You're a solar system,
and I'm a rogue cosmonaut who
(having fallen in love with you  through a telescope)
has built a ship from the salvage
of lesser explorations;
now I spend my days
(or nights— hard to tell)
looking at you, chin in hand,
waiting for a place to land.

June evening, mid-sigh,
she holds a finger to her
lips, then to the sky;
pools of sundown flood the fields.
She trusts the breeze to find him.

Cue our story halfway through,
without the benefit or detriment of history—
affinity, no past attached;
you don't know me, I don't know you,
but yet, we do.

Tonight, I'll bake bread
because I need 
good smells 
and warm hands 
and a sense of purpose.

Bedtime, little moonbeam.
See the stars? They're sleepy, too—
all blinky-eyed and snuggled in
like you need to do;

but the very, very moment
that you drift off into slumber,
the whole world sighs and smiles
at you, its dreaming little wonder,

and the bunnies in their hutches
and the sparrows in their nests,
they sleep, too, my little moon,
all fuzzy, warm and blessed

to have spent another perfect day
with a perfect girl like you.
Now tomorrow waits to meet you,
and I'll be waiting, too.

I was a shy girl.
Some boys found my quiet ways
as inviting as
dappled groves in shady woods
(where each one ached to take me).

My father, in those moments
of what almost seemed like
hope for me,
would push back his cap,
tap his forehead and say

This is the only thing no one can ever take from you.
It's the only thing that's yours.

His brilliance was his only pride.

When I left his house,
I took only what was mine.

I thought
I know—

I'll write a poem about another love,
one of those boys from
one of those poems
that I wrote
before you,

and in doing so
I will ease this ache,
I will appease
the part of me
that just wants
to be wanted,

you know?

But, no—
I couldn't conjure their kisses,
nor did I want to.
They were just 
boys from 
those poems
that I wrote
before you.

By accepting the terms of this agreement, you represent and warrant that you have the capacity to love.

Any similarity to a previous love is circumstantial; this love is not affiliated with other loves.
We assume no responsibility for for the shortcomings of prior loves;
we do, however, assume all responsibility for any loss, error, or communication failure incurred while in possession of this love.
It is, after all, love.

Love is available as is; no specific results are promised.
If you are at all unhappy, you are encouraged to return love.
If you find love to be damaged or defective, well, it's love.
Slight imperfections are to be expected, and add to the character of love.

Love may occasionally send you poems, letters, or declarations of its continuance. If you wish to opt out of this correspondence, you may cancel your account at any time.

The service may be temporarily unavailable from time to time; this may be due to maintenance, or periods of reflection. It in no way implies or forecasts termination of love, unless specifically stated so.

By accepting this agreement, you agree not to abuse love by acting in a manner inconsistent with the provisions listed above.

(please say yes)

I blamed it all on Scorpius—
my secret self, the sting, the lust,
my conditional approach to trust.

I shrugged at Mars when jealousy
and suspicion got the best of me;
I was just his astral devotee.

And my vengeful hate for all unjust?
It all went back to Scorpius,
but, alas, I hovered on the cusp;

I'm Libra now. I'll readjust.

Riley wants to build a robot.
With all the eagerness of
a five year old
who has been told
that she is brilliant, and beautiful, and kind,
she presents me with her shopping list:

METAL
CLEAN WHEELS
ROBOT FOOD

She tells me that the wheels need to be clean
so they don't mess up Mama's floor.
Of course, I say,
and kiss the top of
her brilliant, and beautiful, and kind head,
reflecting for a moment, with my eyes closed
and Riley chattering happily,
on why a child's hopefulness
always makes me
just a little sad.

We were warworn; you were weary with
my wild, wayward theories
and as I worried, so it worsened.
That's the way.

You were waygone from your wanderings;
I was waiting for you, always.
You were wolfish, but
I wanted you to stay.

Amid the fig and quince,
the bright pomegranate orchards,
the black mulberry and wild olives,
we were still hungry.
He called it the Tree of Knowledge.
How were we to resist?

I caught my mother crying once,
at the kitchen table, face in one hand
dishtowel in the other,
real crying, out loud crying;

I wanted to be anywhere else,
and would have run
had she not heard me,
had she not pressed the dishtowel to her eyes
and said

“I'm just so tired of walking on eggshells.”
like an eight year old would understand,
but I did,
kind of.

Seeking refuge,
I appeal to your memory
of love.

If you remember blithe abandon,
the thump and swing 
of a heart unhinged,

then light a fire for me in this dark night;

if you know that 
what the eye discerns as reluctance
is often fear

then kindle something brave in me
and fan the flames with patience
until they become
inferno.

When I had nothing to mourn, I did anyway, 
not knowing the difference;

it was just autumn wail—
an old wives' tale, 

and you were indelible,
but I was 

forgettable.

Liz had hers on a Wednesday afternoon
in her car. She tells me about it over lunch;
a backseat full of groceries and halfway home,
she felt something breaking inside her,
so she drove to the lake and sat very still, waiting.

Then it happened, she says, I broke right open.
I wept, then sobbed, then wailed. There was no bottom.

She says she may have even fallen asleep, she doesn't know;
she does know that she eventually stopped crying,
that inside she felt like the fields must feel after a hard rain.

Here, she says, moving her hand to her chest, I just felt brand new again.
I'm a better wife now, she says, a better person.

Good, Liz, good, I say.

I don't tell her about that morning in the shower,
when the water warmed me but could not console me,
or how I'm no better for it.

The storms of late summer did not snap
and surge. The pepper plants did not 
kneel , weary, beneath the rains 
that came
and came.

(or was it a drenched swoon of devotion?)

