The moon wanes as if it’s taken to counting down the days

A post solstice clock sliding across my window each night

Im watching couples in the terminal sway into one another

(The fireworks roll distant)

Your quiet count down is triangulated about the earth in delay

(The earth continues to orbit its star)

Thoughts unbidden

Of your post shower shyness,

Of how soft your body sleeps,

Of conveying all the longing with an embrace,

You exhale

We slip quietly into a new year

my mothers father

the one who adopted all of his children

perhaps too humbled by Him

to have the audacity to create

(although ive never really asked)

eats fruit in his car alone by the sea and

listens to christian radio for hours

inspiration for his sermons

and he tells me that love isnt love

if it doesnt bring life

because by its nature

its bringing death

(and ive never really been brave enough to ask

what he thinks of seedless grapes)

Ears pricking, only quietly haunting any other type and skirting the edges of things wolfishly, I’m howling all of the things that build up at a forever indifferent moon, pupils  narrow in the light from a cracked phone screen, insatiable, academics are another breed altogether, we go back to our hometowns and feel too big inside, consumed

I deleted your
Number but now I know it
By heart anyways

Did you ever find
out who smashed the window of
your truck in that night?

I have not lived here long enough yet to make the miles between town seem any less than what they are but there's a chance they never do

I wonder this when I watch the cynical navy men and women slink from their houses between the trees when it's still dark, asking if I was a newbie, wondering if they were the reasons for the prolific "don't drink and drive in memory of:" signs posted along the the lithe road that twists between lakes and the far flung gas stations that cater to them

where the mountains peeking through in the west seem out of place, unsettling, like a secret relayed to the casual ear

I have not lived here long enough yet to have had that fortnight meeting on the lawn with thoughts of my return to the earth and a pair of nail clippers or to be able to dance with the creaks in the hardwood

And I'm still missing the droll herons that would loop from the north around the pines of my home on the hillside and land in a huff in the low tides amongst the gulls, I miss knowing, the path of the sun across seasons on my chambers floor and whether the chickadees here prefer the birches in the park or the tall broad leaves that stare at me from across the lake and the when of all things that move in the dull quiet

////

But Ive lived here long enough that the bruise on his neck hasnt faded and I wonder if we'll be over before that happens too

Sometimes I think they are bugs
when I see them from the corner of tired eyes
I catch them wandering between my fingers and knees and scratch at phantom itches
and fidget when I stand in line
Pulling at the make up below my eyelids
a target on the hollow of my throat if you were looking for one
I pieced together the patterns of strangers like constellations
And never let my friends use pen

name tag, smile, tattoos
stare at complimented shoes
too shy to ask you

Our words are flecked with phosphorous
Lighting the search of a changed beach
The ferry approaches us timidly
Inhaling the smoke drift wood fire
Before tracing her route back
twice around the island
Before we eventually leave
Curiously eyeing us from afar each time
Strange sand creatures to her and
Almost strangers ourselves
Cigarettes and alcohol bleaching
shifting changing our past
into something we
laughed about

It’s been a while

Your hair has creeped back and exposed the top of your head and your eyes change color a lot but maybe they always did that its been a while.

The conversation lapsed in on itself again 
and David had fallen asleep,
To dream about smoke stacks reportedly,
And had left us alone with
all the conversations and laughter and arguments of the last eight years that we never had
Reverberating off the windows and leather seats and dissipating into radio static
I asked how to switch to AM and
You were surprised although
I was just being nostalgic for days when we'd wait in your car on cold mornings and I was too young to understand anything
I awkwardly admitted that i just felt like
hearing some one talk
And you fiddled with the **** thing for too long before you picked one
and after a minute
it became horribly apparent to us both that the topic of the morning was "dead beat dads"

Rorschach test for knees
Lovingly kissed by chairs, tables

I cant help but privately lament for those who
share that piece of my autograph because
It's a senile old thing
Hardly used and
rarely left untouched by monikers
Composed of four misgiving syllables
And now being sadly echoed
By a dumbfounded lover
Who really should of known better than
to fall in love with a girl
whose names a lie

There is a Japanese man
living inside me
Who walks bare foot across my soul
dazed and
mumbling to himself
In language i dont understand
He doesnt bother me
so i permit him
to sleep on my heart
spectate my dreams
and eat whatever
ego he can find
Although i can tell
he is not happy
here

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
What is love
But pollen and lust ?

Because if you study those
Decrepit maps curled up in the
corners of antique stores and
the menus of sleepy little diners
Where retired navy men gather to drink coffee
Murky as the water they worked on
For their entire uncertain lives
You would be studying
what used to be Slaughter County
Where it remains tranquilized
By narcotic gray skies
Next to islands that awkwardly
break off from the mainland
Creating channels
Where anxiety is drained
Into the population of
the suicidal indigenous

Sometimes i suspect I only
dreamt you up in my head
so I penciled your words
on my ceiling
Just in case
I wake up

Soft Gemini green eyes
Flashing a circular medallion  
whose meaning
is manifested in skulls
Orders four doughnuts "because
The world is ending tonight"

Quietly sway to
jazz for linoleum floors
that squeak an applause