A Giant’s House
Birds have started to fly into windows again.
We are seeding matchbox coffins in the ground.
Once more, my grandfather has picked up smoking,
holding on to his remote control
as if it could turn life on or off,
his cells snowing away from him like a last winter,
dying is a busy hobby.
In the giant's house where I grew up, the walls have shrunk
and darkened like bad lungs;
they have cut their ears off
like a mad painter.
Two sets of soft hands have roughened into sand paper
and my old room is now a museum of whatever part of the past
we could not face or give away.
Lined up on the green dresser
like whores hoping to be picked,
melancholy dolls are guarding the attic,
their ever open blue eyes rolling under the bride’s veils
the spiders have knitted them.
Their painted smiles have faded since I drew myself
one with red lipstick.
Death is calling, suspenders and lace: feeling lonely tonight sweetheart?
It is funny you should lie here
where Stephanie and I used to compare body parts and giggle—
where the piled up men that added up to you have choked my faith
under silk cushions.
It is funny you should say I love you;
how it is the only thing left
to say in a place like this.
Later, we will walk to the river; we will watch the birds
undoing the sky like a zipper on their way there, to the giant's house.
I will tell you how my father once told me
the stars were staples keeping the sky from falling on our heads.
How he told me rainbows were just God grinning at us upside down.
I will tell you, most days, these lies remain my only truths
and you will move a little closer.
The Photograph
I see the girl with a horse mouth is in the play
with you and this other boy I was sleeping with
before I knew your name, this alignment of letters—
deceitful above any horoscope.
Why is your hand on her, blissful,
at rest on the fabric of her dress, stretched like
someone who has just emptied a bottle of pills
and has now moved to the couch or bed?
Her lips are swollen from kissing you or just better genes.
This is where I would like to warn you—
her scars she drew with eyeliner.
Also there is something vulgar about her teeth
There are too many; they are moonstones—
they could be anyone's.
I want to tie them one by one to a doorknob—
pull these icebergs of pain until all that remains of her mouth
is a black velvet hole.
I want her mouth to remind you of the time
you split my legs like a log
in my grandfather's garden and moved to what you found there
like a woodpecker
ruining pregnant tomato plants.
I want her mouth to remind you of that night when you turn to her
under your cardboard sky and make a sound
only she can hear.
Gold Fish
You wake to the sound snow makes
when it rubs itself on the window pane
like a cat seducing you into letting him in.
You are a light sleeper these days,
clutching at his wrist under the sheets—
a luxury you did not have before.
You think about death, its ultimatum
tastes of metal on your tongue
hurts the roots of your hair
the red marrow of your bones.
You think of your mother
the way she never showed you
how to marry—
makeup to clothes and would no let you
shave your legs. Tomorrow you will not call
as a punishment; tomorrow you will not eat
red meat or white sugar, you will not drink alcohol.
You will laugh at your neighbor's impressions.
Your mother. Please. You've been over this.
Tomorrow you will be new as a bud, green tea and all.
Except morning is floating around
like a dead gold fish at the surface of its bowl.
Its wide eye bulging your own inertia
to remind you how little stars and moons can accomplish
aside from glowing in the time that spills
between this bed and a coffin so thin
there is no room left for thought.
Melanie Lefebvre was born in Montreal on winter solstice day 1985. She studied French Literature and Drama at College Jean-de-Brebeuf and pursued her acting education at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute of New York. She now lives in Montreal.