I imagine you
in the slot canyons of valhalla
among rattlesnakes and bighorns
at twilight

I imagine you
running through knee-deep snowdrifts
with icecicles forming on your beard
under a full moon

I imagine you
living after dying,
and it's so hard
to imagine anything else

But you can't move anymore
and if there is a valhalla
no one ever deserved a place in it
like you did-
but that's a fiction

it's my imagination

it's my cowardice
and my inability to accept that anyone
as alive as you could be dead.

You're a nothing now
and the truth is I imagine you alive
because it is so much better
to be a something than a nothing-

which I think you knew all along.

Split the sun
with an ax like velvet.
The braincase open,
the soul drips-
like egg yolk
onto the sandflats
the old blood ants march out
and pile up
into a monolith
sharp enough to scratch the azure off the sky
tall enough to disrupt the horizon
like a blip on your ancient EKG
that peaks like a drop in a pool
then crashes like a kettle drum.

No birds.
Empurpled sand towers darken silently
junipers twitch imperceptably
rattlesnake retreats beneath the dust.
A billion years of breath and tears
grinding the sediment down
a dramatic pull toward the distant sea.

Make sediment of me.

she must have found what she wanted
because here I am at 26
looking back she thinks she may have been too young
but her and my father are not the divorcing type
she tends her garden every spring
and looks forward to visits from her sons
she spoils her grand-dogs
and is looking forward to grandchildren
that may be years away
but now there are friends to walk with
on occasion, a party to host
a wine cooler
she confides in me
that she is happy and would do it all again
I'm too young for her advice
but feel too old to require it
even so, I listen

Maybe it's not so bad
If they just break up now
It's been ages and she is unhappy.
Yet somehow I feel like
Her problem isn't her relationship.
She is creating this within herself
God knows I've been there
That the first *** after a long relationship
Really does your body good
But after a few you just need to admit
That it isn't taking you anywhere...

But then she said it...

sometimes you just need to **** each other up until you learn to respect each other and then try again

Yeah. Maybe that's been the point all along.

You live in the spaces
between sleep and 2 am.
And I'm stuck there
clinging to memories
that fade like water colors.

Things like your hands
pressed against my body
and those kisses that we
took for granted
in the dark rooms
we called ours.
Things like your eyes
when you needed me
enough to admit it,
and your laugh
breaking my grey silences.

Those small fragments
are ingrained into my brain,
holding tight and overgrown
like lichens to a stone.

It's the things that slip,
like our last kiss,
or those songs
you were always writing
while I was thinking
you could have tried harder
to make us right.
The small details,
your freckles and scars,
and even the hue of your eyes,
are harder and harder
to recall.

Night after night,
I try to conjure images
of your poltergeist smile
and question my sanity
as I get stuck on your eyes-
were they green or were they blue?

And I try to remember the truth
of it all- five years of ugly truths
that beg to be ignored,
but I force them in
and look them in their
pallid faces.

The words sting just as much now
as they did then,
when I let them.
And when I finally close my eyes,
I can still feel your hands
creating bruises like fine art.

I look for you
In passing faces
A stranger's glance
In haunted places

I feel you among
Nature's grandest setting
It is you that I remember
Even when I'm forgetting

I see you wherever I go
In everyone I meet
Your words echo in conversations
That pass me on the street

Your soft, easy way
That safe familiar tone
That always takes me back
To a time long gone