there have been so many
days gone in years
lost in years, etched in nothing

but this one
is somehow
etched everywhere

in your collarbone your tongue the lines
of your iris
in the stitch of your jeans

in raindrops and puddles
growing always
lightening the sidewalk when it dries

thunderchilled, shoulders icy
but only on the surface—
underneath, it’s
etched in everything

it’s something mundane but im-
possible not to miss
never the vast neverending or the
reflection in your so-pretty-eyes

not how it’s purple in the sundown
or the time you kept your feet dry
waving from his shoulders in the ebbtide

it isn’t the round he gallant-
ly orders for the two of you
or his singing voice
the salty never-gone stillness
in your eyelashes

it’s something mundane—
the no-memory but infinite patience
the time he touched your too-warm forehead
and when the water rose how he
kept you off the shore
—don’t forget that

I would tell
the six-year-old me
that that girl is my best friend still
in fifteen years
so I'd hold my tongue
when that collage is ugly
and I could say now
we never stopped loving in all that time

I woke up on Tuesday and I was older by the calendar and the law and I said “hey that’s grand”. When I woke up on Tuesday I was also older by the symbolism and I sat wide-eyed between suitjackets on the 7:45, coffee half-down and a brand new watch on the left-wrist. I made spreadsheets. I shook hands. I was The City when I took my first swallow on the rooftop. I couldn’t see the Empire through the cold-May-fog but I could see it in the mirror and on his knuckles and in his eyes. When I woke up on Wednesday I made more spreadsheets. I made more coffee. Then I was home early and Connecticut again. But Friday was the best ******* day. The sun beat me to good-morning and my favorite gone friend ate a gyro with me and another chugalugged to 42nd street on the bright red leather across the aisle. My favorite hand to touch was there for the second drink too, and I loved my job because I admitted that I hated it, and that’s okay. And he was there again on the cusp of days, and he’s there now still between my ears, and Friday melted to the next good-morning and I’m here now, city-drunk and sky-drunk and *******-I’m-so-lucky- and wine-drunk, and dizzy on the rooftops I’m imagining are better than the ones I rule, and Sunday’s coming and I will sleep for ages and hey that’s grand.

there are fewer words for this
kiss on the temple
soft knuckles
the first sip

but it's as good as
any repurposed for
less regal things

a popsicle in august
the sweetest ****-you to
midday thirst

the first snow and
realizing
you can play the piano still
after eight stagnant years

it is
wanting to stay
where you
only ever
cherished leaving

everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues,
and this is mine:

love is not blindness and his especially
his love was not blindness
he saw everything:
what was there
what wasn’t

nonetheless he rested at reading-glass distance
everything in hyperfocus and bigger, like he wanted
like a futuristic camera: oversaturated, overbright

love is not blindness—

love is literature, or wine, or a lens flare
his filled my gaps with what he wanted there
he saw more than the camera did

I cannot condemn, nor could I ever, his amber propensity
to imagine me. to beg literature is a dodge
of responsibility of which we are all
most equally
guilty

and the devil is in the details
that stitched up such an
achingly different forever
than the one he saw

love is not blindness—
his wasn’t, and mine wasn’t
—but it is literature: permission to fill the page
permission to distrust, like I did then
like I do still

forgive me my own amber propensity
to feel the paradox
there

the sky over i-95 is violet, the color of the deepest bruise
like the one you actually remember getting, that eclipsed
all the little gray-green ones from
tripping over belgian blocks, and mismeasuring the distance
to the doorframe.
the sky over i-95 cannot hold water very long
and soon it doesn’t.

you look out the new-car window
silent windshield wipers and you remember
the other times it’s rained on your occasion
(with stinging peroxide sometimes, and
sometimes gasoline, when you had a match
in the glovebox,
but mostly water).

you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
in the not-quite-hurricane
or the deafening of the drops on the car’s aluminum backbone.
you used to trust they’d never fall, they’d never flood
the crashes you passed rubbernecking were never fatal
traffic would always clear
you’d never be late.

as you watch the oversized leaves support the waterweight today
you think how every bit of that is gone from you now
siphoned slowly and quietly but
unmistakably gone from you now
you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up:
“I do not trust the trees. I do not trust the raindrops.”

quieter you think
“I do not trust the future. I do not trust an empty building.
I do not trust the movie theater. I do not trust the ocean,
or the river. I do not trust water
when I can’t see the bottom.”

you get a little philosophical as you get hungry and the exit numbers get high
“I do not trust the highway. I do not trust me. I do not trust the curtains
to keep me safe when I sleep, and I do not trust waking to bring me morning.”

you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up,
but also because that’s how the thoughts come.
there’s something that you do trust
that’s enough to warm you as this unseasonable may
comes to a close.
you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
and you think how they might fall
but they haven’t yet.
you think how it’s kind of okay not to trust them:
you trust something else.

                                                   (pain is lucrative.
                                                   so is smiling.)

                 a female cardinal perches outside the window of
                 the room, just as you arrive to leave again
                 and you think how she's just as pretty as the
                 candy-apple-red male, though she's dark against the tree trunk

and when you’re back to celebrate the years since leaving
you might even trust that tree trunk
and the girlcardinal you have to squint to see

                                                   you might also trust morning, then,
                                                   and night.

meantime, the sky lightens:
sundrops while the rain comes loudly still.