sea’s quiet tonight, iris and vagabond gray
salt coarse in our hair we can see it in the
last pink light

count the bubbles in the wake
sprouting from thin air and
imaginary whale songs

they won’t find us in the stern let me
look at your hipbones—I won’t touch
not yet it’s too quiet tonight

there’s orion, and there’s cassiopeia
stars swimming white fish in our
***-eyes

gulls’ heads tucked under wings
in the corners—goodnight goodnight
little gulls, dreaming you’re doves

even sirens sleep this moon
soft voices slumberous
smoky, hey—let me look at you again

under the velvet dark, sea in sterling drops
on our lashes, let’s take a break from steering
let waves and mermaids take the wheel

I want you to tell me
the truth about my hands
and what they are worth to you

will you grant me clemency
when they blister and crack
when they redden, raw

up close, it’s no secret that
beneath the skin, there is something
roiling

and I want to know if I should
keep you at a distance

to find a place to call home
where the bed nests flush in the corner
and the arms don’t loosen till you say so

to show all of your teeth and blow away
the bombs and dark purple air that cloud your sleep
and invite you to stay a minute longer

to live in boxes if that would make you closer
to knowing what it’s like to be a maypole
or a wild turkey or a king

to square your shoulders when you walk
and when you shudder
and when you listen

to find a place to call home
where you can leave without asking
if it’ll be there still at dusk

here is the year that i rarely noticed the always redness on my index finger from the key i had to fight to twist. every day. the year that i got over you and then under you. there was the night i figured out faith. and the morning i forgot it. i bought a lot of denim this year, and i told you a lot of stories ("you" being you, this time). i watched more jake gyllenhaal movies than i expected to--"the year of jake gyllenhaal"--but it wasn't his year, it was mine. sometimes it was too pretty to believe in--sometimes i didn't--and sometimes it was like a compound fracture, and instead of setting it, 9-1-1 just kissed me on the cheek and said it's okay. some nights that fixed it. it was the year when i was a real grown-up, and nobody could tell me not to buy ***** or not to eat bacon every lunchtime, or not to drink ***** with my bacon, at least. there were mornings when i woke up aching for someone to tell me just that, to stop, to tell me how to do it. how to do this. how to be a two-wheeler. a year when i still don't quite have it down, but i think i will. here is the year when i lost you and i found you and i lost you and i loved you, and i love you, and you, and you, and you. here is the year that i had visceral dreams and ghosts in the corners of my eyes. i asked them politely to leave, and they did. here is the first year ever that i did not break an umbrella in the wind, and i did not twist my ankle, and i did not finish that book you lent me. i did not finish that mug of tea you put too much honey in that burned my tongue when i sat on your squeaking bed for the first time. this year, i wore snow boots and i microwaved soup indoors and i had a lot of sad saturdays with easy sundays. i watched my tiny town become a tragedy and a hero, and i watched bigger towns do the same, and i think i got to understand compassion, but i watched myself make you sad, and this was the year i did that too many times to count with fingers. there were nights when i only wanted to count your fingers, and nights when i wanted everything at its fastest. here is the year that a lot of people left and i drank more cups of coffee than i expected to, but i still slept more than anybody wanted. here is the year that i wore my grandfather's jacket, and an old friend's sweater. i made money and mistakes and amends and movies and little wooden chairs and painted cups. here is the year that i don't know how, but i will.

you've got a photographer's
eye
and no camera
you look real close
to remember

you rise before the morning does, watch the black
sky go gray through the shower curtain
lacy shadows cast on summer-night skin
not ready to awaken, blue eyes half-mast to
squint away the fluorescent intrusion as your
mother butters toast for you that you leave behind,
your stomach sleeping too.

yawning, you thank god that the possums are
exercising better judgment as you hold
the wheel at eight and four, shake your knees
at every stoplight, sing billy joel top-volume
to stay alert while the clouds go pink and gold.

