an amazing writer handed me this a long time ago ...

(... and i just came across it. and i love it as much now as i loved it then. )

Two Halves of a One-Winged Bird

her eyes catch fire
the whites ashblack
shadow of magma
to be seen
light-years from
never
the laugh a disguised scream
as she smashes the plates and
glasses with seething glee
against the floor
(in a place far away)
we dance on the pieces
and our socks paint themselves
wine on chin
teeth too big as though they want to
get out and eat the face away around them
red wet kleenex
clotted lines marking time
like in a flesh prison
rubber room
but head a cage
and filled to the edge with echoes
now like prison gates slamming
her eyes shut
she doesn’t know whether she’s
in or out
even in sleep she is alert
though suffocating
dead yet suffering
i touch her with tired guilt
insomniacally
and flee finally into
dreams
she is there, smoldering
and slapping me with invisible objects which
she knows are real and sacred
as scarred words
i believe in her
i know she knows i am
nothing
deep down
and this is to be clung to
she wills herself away
yet in her withered will i am with her
and so we stay instead
and try to extend the
dead night into
ever
always alone with one
another after another
mending
mask-lipped
embedded in our embers
buried in each other like
two tombs
tapping at the fragile indestructible because
invisible
walls of silence
between us>