she tells me that i lack a little something
to be her perfect man.
it's such a pretty way to tell me that i
will never be him.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

Between the dusk of a summer night
    And the dawn of a summer day,
We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,
    And we bade it stoop and stay.
And what with the dawn of night began
    With the dusk of day was done;
For that is the way of woman and man,
    When a hazard has made them one.

Arc upon arc, from shade to shine,
    The World went thundering free;
And what was his errand but hers and mine--
    The lords of him, I and she?
O, it's die we must, but it's live we can,
    And the marvel of earth and sun
Is all for the joy of woman and man
    And the longing that makes them one.

****





                   you

noun: the fact or process of losing something or someone.

The empty chat logs
Turning swiftly to empty bottles
And crackling logs, burned to ashes
You were supposed to feed the fire,
Fire consumed weeks on end
Loss is a pretty spindle poised
For blood, spent on nightstands, on hot iron
Wedding one heart to another
Melting without a soldering gun
Loss is cataclysm
Wrought with despondent accuracy
Loss is alive with the dreams you built with me