A creation of something,
out of nothing,
into a self-imposed belief
of importance—
or existence.

I. Reverse Sift

Between hand and fist, breath and wish,
everything shifts. Edge aligns with edge.
Points notch points. Trickles of deepest
blue slide from my palms and evaporate
in the eddying currents of the air.

Your fabrications come from lips and eyes,
dichotomies of faith and belief uttered
in glance and conversation. You define me,
wrongly, as a ‘conjurer.’ My fabrications
begin where yours meet their end.

II. Nightstand

The queen of forgetfulness bids me sieve
your soul, to empty out the coffee dregs
of passion’s ache and recollections
of life witnessed and yet not borne.
I am not so assiduously kind as she,

who takes away both aches and answers.
I prefer to scatter gifts: the matterings
of what you cannot bear, like coal,
compress to things of beauty. They await
your discovery in the morning light.

III. Come Morning

For I am the bedsheet princess, a queen
whose ministrations you will not remember
come morning. My gentle fabrications
allow acceptance of the impossible.

All you will remember, come morning,
is a dreamless sleep which does not correspond
to the faintly wet and bluish streaks which
may have—once—corresponded to tears.