my throat is a forest fire,
a burning map that never leads to
'the depths of virginia'

your hands are made of water,
icy cold and haunting and
I don't know what else to say except
"please"

I sometimes think that we should have a history book
rewritten with our names, because I'll be ******* if
we are not rewarded for the way we forget about our past

I WONDER IF WHAT WE TALK ABOUT AFTER MIDNIGHT
HAS ANY IMPACT ON THE WAY YOUR HEART BEATS AND IF
IT DOES IS IT WATERED DOWN BECAUSE OF BEFORE
AND I WANT TO KNOW IF MY WORDS HAVE THE SAME
EFFECT ON YOU AS YOURS ON ME AND I WANT TO SWIM
in the James River and forget how to sway my limbs around to float

this is not a love poem
this is not an "I miss you, come back" poem
this is a confession
this is a love letter
written on the palms of my hands because I know
you'll never get over how badly they shake

maybe I'm confused or lovesick or homesick
for a home that can only be found inside of warm chests
but I needed to write this for someone, for myself

maybe my questions don't need answers,
maybe they just need to be heard.

There is something about the way a feather hits the ground that sounds surprisingly similar to glass breaking and there are so many things I need to tell you but the words all dance in my head behind a mental block and they swirl with songs about broken boughs and fallen cradles and realizing this hits me harder than the day you realize that Ring Around The Rosie is about the Black Plague (I'm sorry for ever telling you that you were the childhood innocence I always wanted) but I suppose nothing can ever be as pure as a pair of turtle doves and I always imagined myself as a pigeon cooing at your feet while you sprinkle your affection like bread crumbs — always plentiful but always in your control — and I am always cooing, cooing for you, cooing even if you wrung my neck like your hands when you are nervous and you are always clipping my wings with those persuasions to keep me around and incapable of flying away or even imagining a home anywhere unless it is perched on either of your broad shoulders and I accept that; I have never been a songbird with anything lovely to croon about and while smoothing out my feathers I know why the caged birds sings and it's because all the birds that cry get their necks broken.

Lover, I was never a creature of euphonious language, but, in the sincerest way possible, I want to trace the lines in your palms with my fingertips I could blindly transfer them onto paper like my native language; there is something that tells me that there are otherworldly creatures that breathe life into every speck of dust floating by your window in the early morning so they can be assured that every particle feels the blessing of seeing the loveliest of nonsense spilling from your lips in a low mutter; I have dreamt of a world where I am stringing harps with every word you said that I grabbed with my grimy hands and condensed into velvet strings and in this world I play you a melody and I do not tremble and you are immortal. However, I do not quarrel with this reality that is given to me, for I know that it is an honor to have been placed on this earth in the realm of your existence, to have the privelege to see the way the sun glows this new shade of warmth when it is bathing your shoulders — like a lover with kisses made of milky light, it kisses you into a divine sort of oblivion that I cannot help but envy and admire, I know we do not realize the true beauty of things until they are broken but I have haggled my soul to never see you crack, and God knows I would extinguish the flames behind my eyes so that they are reduced to low-burning coals, in the hopes that you and everything delicate that follows close behind will at least hover just beyond my grip, still not too close because I have always had trouble keeping a gentle grip on heavenly things and you are a piece of every form of divinity that I can bear to break down into fathomable thoughts; so, here I love you from worlds away — yes, from worlds away, I love you.

There is a 93 year-old man. He has been driving for years
trying to unlock his lover's jaw
it is stuck tight with the thoughts which have become lost somewhere
near the back of her head.

He thinks about the mist in her eyes, how once they were islands.
She was a child surrounded by the sea. He was a soldier.
Sat next to two bombs they both went off,
when he met her
he told everyone he was the luckiest man alive. They were stranded together.

Now he drives around the Hebrides. Thinks about the summer
when the ferries stopped, they ate nothing but salted fish.
He is desperate for her to remember. Somedays she does.
The winter he met her father her family
had never seen an Englishman before. It was so bleak.
She only used to wear shoes when the snow fell like an apology,
now her feet are so lost they barely carry her
from bedroom, to bathroom, to window.
She looks out over walled gardens, everything she once had was an open space.

She tells me about the day he came home from the army.
Threw his pistol in the bin
like he could ever throw the war away
I think of the irony: a man trying to throw the pieces of his life away
that he could never forget. Now all he can do is look
through flesh and heartbreak
and too many stories to tell.
All the addresses in his book, like they're not just bricks and bones
and nursery rhymes
like it's all falling down now
through curtains
and IED's breaking through bodies over screens.
Like a train crash.
Like a house fire changing everything you know
holding it to your chest like it's more than ash.
More than this.
Looking out on a bank holiday wondering what goes on
behind all those closed doors
counting all the things you miss.

I would give up sleep for you.
I would live my life five hours behind.
I would spend my inheritance money.
I would leave like breaking in the morning
just slip out through the door.
I would swim the ocean, loose my body to the current
like a broken bottle frayed and battered until I was all green frosting and smoothed edges
and opaque.
I would wash up on your shore.

