after Fernando Pessoa

Time crinkled like a brown bag
given to the hyperventilating.
Yet still the night was blue,
its skein unruptured,

no hand had come to drag me
into what prophesy I’d spun
from the window.

Like anyone my mouth wants
to be gentle.

Still my lover told the dispatcher
She’s screaming in agony.

The paramedic said I’d sleep it off,
spin together by morning.
Night’s right arm itches the left.  
Lonely Soares wrote,
Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake.

Still I am the girl waiting
for who she should have been,
the finch
smacking against the silverware

waiting for her wings
to sprout
in a blitz of viscera.

Still I am the woman trembling
beneath the shock blanket
light shining across her eyes.

How many times has the world ended for me?

I’ve always been the same.
Nude in my devotion to elsewhere.
With my miraculous dreams.
My spinning sundial.