At a beach on a coast
walking-distance
from my present home,
the wind cast rivulets
into the grains of sand.

In the shallow shadows,
I can see the gray
leading into yellow
Bleeding into its fellow.
Impossible to separate (or, at least, misleading).

So their togethered taupeness
will be sampled and classified
in a blue munsell book
with a breaking cover
I should've returned ages ago.

It's useful like this.
But did you know
a few pages away
you could find
the blue-green stain of my veins?

Why do I know this?
There are only so many ways,
after all, to fill the time
in the back of a truck in Georgia.
(Even fewer if you keep your seatbelt on.)

So chart my freckles next, darling.
Find a new slot and show me
how my skin
shares the same page as your own.
Just on a different row.

Sitting in the solitude of your chance-made garden,
you watch the wind
dancing the leaves
of the tallest trees.

In this moment,
the last thing you want
is for the streams to descend the lengthy limbs,
sliding ever closer
to your carefully set self.

But you and he
and them and the air
can never stay still
for long.

A rose-window seldom resembles a rose
And we're taught that's okay.
An allusion will suffice
Where an illusion fails

And either is better than the third near-homophone.
The Carmen Sandiego of it all.

For if we cannot have the real thing
It's more fitting to sketch the bones from memory
Than to chase the world round
And only find its thorns.

Down the hill,
where the sun had seen hundreds gather,
a table with a radio,
two lanterns,
and three shadows remained.  

Up a-ways,
under the few real stars the city had to offer,
the foursome sat at the edge
of the gravel and grass
and listened.

Hearing words millions hoped for,
fraught for, rocked votes for.
And in the pauses remembered
the promise of battles long since started
yet long to be fought.

There is so much more sky
above the street i followed for years
from home to school.
Reflections of the changing blue
still caught in storm drains and roof tarps.
Staining the glass crowding the corners
where i used to catch up
to a yellow dog named Sam.
He was taken by sleep
and creaky hips
long before the wind
cracked the limbs of our trees.
A mottled brown cat
patterned like a lake
skipped by rocks in every direction
followed Sam with greater noise
and a harder peace.
The sun stays longer at their intersections now. 
Old growth never fully gave way.
But the wind took its leaves all the same.

at the turn of the caravan
as the cars carried on
L stood.
His black bike at the side.
His Black fist in the air.

He stood.
until he sat.
so I sat.
He told me his name.  

“I have tried to live
My life in such a way
that I love everyone.
and it’s just so nice…
to feel it reflected back.”

“I’m sorry.”
“You’re good.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re good.”

I could lose myself
in you.
I could bury myself and
never look back.
But your love is
quicksand.

You're an
illusion. A card trick.
Houdini's Upside Down.
Will I ever
escape you?
Or are you
the lock that sticks?

He nipped
her lip the first time.
Back against the brick wall.
Bottles warming,
soon forgotten at their feet.

There was something
so urgent
in the way they fell--
limbs tangling on
or against
any surface that
could hold them.

But those surfaces were edged
in pasts long hidden
and razor-sharp,
wrapped in caution tape.

And they remembered their fragility.

So they tucked
in their elbows and
side-stepped each other.
Trading bitten lips
for shattering glances,
they told themselves
No.

But sometimes,
in quiet moments,
the Yes still breaks through.

dear baristas who read auden
float their crooked hearts in foam
for you to carry, crooked neighbor,
on the ways there and back to home.

You nipped my lip the first time. No skin broken open, but hearts were. Baseball caps and coffee breaths sent flying and ragged with possibility. Some mornings I still wish we had never left the sunroom. Or the alley. I miss the burns our walls gave us when two skinny kids pressed against them and into each other. You were my first great love.

Would I know passion so well without you?

You were my friend first. Though we both wanted more. And when more didn’t happen immediately, I assumed it never would. But you stayed or, at least, came back when I called. We never put up fences, so when we found ourselves on the other side it was better for being connected. But now, both fields have gone to seed. You were someone I could lean on who still made me feel like I stood on my own two feet.

Would I recognize support if it wasn’t for you?

We met just over the fence from my parents’ house. Our best friends fell for each other, so it seemed possible for us too. You came over the fence a year and a half later and met my parents. And held my nephew. You were late, but you wore real shoes. Charlie loved you. I did too. I loved that you saw a future with me--a house with a tree we planted and a family we made. That image will hang in the walls of my memory, reminding me I’m someone to see a future with.

Would I be even more stuck without you?

There were others in between. Their losses make me pause like trying to remember the beginning of a song as the melody plays on. But it is our anniversaries which take my day. At your graves, I have made my waiting rooms.
For too long, I have listened for a pulse. Too often, I have mistaken my heart beating for yours returning. Too quickly, I have seen our memories as signs of an impending resurrection. But you, too, have buried me.

I hope only that--should you visit my graveside--you think kindly of me too.

rosemary wilts, my darling,
and so do memories
in stubborn wooden jagged scraps
and breathless little leaves.

