Then one day she noticed the forest had started to bleed into her waking life.

There were curved metal plates on the trees to see around corners.

        crown of infrared
        song of drifting dune

He used to know so
much—had mastered
dead languages, could

On no set schedule it roams
the streets with nothing
written on its forehead.

Their sorrow is something like
buyer’s remorse. They chose
their paths but now regret it,

Moths bat their brains to powder
against the streetlight

I am like the king of a rainy kingdom,
rich but weak, young yet very old,
who, with perceptions piqued by marigolds

Rain falls, fails to irrigate the entire town.
Urged by grandiloquence—or tenebrous cold—
the pale inhabitants of our neighbors’ graveyard