you join the real-world almost right away,
asleep before you hit the tracks at westport
tickets tickets tickets grabs your ear, but only just.

your coffee cools in its thermos, forgotten in the
new haven line haze, your nerves all perked up
fighting with the fog between your ears. your nerves
all perked up. your nerves all perked up. you try to
kick the fog to no avail. you all but sleepwalk
down the platform, you barely watch the gap.

hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if he came your dream-voice
whispers to your conscious yes it would be crazy your
conscious chuckles at the thought.

you trip on the overweight businessman’s pennyloafer
and you think how much you need to *** and you toss
your cold bagel in the all aboard trash can and you
think about how crazy you would be to hope to see him
and you hope your backpack isn’t slowing traffic too
much and your nerves all perked up your nerves all
perked up and you shake away the fog one last time and
you get to the end of the long hot platform and you—

hey wouldn’t it be crazy if but yes he’s
there and yes you
don’t know
what to
say but
yes your
eyes wide yes
mouth open
yes you don’t
know what
to say but

*hi,
I love you,
yes

the world's at home, and it's from taming one star to another till it's light.

once upon your voice I walked on eggshells
wrote on eggshells with infinity and refuge
you’d drink a fifth
of anchor steam, and refuge
we’d talk all the doors closed
refuge.

the fault lines, beautiful in
their unself became the weave of things
your skin radiated a reddish copper glow of
the ones behind
floating like in your stars
red and gold—
he’d change your colors.

I had faults, but we did not
and you did not, but he
talked like next year with you
and this heaven curdled—
I wanted to *like heaven and so I
breathed the doors closed quiet
drank my own refuge in the dark
that you didn’t ever count.

let’s count the darkness now
the sun is what I love and I can see it
hiding in the things you said—
“we were back burner anyway”
—I want to like heaven
and so I dress the shore, waiting
but if it’s coming it’s slow
and I want to like heaven.

so I go
taming one star to another
till it’s light.

it was the hooded-sweatshirt, sit-close-and-pretend-you’re-cold, bleacher-seat,
whiskey-and-coke homecoming that you never had when the leaves changed.
but the leaves changed anyway.

the damp grass smelling vaguely like your fireplace as the world got quieter,
your nose in your precalc and your foot tapping and how-many-years-left
of solo fridays, you counted the suburban stars but didn’t tell anybody
how ******* beautiful they were above your head, because they were yours.

when you wore your high school colors, you were cold for real. no pretense
in your shivering, no flutter in your abdomen because he wasn’t gonna talk to you,
and you didn’t really care, you shrugged. but the leaves changed anyway.

and you changed, slowly. grew taller and smarter and prettier and then the
remaining solo fridays shrank to none, and you left. big sweet snowdrifts turned to spring
and you shared whiskey-and-coke with the city, your stars dimmer but abdomen
finally fuller, and limbs warmer and no sweatshirt because you didn’t need one,
and hands all over to hold and feeling all three kinds of love at once.

and then the accidental homecoming, and the changing of the leaves
and the hooded-sweatshirt shivers and knowing you’re so much bigger now than the
suburban stars and the backward glances of the bleacher-seat kids, but the damp
grass still smells like your fireplace and suddenly you’re small again, just for a
second but god that second, you shiver and turn around again. you’re so much
bigger than this but homecoming, this whiskey-and-coke homecoming still isn't yours.

in the hot hot hotbox where the
interlude first dug in its feathered heels
(the *******), now, it being
gone with the wind, the wellsprings
reflexively engage because the wind
is hot and here I'm not unused to you yet
and I sure don't miss you but here
I nearly want to

you’re tall now and your elegant shoulders are
rolled back and your collarbone frames your diamond
pendant like a picture
you don’t always wear the athenian owl anymore
you’re a little past your own poetry

they’ll all say my
how you’ve grown
haven't you

A vinyl record makes the rounds, dust attached loose to the needle, imperceptibly
breaking
off
making
short
homes
for each
molecule
in each
black
groove.
Your hurricane breath will send them subatomic-
Superdomeward on your next mad quest
to convince your girlfriend that you are neat&clean.;

