There were too many mosquitoes in Yellow Knife. Your face somewhere in this sentence.

Blurred and swollen noise so loud it blows a balloon in your skull as yellow as a bait bucket leopard leech pulling on minnows whats silver is buried in the body teeth medallions.

haze of brine flies breaking along the shore chemical weapons incinerator where the water evaporates

shoreline

Who could have a face after

even one covered in weeds or wheat.

hard-cut beside crumbling stone and burnt wood

frames

you were always stepping out of the photograph like a slaughtered animal limb the dog drags out of the forest your jawbone fixed to my jawbone.

You drove out and shot bright intervals over the salt flats in which nothing moved white all around you were thirsty

low volume drooping left eye a goddamn shadow at your feet : your mother was half swallowed by her photographer, squinting into the light like the twisted necks of chickens so you step out of the shot

pion smoke kestrel bright red cactus flower where we find a hummingbird juniper

old Christmas trees planted in the salt flats behind us melting tinsel and red ornaments glittering in the sun

asleep in the garden with dirt smeared inside our underwear two years of food in the pantry enough to walk through the burning world counting blessings locust and gull

Repetition has nothing to do with rinsing clean but looking and burning and bone. What sticks to bones shimmering tissue nexus stretched between muscle and bone and organ eyes lit in the current pinning seams and stringing sight like laundry on electric line. The line of that dress is the eye drawing your clavicle from the light and burning it until it becomes a meaningful object to pass back and forth and suck. A swatch of material to wipe our mouths clean with. electric

You leave the glint of fish scales on the gutting table,

blood in the sink, shining milky underbelly.

Your thumb reflects on the fillet knife

silver cutting across the sauna house door

where we dont shower but steam and swim

at night cut apart by the dark lake, fish-eyes

film and sink back into their dark sockets.

It is impossible to come back

Impossible as a familys hitched gait

limping over the lichen towards light

windows, dinner.