We wake to skies of groggy grey
and struggle to wipe the night from our eyes.
Rain pelts the windowpane as I burrow into you
and ask with a tongue still warped by dreams
if we can stay in today and sleep off the world like a bad hangover.

We could turn the bed into a boat
and use the day to travel the seven seas.
Our pillows could be rocket thrusters on a spaceship
trailing asteroids through the cosmic void.
We could go spelunking under the comforter
and scale mountains with the sheets.

I could try to convince you it’s just the weather,
but the truth is I just want more of you – all of you.
I want every adventure from our bed
to a jungle, to a mountain range,
to trips to the grocery store and
making pancakes in our pajamas.

So let’s sleep late and lazy and
make our bodies into puzzle pieces
because today, rain or shine, we’re playing hookey.

She doesn't know how to make you happy.
She doesn't have the ability to wrap her arms around you and whisper in your young ears that old women are strangers.
She doesn't know how to kiss your tears away because the ocean terrifies her and you taste like saltwater when you bask in the sun.
She doesn't want to watch you suffocate but it's hard to let you breathe when she needs oxygen, too.
You are sunlight and glory and an inescapable breeze in winter but to her you are fragile and have broken too many times and she's running out of super glue.

Maybe this doesn't make any sense, but neither does her head
neither do you and neither does she
cause you aren't a single thing she knows what to do with
yet she can't find it in her to let you go.

All I have now – all that is left –
is a handful of mementos that your fingertips lingered on
long ago; magnifying glass, old college notes...
How can that be all of you?
And I was given a sweater, itchy wool.
I never saw you wear it but I am told it was yours and so
like a child with a blanket I clutch at it, desperate for something.
It makes my skin crawl.

At your funeral it was so cold
and my feet were so numb standing in the snow and I thought
“Won’t you be cold there?”
I stepped forward and asked the funeral home director
for a yellow flower please.
I laid it on your coffin and hoped it would at least remind you of warmth.

I am told you are still “with us” and you “live on in our hearts”
If this is true I will lend you my heartbeat
and pump into you some of my blood
and my breath going in and out and in again and again.
My lungs can be strong enough for the both of us
since yours were not even strong enough for you.

When I look at you
You send shivers
No – sparks.

The air is charged with them
Dense.

I can feel just how much of it
is between us –
(always too much)

And I want more than anything
To cross it –
Wade through the ions
to you.

To only stop when my lips
Meet yours
(the only way I have found
to get rid of the air)
and you take my breath away.

A blow is delivered with
Closed fists
To my temple –
Where I so often came to worship.

Stained glass has been coloring my vision
For too long.
The pure light stings and I must
Close my eyes.

Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hollow is your name.
Kingdom come
And I am done,
On Earth as well as Heaven.

Your house is forever standing with
The steeple reaching out
To grasp at nothing
But raindrops and clouds.