Just a thank you note to say that

Once you were bespectacled, respectable as

the stack of yellowed paperbacks behind your

mouth that smacks of wis-dom, wise judgement,

heavy as a cudgel in the contours of my brain.

Your words hung in the air, light as a wrecking ball

and there were angels in the atmosphere. Their blood is on your hands, which were extended, palms up,

full of gifts that I savor after the slaughter. Gifts like recipes or roadmaps, presents that necessitate

Just a thank you note to say that

If kintsugi makes a thing more precious then

my mind is a goldmine, a hoard of glittering things that you plundered and pushed across the table toward me like a bottle of glue, an offer I accepted. Rubble and glue inside a skull, what can I do but suture them together, raise a new dome, like building a ship in a bottle. I craft columns, halls, and balconies that arch toward something ineffable. There are angels in this architecture, birthing and re-birthing like Athena leaping forth and bubbling away like a mermaid in foam. So this is

Just a thank you note to say that

Thanks to you

I am an architect, an artist, an angel,

a ruin-god-lover-handyman-cynic-golddigger.

Thanks to you.