I would drive for miles. I would purpose build.
I would tear up the books, rewrite them with your name
over and over, out though the skies,
climb up through the atmosphere
paint the moon with your face.
Loose myself to gravity. Just give me something to blame.
Give me water. Give me tidal waves. Give me ocean hearts,
your storm-wall, ocean heart, breaking-wave kisses
wear me down gently.
Tell me your life story. Write me into it.

Remind me when I forget who I am,
even, when you have nothing else to give.
Take me home.
Tell me something true.
Pin me on your chest like a buttonhole,
wear me to your wedding.
Show me off
like I was ever something to be admired.

In the fog
streetlight glow:
Will-o-the-Wisps

Embers wrapped in gauze
harsh yellow light
spills into grey monotony

The world has shrunk
confined
to the pools cast by floating lamps

All else
is a faded
grey blur

A stagnant breeze
stokes the down air
into writhing ethereal vines  

Vision clouded
permeated by whisper
mist caressing  

Everything is painted mute
a drear uneasy blanket
cast into the valley

I drift
strung along
by the luminous spectral splashes

Unseen
Unnoticed
a smudge in a world of vapor

Am I
anymore definite
than the intangible fog?

March today
despite being January
At least  a good day for a walk

Ice in sepia speckled with black
wilted under
the Water’s surface

Ridges and islands
           of white ice protrude
from the murk

Delicate ripples
roil from
inky black wells

Drab and tattered
the snow trodden grass
sways in the wind
Murk
Murk
The color of tea

steaming
Chai
In a floral mug

A warm up from
the chill
  walk

I drink down
to the dregs
satisfied  


It’s still March
as if January resigned early
and February forgot to come

Forty Degrees
clad in shorts
and sweatshirt, I walk  

Air perfumed by thawing soil
and melted pond pools
painted robin’s egg blue

Ice bent trees
bow towards the road
like children’s hands

Reaching towards
pothole puddles with trickles
trailing like balloon strings

Reflecting the sky
inverted vignettes
Caste in brown

Framing the trees
skeletal fractal fingers
reaching across the tableaux

Peering through the clouds
the Sun silhouettes
black bottle brush pines

The wind howls
outside my bedroom window
shaking me
my heart; my soul

it screams
while you sit there
drinking sweet-smelling coffee
a baby boy in Africa
cries of hunger
and aching ribs.

while you are curled up
under warm and soft blankets
an old and lonely man
wanders the darkest streets
looking for warmth;
a home

while you hide there
surrounded by light and family
with an aura of ungratefulness
you are lost in the rays of your technologies
with a frown on your angelic face
when a weeping woman
shakes and prays
for her gone children to reach Heaven happily
but you dare forget God to a screen?

my house shakes
from Wind's agonizing words
and a streak of cold
trickles into my haven
along with the words
"what am I doing?"

somehow
my stiff legs reach
a window
and the arms in front of me
pull it open
to reveal no sound at all

where is the wind?
did he leave just as
he touched
my heart; my soul
making me waver?
or does a gust not howl ,
speak,
and isn't heard?

no
the wind was here
for how else did the once-twinkling snowflakes
suddenly freeze
and lose all of their beauty?

no one but Wind
would take the innocence
of such young and beautiful white specks
just as they landed
in this cold,
dark world

no one but Wind
would flare you with reality
enough to make you cry with obliviousness
for this wind; my Wind
he is the voice off all those
who have faced
life's stinging brutality;
him
instead of
hiding under covers
and whispering morbid lies
that
everything is okay

i kept my hatches battened but that
didn't stop your love from barreling toward me
like a runaway freight train with faulty breaks.
and god almighty, did we crash.
you came to a screeching halt at my doorstep
and i didn't know what else to do but let you in.
you looked so cold. we did not start with a spark but a full-on fire.
i told myself i wouldn't fall, instead i jumped.
our sinking frames somehow morphed into life preservers,
and we managed to keep each other's heads above the waves.
we had seemingly saved one another.
you tossed your pills, i flushed my razors, and for a while that was enough.
but we learned the hard way that even the deepest love
can only keep the storm clouds in your mind at bay for so long.
eventually our cracks began to show.
missed calls and silent hours built houses of cards
that were blown down by too many miles.
we hardly ever smiled anymore.
my hands were sieves and yours were sand.
i want to break the hands of the clock
that cursed us with this bad timing.
i have mourned all the hours i won't ever have with you.
i have felt the thunder that rumbles in my lungs
when i reminisce about the memories we'll never make.
the moment i realized i would never wake up beside you
an atom bomb went off in the center of my chest.
but the radiation is what's killing me.
the life is being drained from me here in the wake,
in the ache of your absence. but i won't beg.
i will live out the remainder of my days
tormented by wondering if maybe in another world
our love is perfect and neither of us bleed.

- m.f.