Vaelente

Vaelente Oct 2016

Twisted Sheets

The rain pounds on
as though to carry some of you
to me
but everything gets confused
when we hit the ground.

Vaelente Oct 2016

Trimrose

I think,
most often,
a daughter's heart is first broken
by her father

Vaelente Oct 2016

Slough

It's a sedative,
a heavy dose of morphine,
and I am falling into the slow-
bleak.
It cleans out my veins
of all the dirt,
scrubs my throat soft,
spilling out my mouth
in blurs.
Pulse static under my eyes,
oh the little voices
speak quietly now.

Vaelente Oct 2016

Weather-bound

a thin rusting frame
is held up against broken glass,
frosted over by years of
sea salt

thick to breathe as snow,
South-easterly tangles my hair,
glosses my cheeks a cold rose

I cannot see myself
anywhere

Vaelente Oct 2016

Lupe

This nature of me,
the skin over my bones over my poetry,
I've missed this tender discourse,
the rhyme and reason of my slight frame held against glass.

I see myself better when I'm not trying to cry,
and I'd left this naked art so long
I could no longer tell the difference between
a night with stars and a night without.

This is buttermilk to starvation,
drowning twice and coming up for air.
The first mouthful aches like forestfire,
by the third I am a gulping animal.

Vaelente Oct 2016

The Greek Origin of You and I: Astēr(star)-iskos (small)

What is an asterisk ** -h-e-r-e or -t-h-e-r-e *
only little stars suspended in an endless string of space
I wonder what is between them, in the molecules where they don't collide.
Isn't that the crux?
The question we must ask?
Our touch only as momentous as the reason we were not touching moments before?
How can we be lovers
if we do not know the ways we fight gravity
to lie together.

dash- (I've run away from my heart before)
h-e-r-e- (have another, says my sorry head,)
t-h-e- (dirt runs down the drain, but the scars always)
r-e- (accuse).

here or there,
little stars dash to hold hands
over the dips of dark matter;
these things between us.