You went to that place
                         Where her flowers used to grow
Spilling hot, salty tears countless times
                    Left the air always smelling like the sea
Even years later
                       You can still hear her mermaid laughter
                   Echoing through the trees
Grown over with weeds now
                                      Sweet memories resting place
Much like the aching hollows of your heart
                   Anger rushes through the quiet solitude
           Urging your knees to buckle
Digging your hands into rich, wet earth
Sobbing great hiccuping gulps through mournful wails
                        True pain is that of loss
A circle is finally cleared
       Exhaustion floods the moment
Head heavily laid where she rests
                   Clouds hum by above the canopy
Digging into your pocket
Smiling softly now
            Grasping at incubating bleeding heart seeds
A hole here, a hole there
                                   She'll grow again

*For the dead never truly leave us

sometimes no work of poetry or art can describe
a feeling of just simply wanting to say*
*******

It must sound novel enough to uplift you
but familiar enough to be nostalgic.
So that you feel as though you are Home...
but ready to believe in love again.

Is there anything so extraordinary as a hand?

I asked, as I ****** his finger
with a gusto hungry to milk some essence of him
that would nourish me after his body left.

Your divine digits! These brilliant explorers, who
fragile as separate spring shoots, can teach and tell and build what
would last for ever.

If a Renaissance lives, it lives in these hands , these ingenious orchestrations that can musick and paint and sculpt and-

          *-and write?

Yes darling, and that.

I migrated my tongue and attention to his palm and slowly painted his love-line pink, tasting his future.

Do you know, when I was once a little Catholic girl- they would tell their stories in Sunday School and I used to imagine the soul resided somewhere in your belly and felt like chicken noodle soup...

and perhaps not so, perhaps hands are the houses of soul where the most Authentic Self of selves resides waiting to touch, to hold, to caress... where the animal desires of humanity delight in the most truthful communication existing?

        -Then... what is the common language? Id?

Yes, perhaps you're right. And love.

His other hand, jealous of my attention, spoke aloud in a sonnet of pinches and strokes that could have drawn tears of reverence were I not held captive by the decadent finger between my lips.

Between gulps of air he queried my fixation
and with a final holy gasp I testified:

**"Darling, touch is the only transparent sensation"

I used to be close enough
To breathe you in...

Now I must settle for tasting you
On the wind.

Strange the way things are so easily broken.
                     Even stranger is how delicate they are when built.
                     Like hands, small... soft and gentle on a baby
                     But so easily destroyed by another.
                     Hearts... not an element of strength about them,
                     But they suffer the most and yet...
They continue to beat...
Sometimes slower like mine,
       I feel the force of time
                   Slowing
            Stuttering at points
              And even SHATTERING.
we               A world too arid... too destructive and self imploding
breathe                To allow any such existence..... A Hero...
  sin                             We slaughtered the ones we had.
  and                               Jesus beaten and nailed to a post...
   saviors                              Burnt at the stake... I suppose.
                                                     Because we are scared.
                                                        Petrified and screaming from a man
                                                        That had mastered redemption
                                                        we corrupted the only hint of peace we imagined.
                                                        we are the masters of nothing.

Now as he floats in space with the stars we murdered to save our "souls"
We bleed empty bones and blame everyone else for our guns to our head,
Shaking... will you smile when you die....

I roll the possibilities over my tongue
before I even allow them to breathe.

I carry my lids heavy, as if lost in thought
and pronounce:

"Salt, lust, and barrelled in frustration."