she’s

                a Gordian

                not.

the antithesis            

                 of all tangled

        things,

the space               between the

                unsolvable.

 

like the year she claimed a deadly

diagnosis:

                wrapped our empathy

around her finger and there held it.

in the throb [a memory trick] of veins:

 

(our veins.

 

or in which she entwined,

 the depression,

                looped back,

entrapped              backstabbed,

and wove herself into a tragedy,

us,

a barathrum lure to the death of

                 who we were.

 

but aren’t you

glad we’re still alive?)

 

and speaks still

                 she does, gnarled voice

soft as saplings, youth

                                supple for

                                bending,

of moving far away, an inevitability in knots,

somewhere out of reach

                                                   is an end

 

(but I can’t find the ends

 

(but I can’t find you either