you've been drawing houses on your mattress and your sheets with the hope it won't be long until it's all the metaphor you need. at home above your parents' dresser was a portrait of the sea. and all the months you second-guessed their love and looked for it in me. lying in the road with everyone you know wrapped around your wrists, filling in the holes. the _ are homeless _ for someone to haunt, to be their host. puppets staged at dawn. you say, "all i want is some concern or someone to care for me." you raise your cup. say, "here's to all the months you've never noticed anything." _ 100 knotted ropes. your hands are forming fists, but there's nothing that they hold onto. you're filling up bottles with dirty roof-touched rain and lining them against the porch's edge and whispering as you'd say, "if winter comes before i find someone to cover up this stain, i'll lie down and cover it myself but never get up again." now that you're a ghost, you leave in little notes taped to the bricks these sad and somber poems. with ribbons up, the palest yellow gauze all decorate your dreams and tie a knot or make a bow across any broken scenes.