He is looking away
he is looking at something
beyond you

as if doing so will erase regret
as if doing so will erase you

when he turns to you
he says I’m sorry
but what he means is
this was a mistake

when you turn to him
you say goodbye
but what you mean is
*I’m correcting my mistakes

I feel like I’m dying,
you said, and I wanted to say
you’ve been dead for years.
But you seemed so sad then,
the deep-seeded kind
of sadness with no real root,
and it must be harrowing,
I thought, to be mocked by a life
that so little resembled anything
you’d designed, to shrink
into the shadow of a life
that had begun without you.
And so I did not mention
how the light in your eyes
had waned and withered
or how you would always be
longing because you had nothing
to long for.  Instead, I said
you’re not alone*,
and hoped it was enough.

In those quiet moments
stolen between pockets
of swollen sunlight
you released me
from the darkest terrors
of my imagination.

The broken dreams of a broken man.

...

You told me once
that the heart’s greatest vulnerability
is memory.  I have known too well
how time can turn
a gray moment lilac.

...

In the biting breeze
of your departure
you left me
grasping at the handle
of a door that closed
too quickly.

One decision can decide a life.

...

After all this time
what I remember most is love,
etched into the deepest crevices
of my soul behind all the ways
I’ve learned to spell *loss.

and now the shade
        is creeping in

and now I can see
          that I loved you
      too late

and now there is no shelter
                                         in the feathers
          of your hummingbird hands

and now your words
              can no longer
                                       eliminate distance

and now despair
       is lashing
                                at the heel

and now I’m only reading
                                             shadow in the hollow
            pools of your eyes

That summer the sky was hedged in
by clouds, as if to stave off emptiness.  

When trees unfolded their fragrant bones
you were enveloped in the lavender
scent of solitude and you could not shed
the bitterest memories.

You learned truths
that seemed unkind:

the world is insincere
and you will never be beautiful.  
It is best to care for nothing.
To dream of lines and endings.

It was then that you noticed
the contradiction inherent in hinges,

how a door can blossom
and wither in the same breath.  
How it all depends
on the will of a hand.

In time you will see
that you wanted
everything too much.

You have asked too much
of this world.
But soon you will learn

that things appear most beautiful
when viewed from a distance,
and you will find no comfort

in illusions of closeness.
You will find that the reflection
in the window

clouds the promise
you expected to find
in some vaster field of sky.

The danger came
because you did not
expect it .

You thought it was over.  

But this was how
it always worked, how
you were always most vulnerable
in a state of security, how
you could not sense
the precariousness
of your position
until the tide was rushing
toward you, the salt pulsing
through the wound
that had only just
begun to heal.

It arrived in silence.

The sound came after
the suffering,

after the pain had nested quietly
within the cold cage
of bone,

after the heart was brimming
with the burden
of you.

There could be no resolution
because the beginning
was broken

and so our story
could never

bloom.

but suppose it’s not a river
suppose instead you are laying
down bricks one by one
and with each new brick
all the old ones stack up
behind you to form a wall
so you can see all the bricks
that got you here -
the city you chose
and the love you didn’t -
but you can never return
you can only gaze at the choices -
the ones you’re glad you made
and the ones you wish you hadn’t -
and sometimes it was not even your own
hand but that of another and it seems
unfair that such blocks must remain
that their permanence is not yours
to claim but if you stare here too long
you will never recognize the clearing
behind you and all the places still left
to travel so where will you go from
                                                                 here?

We did not always feel such insistent tugging
on the sleeve and so we did not remember
to cherish time until the moment had passed,
the memory marooned,
its breath grown short within
the parentheses of its existence.

The air itself is tender
when I offer myself
to the tenuous moment,
a nest of softness in the rainy
daylight.  I do not know
how to be the person I am
becoming, but I want to find
meaning in the deliberate punctuation
of your sighs, in the dead fluttering
of wings, in the undercurrent
of something missing. To find
that the bigger moments
are incidental.  To find
that my biggest regret
is living my days as regrettable.

There was a year in your life
when your music abandoned
     you and you

     found no meaning in your ink-
     stained history, her scent ghosting

over the creased sheets
of memory.  But when you ceased
     to choke out the vowels

     of her name you were no longer weighed
     down by the heavier things. Did you

know it then?  How you could believe
in something and still fail
     to live up to it?

    How there could be no meaning in flight
    without clouds to gauge your distance?

1

Time did not exist
under the cleaved
marrow of moon
while you sighed
away the hours

2

Sometimes when he looked
at you you felt the weight
of your suffering reflected
in his fossilized eyes

3

He opened his heart
without giving it away
and how startled you were
by the coldness you found there

4

Often you felt
like little more
than the afterthought
of a peppermint

5

Like the leaves you were unaware
of your transience you could not see
the end the fluttering then the limpness

6

In history you are always viewed
through the lens of your mistakes.

When you came to me
I was too tangled
in the moment
to unknot your strings
of lies.  Too eager to collect
the words cascading
from your easy
grin.  Perhaps you prefer
me fragile and a little
helpless, fingers hovering
along the fluted edge
of a dream.  But in the morning
your eyes flickered
like candlelight, their warmth
tapering in a ribbon
of smoke.

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.

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.

Don’t run away  -  open your heart
like a door and welcome in the night
with all her peculiar baggage.       Listen
                                                                   to the haunting cadence of crickets,
                                                                   how the moon pulls slender notes
                                                                   from their wings as she pulls shivering
                                                                   waves from the sea.
                            They sing of freedom.
They sing:      Release
                            all those memories you’ve trapped
                            like fireflies in mason jars - you ask
                            too much of those tiny flashes, expecting
                            them to guide you.       Stop
                                                                          trying to preserve
                                                                          their light   -  their beauty
                                                                                                      exists only
                                                                                                      in darkness.
Hear the promise of sunrise
in the crickets’ song.

