invisible, impossible girl

sometimes i feel i am such a hurt little person
i want so much that i seem thin and hungry to myself
as if the air whistles easily around me
walking down ninth street - a lovely view at dusk -
surrounded by the speaking sound of dry leaves
sweeping along the pebbled concrete
gray spiderwebs of clouds caught up on the moon,
writing letters in my head to people i will never meet
dancing in my socks, safe in my room,
singing to myself in low voice
to poor dead jeff buckley and sad country shuffles
played by jersey boys in boston bars
about driving around teaneck in our parents' cars
to poems made of words i misheard or misunderstood
reading your lives
and recasting myself in them, dreamily,
like someone telling herself a story on a long walk, late at night.
i wish we could be healed lightly-
wounds pinched closed as one might seal a piecrust,
trust and hope melting together into sugar
and not this mess of improbabilities and contradictory desires
firing me till i crack or fuse into some new shape
that i am yet blind to
and which i still will not be able to explain to you...
but no girl is an isla.
hurdles to turtles, fumbles to miracles, amen