighthouse.

The lighthouse; you've never seen it but I'll tell you about it.

The bottom was soil, the top was diamonds, and the layers in between held everything you could think of.

All in exact equilibrium.

In the balanced home, feathered hands reached through the ceiling and became mistletoe.

We kissed.

You disintegrated.

You were swept up.

We began again.

It's something we call "the spin cycle."

The carousel goes around and around and now it's a table saw.

When it slows down and stops, it's a speech bubble in the air.

I can't read it but I can make a guess as to what it says.

There was that one life we always talked about, you and I.

In that life, I filled the gas tank of the boat with blood and left you drowning in a cloud of red exhaust.

In that life, only the tiniest tea parties were allowed in the gingerbread house.

In that life, you didn't have to take a different pill every morning with the same expectation that it would all mend itself.

We didn't have enough silver in our pockets, though, so now we're stuck here where it's nighttime but it's not nighttime and the whole system tears itself apart.

Sleeping in piles of cane sugar on the floor makes it just a little better.

I've never finished a damn thing in my life, but I wanna finish this, and I need you for it.

Hold out the other corners of the blanket for me, will you, please?

I'll make you lemonade, I'll give you my house.

Whatever you want, it's yours.

I'll die at the altar for you or whatever, I'll do it, but you must help me seal up Fortunato, quickly now, quietly.

You ask, "how many ghosts can you fit in your chest before you become one?" and I glare at you, spitefully slathering each brick with mortar.

I told you it was none of your business.

You say it's was foolish not to tell you because the sandman is already halfway to the floor and it's gonna be over soon anyway.

I gave in and told you I didn't know, but I could stop when the river water was finally soft enough to swim in.

You didn't ask anymore questions.

We covered up the screams with wallpaper and you said all you wanted was the slippers, so I gave them to you.

You flew away and I realized too late that the eyes painted on your wings were warnings.

It's over now, though, so I go back inside and pretend it never happened at all.