My bed holds more secrets
than I am willing to remember
Pandora's box
has nothing on this mattress
It holds the shape
of my first
my next
my last
but it is soaked with your scent
With each new visitor
I watch it release
a little more of you
as I struggle to hold on
salvage your presence
and change this burial ground
back to a place
where I can get some




sleep

She draws Crayola green meadows
in which she frolics and laughs
snuggling up to her
imaginary daddy whom she colors
in unstraight multi-hued stripes
accessorized by a large
unselfish heart in brick red
proudly erupting from his chest.
Her sepia brown-blob puppy is
rediculously happy,
just like her
holding the perfect father
she has always dreamed he is.
Together they stare at
blue construction paper skies
and cotton ball clouds
discovering sailing ships,
famous people heads,
and all the animals they will see
on the day he comes
to take her to the zoo.

~

He labors intently within the lines
coloring subdivided spaces
in one direction just the way
he would teach her
if she were here.
Pressing into the bold
outline on a tiger tail
he hears her giggle in his thoughts.

He closes the book
each page fully given life
placing it on the teetering pile of
earlier masterpieces
filed beside his desk
where he and his daughter stored
the art they created
on regular dates they never had.
He rises on the ritual of completion
toward his omnipresent closet
full of stacked and redundant "if onlys",
each one shaped as
a 64-count box
purchased and purchased again
with every book
he intended to share
on their next wax pencil excursion.
On his toes,
one more "if only" goes to the top.

He still colors.

She still dreams.

~

An Orange/Red sun drew itself
out of the bleacher tiered palate
and hung high betwixt
her cottonball clouds
29 years from the start.
Daddy holds his daughter in deep embrace
while a secret artiste' paints
a tiny translucent drop
on her quivering cheek.
The diligence of construction-paper prayers
are answered in the evidence that
there is no crayon for clear...
it is a tear,
and we are really here.

(I love you my precious girl, with every color in the box :-))

Centered and exposed,
Vulnerable offering.
Strength in surrender.

You will not be meeting me
at the train station,
wearing nothing but a sundress and
the warm scents of
wet desire rising as
a lustful fog
from your steaming forest,
anytime soon.

The heat would **** the sun.

I will not be showing up
on your doorstep,
rigid and pulsing
with the blood of
centuries coursing through
my thick roots,
in the nearest future.

The pressure would crush the moon.

Instead,
I swim in your teacup
and warm baths
while you roam in
the smoke at the edge
of my shadow.

I feel your soft whispers
across the ocean of time
as they float on broken
spiderwebs of memory.

Our love is in the words
between the worlds;
resting in the
wet soil of
an afternoon nap,
we bloom as one.

As the fire of night
descends, destroying
the boundaries of time
and space,
we transcend all that
is cold and unforgiving,
leaving behind only
echos of wanting.