You sit crosslegged, Buddha on the brain,
corporation on the docket.
Which
one
do
you
dream
of?
And more importantly,
which
one
should
you
dream
for?
The twenty in your pocket will get you one-fifth of a silver ring
or five turkey sandwiches.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”—it wasn’t Buddha who said that, but
it’s Buddha’s smiling voice in which you hear it now, between your ears.
“What the **** does that mean, Buddha?” you sigh, and there is no answer.

You move, and move, and you keep on moving. You leave a little molecule
on the subway, and on the bar, and on the sidewalk without feeling it, losing them to
short
homes
vulnerable.
The hurricane breath or the sunshine or the invisible rubber glove of
Buddha, or Carl Solomon, or Walter Cronkite or God or whoever does the universe’s spring cleaning
will send them subatomic-Superdomeward
and you’ll never even know you missed them.

Your girlfriend thinks it’s realcool you have a record player,
but it’s a little dusty, she says.
You touch her lower back and smile. You get eye-level with the needle,
and you blow.

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.

i told you the verymost secret truth to ease the parting blow. so you'd forgive me that the only blow was parting, that the bookshelf wasn't big enough for us both. when i told you all those other truths you thought i'd be the leatherbound dictionary that stays the digital age but i let you in on the verymost secret one and now you're not so sure, huh. you're not so sure. i'm not so sure. the definition marked by post-it is a word that is not officially recognized. the english language never was so much my thing; i stumbled all over it in nerves and inescapable sincerity that was too close together on the cookie sheet and came out wrong and stomach-aching. i stumbled all over in nerves. i roll back my shoulders and i say "good, how are you!" and i make lists and lists and lists to plan my heartwarming. i sit in the sun and i write on my hand how much i love the sun but my hand doesn't say anything back, that was your thing. the sun might not be real, now, even though it's warm. 

i am really very good, i think. but i don't know unless i tell you. what i tell you might be all that is real, and that might be why the verymost secret truth is all that blurs my vision now. i roll my shoulders back and i say that i am really very good. and they say, good! but the parting blow was all i could give you, so i can't tell you good, and the secret truth is the one that stays, and the digital age crawls forward, and the leather cracks, and i miss you.

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

it’s just one

letter in the box (that you checked
and checked
and checked
till the fountain dried up
on your pen-tip).

I waited--
bated breath and newsprint
on my knuckles
--to tell you what I knew now,

but you shouted over the
first syllable
and never heard the rest.

patiently I watch the red flag
rise and fall with daylight--
bated breath and newsprint on my knuckles
--for your word.

some days I feel it coming
comeoncomeon

it’s just one

I saw the weather there
seventy-eight every day (every day) as long as you wait
for the clouds to burn away
they always
they always do

I saw the future there but don’t know yet if it’s
mine

I saw faceplates facades and artifacts there—painted bricks you couldn’t tell from the
real red bricks on your granddad’s house
(you don’t so much
remember what they looked like, but you are confident
that the difference is negligible)

I didn’t see much else there but the weather
boy
the weather is pretty in the afternoon

you stand on the corner of your just-gone home, dirt from below the torn-up asphalt making its way beneath your sunglasses, the distance between now and then something you can no longer stretch your knees and step over. your first love is boarded up across the street, succumbed finally to the burn of nineteen’s shallow pockets and standing in the way of a new apartment complex. you walk on, humming so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. it’s a strain on your ventricles, loving and losing and owning and letting go, when you’re here again. knowing the porch’s soft wood at number 18 while the door is bolted and a stranger’s boots line your closet floor.

it’s not all lockouts and dire prognoses. your tomorrow professes to accommodate a higher wattage than the sconces in your old room, and your visits taste like love and memory and breakfast, and his bed is warmer than your own because he’s in it, and he welcomes you home like that’s what it still is. it feels like he’s not wrong to say so—sometimes, you still belong there. cold coffee in hand from the farthest corner where they know your order still. an opinion on which pizza joint has better marinara. a favorite bathroom. an indelible mark on your old library desk. some of it is yours.

but some of it isn’t. some never was, and some has slipped through your fingers. you hum a little louder as the months go by and the boarded windows give way to a brand-new storefront—one that never knew you at nineteen—so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. but you keep coming back.

