you always have such cold hands  

i make a better glass than a person.
pressing my cold hands to your skin,
you ask what kind of forest i am

& i tell you i am a forest made of glass.
a fun house mirror effect amplifies 
the birds, unless, maybe, inside me 

they have to be monstrous. 
i tell you to be careful where 
you walk because every surface 

is fragile-- which sounds cliche
but all the grass is capable of snapping 
& i don't want you to get glass 

in your foot. i love when no one
touches me because it forces me 
to remember all the felled trees.

i count their trunks & hang them
in the window as prisms. i sit on 
a limb in the shatter & i pray 

it doesn't snap. there are dead
trees & they are colder than me 
& i warm their hands under my shirt

like you do for me. i want to ask
you how you know you are happy
but instead i find a glass leaf 

& breathe on it till it fogs up.
you tell me 
you don't think you would like

to live in the glass forest.
i'm thinking of a basement full
of unanswered questions that slip

between conversations. i want to be
philosophical but really 
i just wish glass were a little bit

more like skin. i wish you
were see through & i could see
all the kind of birds in you: i'm guessing

swallows & cardinals. my mouth
is full of glass bird seed. my finger nails
are glass & two of them break-- 

they were also windows. you are pressing
your nose against the window of my pinkie
& telling me that we have 

so much to be happy about. i tell 
you i know we do &  i am happy:
the word "happy" comes out of my mouth

as glass because it's a lie.
not because i'm so sad, just because
the word never takes hold in me.

i drop the word into the forest:
so you won't see it.