Above her door
sits a fox in blue shades of snow
made by a man she’d say she met twice.

Neither of them know
she'll take it when she goes
a moment of warmth carved clean in the ice.

Anyone who has stood at a river long enough has felt change stir within.
Yes, the water is always moving.
Here, your mortal feet will never be caressed by the same stream twice.
It takes time for water flowing in one direction to flow again over you.
But in your travels, fortunate wanderer, you may happen again
upon the same drops in a different body.  

Can the same be said for trees?
Deciduous or not, all lose their leaves in time.
And can the leaf you admire today be seen again in your lifetime?
Not in the same form.
It falls, my dear,
past the bark to the waiting litter below.
sustaining again.
Becoming eventually.

In the meantime, our failing eyes
watch the tree react.
Big enough it is to draw our attention.
How many strikes can it sustain?
How many fires will it survive?
Countless, my darling.

For when it fears,
for when it just may cease to be,
it does not leave its potential unharvested grain,
but digs deeply.
Widely into the earth, the tree gives
to the network it has always been a part of.
Leaving, we know, enough of itself
to be found again.

the scalloped skirts
of the biloba ballerinas
are furling while green
still paints the stems
of the stubborn soloists.

the maidenhair corps de ballet
flies from the wings
tutus golden to match the winter light.
curtains open on the new season.
the sidewalk audience stands

in ovation
and continues home.

Ceiling quaking.
Flaking asphalt, falling
stars--cement breaking.

Murdered by hope
under stained promises
presently forsaken.

You're (barely) living
under the overpass

socks worn through
are ****** or darned
rarely at the same time.

people worn through
are darned or ******
and far too often both.

When I open my hands
revealing the worlds smeared
across them, I’m not terrified
of what you’ll see,
but, rather,
what I don’t.

Barbed fingertips and dwindling
paths—this fortune’s not charted
for the faint of heart.
I’m mapless
and hesitating.

My memories of you are wires
crossed with the stories
I’ve so often heard.
Dates and certain traits
are now blurred
and faded.
I can’t remember your voice.
It’s been years since I could,
but I remember
how it rumbled.

I do remember your arms—stalwart
and freckled so deeply they looked
tanned—the same arms that gave blood
in the name of each
of your grandchildren.
Your arms were my first charitable act.

When I would wake at four
and stumble sleepily into the living room
to find you watching the news
on mute
in that old battered recliner,
your arms were my rocking chair.

When you marshaled your parade
of capped grandchildren
across the street
to the park that will forever be yours,
your arms were a force of nature,
sending multiple swings soaring
into the air
in a complex rhythm
only you
could comprehend.

I remember your chest—barrel-shaped
and strong—creating a whistle
more powerful than I could fathom.
I still think of you
each time
I manage to carry a tune.

I remember your hands
picking me up and dusting me off
when I jumped
too soon.
The selfsame hands
that gathered up all the caps we strew
carelessly in the grass and mulch
balancing them one by one
atop your head
when the sun was setting
and it was time to leave.

I can remember
that lovely rumble
leading one final rendition
of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
as you marched us
safely home.

When I see pictures of where I’ve been,
it still feels like home in a way.
I think of entryways I have stopped entering
Still sparing a spot for my slippers.

We may be a place that I never go again
but in the negative spaces of this photograph,
you’re still mine
to claim as a home.

dried tears may as well
be painted gold on a mourning face.
the acknowledgement of so many breaks.

the only way forward now is through.
mending made evident
in the tracks of a beautiful glue.

Love languages are meant to be understood. But with no dictionary, no encyclopedia, and a map only written by chance and time, understanding is an act of fate.

And who are you to fight fate?

Envision:
A boy & girl--more than children but not by half--moving ever closer. Swaying. Pulsing. Knowing each other's middle names but no more, they connected. Pressing. Clasping. Grasping.

Know more.

There once was a ******* an old ship.
Blue skies and waves were her catnip.
Put wind in her sails.
She'll fill up the pails
And hope that the seals stop the drip-drip.

There once was a city with too many rats
The townspeople gathered and brought out the cats.
Disappointed they were
In their best friends with fur
For the pets caught nothing but naps from their mats.

long-distance calls from the porch steps
in somerville waiting
as this homophonous season
departs wanting to stay
on the hook with
you so very far from sure.

They saw each other at a holiday party. She’d gone every year with her family, feeling more at home with the adults than in the den of popular peers occupying the pink bedroom. He was a regular on a different schedule. His father was a minister serving hope at the midnight mass, but not that year. So he, his brother who she knew better, and their parents basked in the champagne glow of the Christmas Eve court.

He was still in school. She was in her first capital-j Job. That night, he asked what she loved about it and she talked about pottery, the edges and effort that people put into everyday objects to bring beauty and meaning to the necessary. And he laughed and let her. They exchanged numbers. While he hunted in Texas, he sent a happy new year to her in Chicago. Her ex’s auld lang syne arrived first, but his meant more.