You didn't hurt my feelings
in an otherwise unremarkable moment
and I didn't react with silence.

I didn't cradle that silence like
a delicate, damaged thing.
(the bird that each of us
tries to save—
shoebox, eyedropper;
our mothers knew it would die,
but let us figure it out)

I didn't have myself convinced
that no one had ever hurt like this.

My silence didn't get deeper.

You didn't wade through it to get to the door.

Because my love cannot be the orchestra,
I have hidden it in the glissandos;
do not listen for it when the music swells,
but in the resonance of in betweens.


Because my love cannot be the whole summer,
I have strapped it to the legs of bees;
do not look for it in flowered fields,
but in the pollen stuck to window screens.

In the early spring,
we hung brightly colored yarn
from the low branches.
It would slowly disappear;
above, brilliant nests were built.

A battered heart lends
character, like an eye patch
or a cowboy hat.

I'm not beautiful—

no scandalous, empyrean beauty;
not the beauty
of long legs and sleepless nights,
not transcendental, not diaphanous; 
no ambrosia, no absinthe;
no earthly Aphrodite
to crush your heart 
with slender hands.
No,

not the kind of beauty
that makes disciple 
out of man;

but

our secrets, they rhyme darkly
and your heart is beating sharply,
and tonight I'll make you love me
while I can.

We draw hearts to say 
     I am in love with you

when love disappoints, we say
     I am heartsick

when we fall deeply, we say
     My heart did a slow somersault

when we know that the heart 
is a drum, a pendulum, a clock.
On good days, it is a sundial

but it is always
just a timekeeper, the 
tick 
tick 
tick
of minutes and seasons,
but never
forevers.

a distant dog barking
at three a.m.
because the night is big
and the chain is short

and sometimes
from another dark backyard
another murky alley, lit by bare bulb
from the end of another chain, tied to a different tree,

a commiserating howl.

I've removed the blankets from my bed
although the nights have gotten colder.
I dare not let them touch my skin;
you've left me, carelessly, to smolder.

i

Love wears red boots.
They click faster on the sidewalk
as I  hurry to catch up.
I just want to ask her something.
She gives me that look that says
I'm sorry, but I can't help you:
smile tight to the teeth, sad eyes.
She looks uncomfortable
and a little bit afraid of me,
so I thank her for her time
and pretend I just remembered
there's somewhere else I need to be.

ii

Love is a crone
sitting at a sticky table,
cigarette in one hand
stained mug in the other, saying
And the whole time, she thought it was me!
to a round of ugly laughter.

we grew up poor together
and didn't really like each other,
but when you have nothing, it's nice
to have company,

so we did what poor kids do; we stuck together,

taking breaks from being poor in the afternoon woods,
where nobody was dressed nicer than us
and the creek didn't care
that our shoes didn't fit.

Anna, I love you because
nobody knew how sad we were.

Born of the same star,
you and I,
cradled in the arms
of a spiral galaxy;
our dreams for  death were

bird, volcano, reef

and we did not go easy—
no soft snap of filament,
or  cosmic campfire left to smolder.

We were spectacular;

but that was a billion years ago.
Now we have no word
for the infinite nostalgia
of those aeons spent sleeping,

no reason we can think of
that every night before we met
felt like a thousand light years, collapsed.

Your advice is appreciated,
but I think that instead of
the 'three shining coins
and a lonely crossroads' thing,
I'll just write him a poem.

I'm still like a child
with love—

wanting more than my share,
impatient, reckless.

An unruly student,
I have learned nothing

except this:

Love is indefinite and
ill-defined,

but we should study
together
sometime.

so I thought I might tell you
that my left currently bears
a disappearing crescent of ouch
and three diamonds

or that my right
tends to drift
to the back of my neck
when I'm trying to remember

or that they both stop and start
over these letters
right now,

not sure what to say.

If I wrote you the shortest poem,
a word, or less
that said as much as any
poem, or more;

worked through this night, and the next;
by sunlight,  lamp light
head bent over every word I've ever written
and all the words I haven't learned;

if sometimes I cried, and thought I'd never stop,
and sometimes I found a word
that was not the right word
but it was a good word,
a perfectly sweet word
so I held it to my chest for a while;
curled up in bed with it,
stood there, waving
long after it was gone;

if I wrote you the shortest poem
and rode my bike to your house
because I wanted to give it to you
while it was still warm,

would your door be open?
Would you smile for days?

How sick I was (and lost)
when brought to suffering
by the smell of coconut
on someone else's
freckled skin.

The crickets abandoned the yard
not long after you.
The evenings are too quiet now—

no big, dumb you exploring every 
bush and branch,
snapping and snuffling
through the thicket,
coming home 
with dirt on your nose
and covered in burrs,

goofy faced.

Just grass
and a sleeping garden.

The squirrels fear nothing.

Though winter stripped the orchard boughs,
I still think of harvest kisses.
I loved you then and maybe now;
my first bite, my red delicious.

My errant fingers
create two new words;

gentlenab
I find strangely ******,

wrotten
I find strangely appropriate.

The pianist, realizing he will never have me,
plays the last few notes of Chanson Triste.
Go, he says,
*and take that with you.

Out of work muse
seeks out of words poet.

Must love grammar,
discord, whole days lost
to plotting coups through bitten lips

and safe words drawn with fingertips;

should know to not break my heart
at night, when there are still
hours of emptiness to fill up with sorrow.

Available evenings, starting tomorrow.

days brisk with drumbeats,
evenings spilled from riverbanks—
drifts of violet, ripe moons.

I used to be your
grinning goddess,
tangled, finished,

and you, my proud tiger.

Now it's cool kisses
and a tidy bed.
We're nothing like we were
back then.