When we have stood, cold and raw, cracked open, underneath
the waterfall of time for long enough that
it doesn't burn our skin quite so much
anymore,
I hope that you can repair the heart I
tried to break as gently as I could.

I hope that you find a girl who has always wanted to
name her baby Cody,
who can ski like a demon and
take her liquor like a cowboy and
lives for Silverados and Colorado sunsets.

I hope that when you remember my laugh,
it doesn't sound quite so pretty as hers, and that
when you scoop her up from behind,
it will feel like you are doing it for the first time.

But when she sees you cry and
says she's so grateful to have a boy who knows how,
I hope you are reminded of all the love I gave
to help you learn.
When she hugs you and thanks you for listening,
I hope you remember the time I spent listening to you,
teaching you what it means to be heard.

The way that I love you is not a fake, flimsy kind of love that
floated away when I left you--- no,
I want your girl to be all the comfort and safety and warmth and devotion that I could never be to you...

And if she isn't,
I hope that she reminds you of me
enough to make you leave before
she breaks you again.

Appreciation is tough to receive, but it is even more difficult to offer.

Seeing you first thing in the morning is like opening the door to good luck.

So white
I thought it would tear through
Red revolution, gritting stones
Electric convulsions
And ivory tides

I felt children weep
Soft, long sleeves soggy as lattice
That, flayed to leaf, too long
On porcelain lay
Hisses and gasps—
Were sobs always so volcanic?
Like suns— erupting— quite not—
Wilting— to stars— blinking—
Gushing upon—
Each other; a strange confiding
Nakedness

And feathers
In bronze dressed— stuttering—
Stuttering, bubbling
Would that the flood would loosen

Rather melt—

Rather the moon than Jasper,
— It’s gory quiet
Rather pebble
Rather mud-licked bumbling babble

But melt— melt— Oh,
Never quite full for the night!

I feared it would burst
Crowds of red-cloaked seeds
Into a havoc of fruit and flesh

I feared I a dandelion
Would open— would sway away, away
From bits and bits— of me, but

It hit— hit, hit hit
The jagged black insides of mine
And I was real

I was real

Gasping— gasping, till it—