I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze,
my back an armadillo's rounded armor--
I pine (what else?) love lost long
before I held its fragile bone in my fingers--

Two lovers curled on our sides, heart halves:
I thought love was what was close,
touched her clavicle with my fingertips
only to find air, scentless and thick.

I thought love was what was close;
three thousand miles away, my mother
is the only one around to hold herself.
She teeters on her heels from divorce,

three thousand miles too far for me to catch her.
We lie on our sides; a mirrored half-heart makes a whole.
I face east. Facing west, in egress vertigo,
she hopes for sleep, that the spinning stops,

her caged eyes watching in the mirror for change,
long lost love a distant hope, like land
when the sea has stolen your legs and sleep,
with no arms to hold her but her own.