Delicate Mockery

little coloured plastic bits fall on the carpet
twisted, funny shapes - my fault, my doing.
i have hurt something besides
you or me or the both of us.
i ran away to do something useful
and took twenty silly pictures of the same object
while the sun let its hair fall in through the windowpanes.

me and my childish wiles and whiles
could take me anywhere,
build me a road like an
unrolled spool of ribbon on top of the fences,
in the branches of the trees,
into the center of the world itself.

but now, we come to breaking plastic,
breaking glass and bricks
and china and bone.
we light matches in the darkness,
go into the bathroom, hold the little
orange flame up to the mirror,
staring at ourselves vainly.
and when we run out of matchbooks,
we use locks of hair.

back by the water,
when none of the cameras could focus
right, i thought we had something.
our stiff blue uniforms,
grass staining my stockings,
music playing from a very long time
and place away.

out behind the trees,
we saw each other,
and we looked like wrecks,
nothing like what we looked in the
nighttime, our eyes
all shadows and burning,
lips cracked, hair cutting itself.

we breathed in dust and smoke,
attic air, we breathed
in the same air we kept
breathing out.
we lost our teeth on the
spiral staircase,
we lost it somehow then.

lockets are a delicate mockery
i think i knew you.