The world looks different
when you always keep your head down -
I've studied all the oddities of my feet,
the details on your shoes,
the patterns in the carpet.
I've learned how to dance
without stepping on your toes,
and how to sing without raising
my voice above a sigh.
How to glide over the surface of things.
Perhaps I will never see sky
with my eyes glued to the floor,
but I'll be the first to know
when the bottom drops out from under us.
And then there are words fastened
to my tongue that will never feel their syllables
shudder in the cool breeze of candor.
Here's a question I won't release:
how high can you build something
on a foundation of eggshells?
The elephant in the room
is already cracking
                the stark
                    white
                       veneer.

It’s always a story of hearts
caged in bone, and how they
converse between bars like branches

of weeping willows. It begins when
they pull out their dusty dictionaries
and redefine themselves so their names

become synonyms, and how they flip
their pencils over to press pink
erasers against yellowed pages,

to rub out the line dividing reality
and daydream.  Next comes a ceaseless
cycle of rise and fall, and how lungs

methodically beat themselves against
chest walls with every sustaining breath.
Then it’s an abrupt lurch of

limbs, and how feet must find
new anchor when the rug is pulled out
from beneath them. It seldom ends

at happily ever after,
and most stories never bubble
over into the easy resolution

of *epilogue.

When all we had to show from
several sunlit days
was skin burned red from heat
we learned to avoid the light,
learned that freedom breathes
in darkness, where shadows cloak
secrets and we become blinded
by anything beyond this warmth
of togetherness.  Light limps
toward us in the demands of dawn
so we hide beneath the shade
of trees, and in the rustling of branches
during storm the wind sends her message,
barely a sigh in the rumbling thunder
but something about white flags
and the closing of curtains.
But I won't surrender, for in nightfall
I've discovered that I don't need
candles or stars
when I have the glow of your eyes.

But while life whittles us down, he also
carves lessons in riddles on twigs we then
collect in baskets woven from love’s loose
ends.  Like how to wrap arms around a memory.
Or how to keep the flaws in the self-portrait,
even when the world tells us to paint them out.
And how to love the way the air smells when
the rain stops, or how puddles reflect rainbows
when the sun shines.  Or how to cross the
bridges we would rather jump off.  And
when sorrow weighs down pockets like
loose change, how to toss each teardrop
in the wish of a penny in a fountain.  And how to
recognize that no matter how much we give
to the world, we must not take for granted
that we deserve anything in return.

These are the moments when I marvel
at the way darkness reinvents itself
in shadows that move with moonlight
across these walls.  In this gentle hum
of white noise the promises of dreams
unravel in a ribbon of whispered syllables,
and with eyes straining toward forever
I can see the contrast between what I am
and what I could be beyond the stillness
of this room.  There are questions marks
that hang in the margins - their plea:
Let me be something more than what I am
in these hollow hours filled with not knowing
what I am waiting for.  Let me grow
into this heart and everything it holds inside.

for T

On the first day of summer
we swam naked in the carefree sunrise,
pioneer beams of light shimmering

reflections on still water. It was
barely 6AM and the park sign read *closed
so we hopped the fence

and bounded barefoot through the trees.
Then with our clothes we shed our inhibitions, too
drunk on cheap gin and stifled laughter

to care.  Too content to feel self-
conscious.  Wading peacefully in the humming
heat of the dawning season,

you asked me how I felt -
and for the first time in months I could smile
and answer happy, and answer honestly.

Maybe it would be best
to just forget you,
to tie my love
to a helium balloon
and release it to the clouds.
But I find it difficult
to just let go,
because at one point
you meant something to me,
and I to you, and although
that feeling has been replaced
by the swift sting of heartache,
I find that fingers cannot grasp
scissors in the severance of ties.

The features that distinguish the person you used to be and who
you are today are becoming clearer, although I no longer remember what
caused you to change.  But I can still recall that distant time when
you were more than just a vacant shell. I can see the woods where
we used to explore, can hear you explain why
the grass is green and the sky is blue, and how

to follow a ball with your eyes to catch it. Now, all you’ve taught me is how
to survive on a diet of forced smiles and fake laughs, and that who
you are dies when you have nothing to live for.  And I wonder why
we are no longer enough to sustain you.  And I wonder what
you tell the bottle that you can’t tell us.  If I’d known where
you were going, I would have said: when

you leave, please do so quietly - I don’t want to know when
you’re gone.  But my tongue didn’t know how
to wrap itself around those words, or didn’t know where
to find the courage concealed in their syllables.  And who’s
to say if it would have eased the pain?  I want to stop asking what
I could have done to save you or why

you’ve buried your secrets in the dirt of discontent.  All those pesky why’s
that still hover - could I even carry the weight of their answers, when
my fingers cannot stop pointing toward what
is no longer there? Sometimes in my head I imagine how
you would defend yourself, when you’re just a ghost who
is dragging his shadow toward Lethe, or where-

ever your destination lies.  And now, where
you stand before me, you seem to resent my silent why,
your eyes defeated but still defiant, as if to retort: who
you remember is fiction. But how could you say that, when
that implies that you are somebody now?  Sometimes I’m awed by how
you destroy yourself just to hide behind the ruins, rather than face what

drives your self-destruction.  And sometimes I wonder if you realize what
you’ve lost.  And if you wanted it back, would you know where
to find it?  And then I think about how
you’re not here enough to care, anyway, so why
should I?  So I give up.  Now, when
they ask me about you, I’ll reply: oh, he’s just somebody who

I used to know. And I’ll no longer wonder how you are or what
you’re doing - who you are I no longer know, and where
you hide I no longer seek. But if you want to return, I won’t care why - I’ll just ask: *when?