I try to formulate letters to spit  

out at him, but I face relentless knots adorning 

our walls, trying to decipher our fragility, afraid  

to break more china plates—and I look at our stash of 

pine nuts remembering how we used to sew our lips 

together at morning’s rise, paint roses into each other’s  

ears at the prospect of ball dancing in the forest, blow 

crescent moons to the beat of our hearts. But we lost 

ourselves in the fire of our trees. We became letters  

atop pine nut forests.