binding spell

i tie the trees to the soil. far too many
have climbed into cloud forest. 
i beg them to stay. watch foxes get swallowed
by a passing black hole. i am unsure
if i should funeral them or treat them
like childhood friends who i no longer 
see or speak to. once i did a binding spell
when my lover told me she wanted
to move away. it did not work.
i began to question the efficacy of
my techniques. candles & salt.
they looked so mundane on my bookshelf. 
her airplane was a sea gull. 
the city turned off all its lights & i felt
along the ground to find our ways home.
empty trains rattling across the tracks.
their knocking, more hollow than usual 
without all the marrow. i missed 
my own window which was taken
by fingermen trying to put a cap 
on all my dreaming. luckily, i have
never needed a hole to sing through. 
i made a secret door inside a book.
did she some back or did i make that up?
a race car tore through town & in the morning
there were huge skid marks from stopping
right before the train tracks. these days
i do not use candles. i use thorns & bones.
i use the flowers who grow along
the eyebrows of the hill. it still mostly
doesn't work. people leave. do they take
all their love with them? i bury a bottle
in every open palm i meet. when they
unearth them, they find the vessel
thrumming with minnow or, on a bad day,
a restless knot of bees.