1.
There are peacock feathers in the kitchen
and the mirror’s broken in the bathroom.

A cold hand brushes my shoulder
as I walk by the open door.

An open umbrella hangs
from a ladder in the garage.

One of the dining room chairs
pulls away from the table by itself.

I open the drapes to let the sunlight in
and everything is okay.

2.
It may be three in the morning
but your earphones still thread their way
around your arm and throat,
blood vessels journeying towards
an iPod heart
playing something you never listen to.
A dog barks down the street,
a tolling bell in the London fog
that has moved out of London.
And softly,
ever so softly,
your heart taps
against the ironwork of your ribs.

It is quiet.

3.
Inside your temple body,
a monk walks over dusty marble
and bows before the idol in the cage.
You don’t know
if there’s anybody left
besides him
and the dragon,
curled up around the idol’s neck
and roaring.
Perhaps they just don’t have a way out.

4.
A faucet is dripping
somewhere in the house,
a quivering plink on metal,
a violin string on a brightly lit stage
shivering and throwing rosin into the air,
a young girl standing in the snow
at a bus station,
waiting for the one twenty-six to New York.

5.
A name.

A word
that holds a person in its swoops and dashes,
cradles a head on its knees,
and whispers instructions
sweet as honey
into the listening ear.

It dresses up as a gentleman
or a pauper
and gives you a matching mask.

When it dances,
you must dance as well,
and when it is somber
you have no options.

It claims a romance,
an obsessive possession,
and it calls the noose it loops around your neck
jewelry.

And only in the dark of night,
when the name slumbers on the ceiling above you
can you see your own face.

6.
I have ten pairs of shoes,
of which I wear four.

I have seventeen black pens,
of which I use three.

I have nine lives,
of which I have wasted all.

7.
The plane is dropping from the sky.

Everything shakes,
rattling like frozen bones
that are about to the hit the ground
and shatter.
The safety demonstration
never warned you about this.
In a moment of calm
you think that the lights on the floor
are redundant.
The walls tear outwards
like origami lotuses.
Maybe this is what the shooting stars
you once wished upon as a child
really were.

And as the wind howls in
to suck your screams
out of your mouth
you fall into your bed.