new is now old,
my fingers are cold and shaking yet I still grasp at what once was.
it's hard to remember you.
fog-headed, I'll close my eyes to try to see
a piece of the past with clarity
like when your heart would beat for me.

like silence, only the sound of our lips
and the backs of my eyelids painting works of art.
like when your breath would whisper my name
and fill the room with ecstasy.

now only one appendage is flooded for me,
and I only feel you angrily
penetrating with resentment
and a fantasy I can not conceive.

but one day we had love, made love; and this is one memory
that above all else I'll choose to carry
in the hopes that it will re-emerge from the hole that it's been ****** into.
though I'm black and blue,
I won't give up on you
but good lord, I feel like I'm dying...

How do the vines of our secrets creep their way into the ears
of those we want most to protect?

It will never matter how I know, only that I know you are happy.

So for the love of truth if she makes you laugh I beg you to sing aloud- your joy is too contagious to ever tiptoe around. Not on my (closed) account. All I've ever wanted is to hear your spirit ring across this country.

Of course I love you, Bebe- Q.
(And I can say without doubt, I shall never have another Bebe-Q. What does that even mean?)

Of course I miss you.
I miss you like I would miss most of my major organs.
Painfully.

But if her light makes your heart photosynthesize so that your entire being blooms with life

-Please-

Be free. Let it grow.

The hardest gift I will ever give you is my blessing.

My love, I am letting you go.

I watched green smoke to black
Ribbons of sensual silver-edged good morning
Snaking above me
A canopy of feel-me-up pheromones
Hazy
You watched, dripping, shower rod framed
As my frame did the same
Please, don't ask for a towel
Let's leave these sheets with the print of our bodies

Son, women (sigh), women are a kin to the ocean
Riding the currents of their emotions
Through cold and warm
Swelling, ebbing
Pulled by silvery moon
To navigate their shifting tides
One must be a patient sea captain
Hurricanes and tempests may steal your hope
Hold fast! Secure the rigging!
Listen to the wind though, my son
Her siren's song will guide you through to safe harbor
On those days when you reach calm waters
The aches she soothes in your soul
Will be worth any perfect storm

I spent drunken walks
saying I love you into a made bed
into a moving train
a locked gate
like the mortared bricks could hear me.

The Christmas lights shone on wet face droplets
happy tears of nothing.

And if you were never coming back
I would never cry out loud
and it was the first time a love would never feel crippled.

Come to bed?

               -I'm not tired yet. But I'll come for a little while.

So begins the bedtime story I recite in my head.  You and me were the stars, the loveable protagonists character-foiled by the scars that always found a way to nose between us under the cover of darkness and love.  Like the family dog who is always welcome (even when sometimes it's not).

And although the story is worn so thoroughly it frays my cochlea with overuse of the thought, I still grow hot to see you beside me once again. Even though I know how it ends, that when my eyes close you'll be on your way again- when the morning comes, as sure as dawn, you'll be lying next to me.

Maybe nothing has changed,

and perhaps the mend sewn deep into the pages of memory is the hope that when my eyes slowly open

there you will be.

For always.

The End

On an L shaped couch on the eleventh floor
I spend these short days with my ghost, hosting tea-parties for silence
drinking espresso like a cure for hurt- I need a drug that's stronger than Love and bolder than Compliance-

-my brain has wrought violence upon itself as I tumble again and again into the abyss of affection, seeking the path but losing the direction. Perhaps when I called you, you detected the inflection of a woman who feels so absolutely that she can no longer discern...

and without careful reflection nobody can learn.

I was never good at playing for sport. I aim for hearts. Every day is Open Season, and my arrow will shoot true-
I'll be ****** if I cannot find something to love in you.

And I'm divided in two, no- a hundred and two, watching myselves like mirrors upon mirrors reflecting every motive, every spark, and every smudge that swings the pendulum from instinct to conscience. Showing the audience centre stage where the white knight swerves off-course to save any soul who's fallen off their horse.

Love will be the end of me.

Cupid, we need a divorce.