You should never use a ruler - it is not the length
of your scars that matters, but the depth. Volume
matters, too, but beakers are never big enough -
you could distill all of your tears and they would
still fill an ocean.  And if you try to measure the
decibels of the crashing waves you will not hear
the whole story.  Instead, listen to their echoes
in the hollows of seashells.  Weigh their words
by the ounces of truth.  The voices may taste
like distance, but the tide will wash away your
footprints in the sand before you count them.

In your absence the days sigh
and heave. I can still feel
the winged ripples

of your feathered fragrance
fluttering in fragments
through petals

of sunlight in the blossoming
dawn.  How can a person
want too much

intimacy with another?  If I could lift
up these memories like handfuls
of sand, they would sink

through the darkened cracks
of my fingers, sifting
into the shapeless

mass of reality.  I have sewn
these unspoken wants
on a delicate veil,

a tenuous drape billowing
in the shifting breeze
of your departure.

There are things that I want
that you can no longer offer. Time,

mostly.  You tendered it once, slipped
it into my waiting palms

like a tissue. My fingers didn’t know
what to do with that

delicate whiteness, fragile
like the edge of a dream. And now,

what can I do with this
sudden emptiness? The ghost

in your eyes still whispers promises
I know you can’t make. Would it be enough

to stitch them in colorful ribbons
and thread them through my hair?

Or will my wrists always ache
with the quiet pulse of memory?

Most days I am broken
breeze and glass
eyes.  The pinched
notes of a disenchanted
canary.  I have grown
so tired of this corner
of sky.  Of this splintering
air.  Of these gauzy
clouds that cannot translate
my sorrow into a language
you will understand.  I want
to wade out to some faraway
meadow.  To wait it out
among wildflowers. I want
their petals to cradle
this uncertainty.  Truth, in blades
of grass.  And your
voice, lifting in a shiver
of mist, singing a song
I forgot long ago.

First I’ll change his eyes
from brown to green

because I’d rather be reminded
of the algae in the pond

than the bourbon on his tongue.
I’ll say pond when I mean lake

because I prefer the intimacy
of lily pads.  I can say things like

he offered love like it was lemonade,
fresh-squeezed and innocent,

because then the idea won’t seem so foreign.
And then it won’t seem so dishonest

when dragonflies become hummingbirds
because I envy their tunneling

nature.  I can pretend that they
drilled a hole in the sky

where we can live out
the lives I’ve forged for us

through poetry, where
we are together every time.

Autumn arrived clothed in whiskey and wind
that dressed the ground in leaves it lifted
from the old oak trees.  In the crisp air

you traced the outlines of their branches
to give their loss meaning, you said
as I considered the weight of the golden leaf

I was twirling absent-mindedly
between two fingertips. Then in October
we became thieves like the harvest

breeze, surreptitiously stealing glances
and words and then, feeling brave, kisses.
Under the gray afternoon sky

you fashioned a map out of fallen leaves
to give their death purpose, you said
as I tread lightly over their surface, now

brittle and brown. Then in autumn's quiet
valediction came the swift invasion
of winter, who cloaked our leaves

in a blanket of snow, robbing us
of the delicate guidance of that
which we had come to know as beauty.

Later, you will wonder
how you never saw it
coming. When you kiss her

she tastes like salt.  Her eyes
are full of water that you mistake
for sea. You talk of the birds

littering the horizon
and she murmurs they’re
sublime.  When you hear

the distant rumbling you think
it’s thunder of some off-shore
storm.  You drape

her in blankets
when you feel a tremor
shake her bones.  And

then the dormant volcano
decides to erupt, as if to
punish those who thought it

dead.