In another life
I might have been somebody
you could love.  You might
think such speculation
is foolish, but it is not
for you to say what
will become of the memories
we never made. How can you feel
secure in a role so devoid
of certainty, when you cannot
compare the paths you chose
not to take? Fairy tales
never lend a voice
to those the prince
could have loved
but left behind.

In others we can know only two things:

(because there was smoke in my eyes
because your eyes are just embers)

the person we want to see

(because your brow was flexed then furrowed
because the moon has wandered away from the window)

and the person they want to show us*

(because I did not fit so neatly into your world
because the mattress has hollowed in the absence of your frame).

As a girl you found
     comfort stitched
           like cinnamon
between the pleats
     of your mother's
         folded fragrance.
We are all a little
     broken but you
          were never brave
like your sister, who
       on winter's first
            snow jaunted
across the white
     while you clutched
          your mother's skirt,
tearful. What does it
      mean to grow up,
           beyond literally
growing up?
     And what do you
          make of the harried
father who never
     returned for happily
          ever after, the seal
of a kiss goodnight?

The rocking feels familiar
because we have been here
before, swaying on the crescent
of a black hour.  A moment poised
on the lip of dawn.  I am not rooted
like this oak but I will tender a tentative
nest.  A patchwork home for the feathered
rhythm of your breath.  Because this is too much
it is not enough.  The contradiction of insufficiency.

What is given is never
fully yours but still you keep

returning with palms
outstretched.  You own nothing

beyond confessions cradled
in dogwood blossoms

and heartbeats, aching
echoes of some silenced

dream.  In November
you are a spindle

and how unprepared
for the unraveling.  Tomorrow

he is gone
and you are still,

beckoning.

I am always caught
                           on the ragged
        edges of your breath.    There are too many
                    words in the syncopation
                                  of your sighs
            and I never know
                       which ones you mean.  I know
           that I need them.       A sequence
                    of notes is not always
     a song, but I still listen
                          for a melody.      And still, I expect
                                  more than I find
     in your slanted
                       glance.        Your eyes are dissonance
                         trapped behind glass.      Once, the secrets
                                     hiding between your lashes
           peeked out.            Their echoes
                    are still tonguing the air.

You like her because she seems lonely
like you.  She says the birds
are my only friends and her voice
sounds like moonlight stumbling
across the pavement. Home
means tracing trails
of bruised clouds and waiting
for rain.  We are always compared
to former versions of ourselves
so it is best not to linger.
She is gone
before you can ask
for her name. You are practically
pleading with her
vanishing silhouette.