room without a view

It’s not so much the ache, the empty interior.
I’ve been in on it from the beginning,
owls flapping their pages of wings,
the suicides in the light bulbs.
A butterfly trapped in the rain of my
tears. How you kissed me on those steps
that always led to nowhere. I was all
smog and lights in your hands,
praying saints moaning from between
my teeth. Both shamed and shameful,
garters always showing and eating
you like ice cream at midnight.
It’s hard to project my voice anymore,
what with all the springs and gadgets
buttressing my throat. There's still a whirring
in me, a wind chime and a wall. You knew why
water kept running from the portraits. Held up
the sky but it was all fake, all fake.  
The sad face of my sex while the roofs swelled
like lips. In the desert a doll on a mahogany
vanity. One hung like a lantern from every tree.