He came to New Orleans for the weekend to see his brother, but spent every wakeful hour with her. They walked and laughed, admiring the butts and brushwork on display at the park museum. When he walked her home at night, she tucked her hand in his elbow and he held it tight.

She got a job interview in Baton Rouge. They met at a coffeehouse after and he followed her to trivia. She moved to Baton Rouge to save money, to give a coworker a new place to live...and to be closer to him, though she wouldn't admit it yet. They had lunch on Valentine’s Day. She made brownies. He paid. No one called it a date. She got the job, put in her notice, and then the job fell away. But her family was there. He was there. A life could still be there for her.  So she went to more interviews and got another job. She got an apartment. They still didn’t go on dates.

She got a boyfriend and her first solo apartment. They talked less for a while. He disappeared into school, she into work. They resurfaced. They met for coffee and went on long walks around the lakes. She made a mistake one night. Not knowing what they could still mean, she left him at a bar and went home with someone else. He forgave her (she thought). They went on walks. He talked about wanting something more. She did too. She didn’t want to be nice, but she hoped she was kind. He made her feel like she was.

For her birthday, she had dinner with friends. He came. When the friends left, he walked her under the overpass to his favorite martini bar. They played at playing pool to a soundtrack of '90s hits. They held decaf in giddy hands and sat in the garden of their coffee shop trying to find stars above the streetlights. He walked her home. It wasn’t a date.

She went to Iceland with her best friend. He told her he’d pick her up. Her flight was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. Wandering the lengths of the Atlanta airport, she gave him an out. When her flight finally landed, her bag wasn’t in sight. And then it was. And he was there when she turned around. She fell into him. He hugged her, drove her home, and made sure there weren’t any monsters hiding under her sink.

He made her feel funny. She mentioned an open mic and let the weeks pass. He remembered the next one, drove her so she couldn’t chicken out, and made her feel like the best person of the night. He recorded her. He called her “the one. The only.”

She felt brighter around him. She liked how she seemed to tuck right into his warm chest when they hugged. They went for dinner and long walks.  They danced and laughed. Nobody called these nights dates.

One year, four months, and nineteen days had passed since they met in the warm glow of that winter evening. She had been offered a job she could care about. In Massachusetts. No one was more excited than he was. He graduated. They went out to celebrate each other, to drink, and to dance. A friend from the open mic asked what they were. Friends(?). The friend asked why. They didn’t know.

That night, he drove her home again. She didn’t get out of the car immediately. He asked.

Why didn’t we?
I was waiting on you..
Well, better late than never.

They kissed.

They both came home that night.

She can’t remember now if it was that night or the next morning, but he gave her a gift she still carries with her. A gift he had carried in his car’s trunk, not knowing how to give. An album she mentioned because it made her feel connected to the grandfather she couldn’t always remember and the father she couldn’t always understand.

They went on dates. For two weeks, they went on many dates.

And then she moved. Like they knew she would. And he thought about moving. And she thought about it too.

He got a job in Baton Rouge. They celebrated. She sent him silly socks. He sent her a blanket poncho.

She called him on her walks home. He woke her up with beautiful messages.

She helped him look for apartments, sending him craigslist ad after ad. He asked if they were places she'd want to spend the night. She couldn't stop smiling that day.

He visited her once. A hot weekend in July spent on the third floor of a New England house with every box fan angled to suit.

She got a job in Vermont.

He was her date to a wedding in their hometown. The flights were too early and she hadn’t planned well. She should’ve flown in the night before. She was exhausted. Not the person she wanted to be. He was ecstatic. She fell asleep with a baby in her lap, but woke up to kiss him good night. He pulled away.

At least, she thought he did.

They went to dinner with her friends before she left. Then they walked around the neighborhood at night. He pushed her on a swing.

She moved. He responded less.

She didn’t wake up to his messages anymore.

She got lonely and started downloading avenues to companionship.

She saw him holding hands with a hotdog in a friend's snapped story.

She deleted snapchat.

She knew he was pulling away. Pushing toward something new.

She clung.

She had never known what they were to each other, but nothing had never seemed possible.

In February, they went for coffee and walked around their lake. He didn't mention the hotdog. She didn't ask.

In April, he told her over a text. She called. He didn’t pick up.

He stopped picking up.

It’ll be three years tomorrow (the day after if you want to get technical) since they found better later.

It’s been over a year since she started considering the never.

She always offered more than she could give. He always gave more than she could offer. Perhaps she could finally give him exactly what he asked. Space.

The album will always have a place on her shelf, though it’s not displayed like it used to be.

She’ll always hope for his reply.

But these days, she thinks three times and doesn’t hit send.

My body remembers you
even if I don’t.
I wake in the middle
of the night, my lips
tender from the dream of your teeth.

A stranger’s graze
an innocent nudge
and I’m cocooned
once more
in the routine
of your arms.