My nights become endless days
When you are absent from the waking moments of my morning,
My afternoon,
My evening.
They stumble on themselves in waiting for your visage,
Ambling evermore until your touch,
Your voice,
Your stories are here with me,
Travelling light as hydrogen in my heart,
Warm as summer waters against my skin,
Strange bright thing in the field of endless color and variation,
I don't know if I love you
But I know I am enchanted,

It is my dear desire to see you,
Not just once more,
But always.

Provide me with the magic mirror
So that I may finally sleep sound,
With the crackling warmth of your dry laughter still churning in my ears.

The Great One strolled in,
Pleased as a fat slice of birthday cake,
In the mid afternoon heat and sweat
Of Low Georgia summer.
He kicked off his muddy boots
With the gusto of an aroused lumberjack
And took to the staircase as
A marathon runner takes to his first couple
Kilometers.

When he reached the hallway at the top
He hollered, "You've got ten seconds to be
****-*** naked, 'cause here I come!"
And he stripped himself of his plaid
And blue jeans,
Mud-hemmed socks and underwear,
And all his garments
descended half-way down the staircase
Before folding on top of one another neatly
As if gently placed there,
Rather than being flung at the zig
zagging carpet.
"It was the clothes' way of rebelling,"
No one, nobody said.
But most true things are left
Unsaid.

The Great One traipsed,
Yes, traipsed,
Down the short, blue-wallpapered hallway
And spun the shiny brass ****
Of his bedroom door, and pushed
Until It swung open,
And he said,
"Are you ready?"
And stared into the unlit bedroom,
The two north-facing windows open,
Short, floral pattern curtain his wife had
Sewn, flapping stupidly in a breeze that hadn't
Been breezing when he was outside,
Just fifteen minutes ago,
And the Great One saw that the bed was made,
Just a slab of gray polyester/cotton blend,
And his wife was not naked on that bed.
And the TV was off.
And the TV was always never off.

And the Great One stood very still
And felt the silence, and the stillness
Of the house around him,
How it seemed like a strange thing,
Against the rolling gray clouds and
Snapping wind.

He reached his right hand
To his right back pocket
And typed the four-digit alakazam
To get into his phone
and saw nothing new.
He rang his wife
But was transitioned to voicemail.
He sat on the edge of the bed.

Well.

the curtains flapped harder
Against themselves as he watched
The storm roll in.
And thought to himself,
A guilty child in an old body
prone to superstition,
"Shoulda cleaned my boots off,
'Fore I came in.
Shoulda cleaned 'em off.
She would have given me
Hell."

He let the rain come into the room,
It spattered against the soft yellow painted wall
And
The curtains simply shuddered,
Sodden as they were.

Well.

She sure had a knack of giving him hell.
The Great One changed his title back to David,
And stared out of the bedroom windows for a long time.
He woke up, without remembering falling asleep.

She sighed and tossed the hair out of her eyes
He sipped loudly from a nearly dry Coke can
"This *****," she said. "I'm going home."
A jazzy song started to play over the outside speakers
A couple ambled past, walking their minituare schnauzer
"Ok." He said, shaking the Coke can irritably.

I feel like ten thousand thunderstorms
On mute
Just a series of verbs and vibrations
I wonder what my words really say
What they really mean
But the lightning show gets in the way
Makes you gasp and forget
The conversation we were having
And the last words
Unspoken
Are Nivana in a shot glass

They sat on a yellow couch,
That smelled strongly of moth *****,
And that had thick, dull brass buttons
In rows of eight and nine across the seating.
And the birthday party continued on
In the living room mostly,
But also in the kitchen and out on
The back porch.

The little yellow couch sat
In a small, awkward hallway
Between the dining room and kitchen,
And it took three minutes for any party goers
To interrupt them.

Her name was Alice then.
When she turned thirty-eight she changed it
To Alma.
His name was and is Robert.
He wore brown shorts that day.

Her hair was curled, for the occasion.
He asked her if she liked strawberry cake.
She said she didn't.
He laughed and said he'd eat her slice.
She said she wouldn't mind.
She reached out and held his hand.
He let her.
Until the girl walked through.
And they ooed and awwed at Alice and Robert.
And then they giggled themselves into the living room.
And Robert, almost twelve, looked at Alice
And thought, "She is beautiful".
And he said, "See you around," and walked into the kitchen.

And Alice thought,
"Maybe I will try strawberry cake."

I know your heart,
Only if it is like mine.
And if it is I know your hurt.
I know you hurt for others.
I know you hurt for things untouchable
But that can be felt by all.
You yearn for betterness.
Know of its existence by the dance inside your bones
And the song inside your soul.
And this world is a bad world
For the ones that feel
And think the way we do.
But it isn't time for hatred,
Because hatred has no room for goodness.
Remain vigilant not only in thought
But in action
Love is not the act of ignoring violence,
Bigotry, sexism, war
Love is the act of overcoming.
We shall overcome.

If I cut you from my life
Like an image from a family photograph
Your absence would still exist
But it would lose your features
Make you into empty space

As nameless and yet as true as the heart
Which beats wildly inside me
As I imagine a new, strange lover's eyes
Meeting mine for the first time

And how
as we share our first drinks,
He'll ask me about you
And I won't remember the words I once said
To describe you
Because how do you explain something
That isn't there