I saw your daydream face like I used to see the ghost of my brother after I'd all but forgotten I had one. My lamb eyes and your lambdas crashed in mythological accidents and I all but forgot that I had you too.

long fingers against your shoulder, on your temple
soft mouth behind it—not anymore, but
it’s okay it’s okay.

a good listener and a good talker, and a mouth no closer now than a foot away
it’s okay it’s okay, and a handshake to close the deal
left open between your legs in winter.

it’s okay it’s okay. an almost-perfect parting, no closer than a foot away
but no farther than a mile, and “let’s still be friends” true and ringing
for the record books; for real.

and summer throwing states between you, but words to bridge the borders
and “I met this new guy” and “I think I’m gonna see that girl again”
and telephones, and postcards, and true-blue.

but
dark and sweaty july air and a visit and a cocktail
long fingers brush your temple by accident “oops I’m sorry!”
and
soft mouth behind it, close
no closer than a foot away—not anymore, it’s okay it’s okay.
and “let’s still be friends” muffled through your mouths and mouths
harder to understand, now

you stand up straighter now even on off days
the poetry not gone with the milk teeth after all

the electricity in his finger tips when he
says “how you doing, my friend”
and when he soothes the muscles in your calf
echoes, revives other muscles
their own memories of contracting so long ago

he knew how long it would take to heal you but
he’s only here until December

you will finish getting better, but you
won’t be like you were

A lion, all gold and sand and sunset, wandered
into a suburban living room,
curled up beneath the pendulum clock,
and lay against the leather couch.
The family—a husband, a wife, a teenage
daughter—were gentle. They looked at this
king at their feet, and had no thought to hurt him.
They had lost their dog, and were in the market
for soft company.

The girl named the lion Frederick. She read him stories.
She took him to the window, and showed him the
fence around the yard.

The father scratched Frederick's ears each morning as he drank
his coffee and read the New York Times. The mother
cooed babytalk to him while she washed the dishes.

Frederick had no time to think. This was his home now,
he knew intellectually.

But his name was not Frederick. He felt that.
His claws were dull. His eyes
were half-mast, house-cat-sleepy, even with the sun.
He was not a house-cat, and he forgot.

They loved him
and they loved him
and they took the wild right out of him.

He was a year into his picket-fence when a scratch came at the
window in the evening mist.
A deer stopped in its tracks, locking eyes with Frederick,
unmoving.

Frederick stood, nudged open the door through which he’d come,
and roared. The deer fled.

The lion stretched his legs and and ambled out toward gold and sand and sunset. He did not look behind.

heartbroken, housebroken
I lost your nuance, pray remind me
redness across my chest, heat and too many voices at once

heartwarmed, housewarmed
big sweaters, his sweaters on your shoulders, no makeup
the basement with gray fabric trees, and baby kisses, and baby steps.

the milk-foam and the let’s-meet-again espresso hiding untouched posited tomorrow
among banana peels and pearls and tissue

and after, cranberry stains on teacups piled in the kitchen
(a very narrow human interval between two tiger heartbeats)
and tight sweaters, grown-up make-up
that same basement, blank before morning

and the Philosophe, my favorite couched villain over us
too many voices discussing horticulture or eternity
I Do Not Recognize Eternity, is what I told you

tigers slow down for the night, sometimes
--the quickest change of heart, is what you thought

and I, again, chose the stars.

when I think about the color of my eyes
I think of blue-green
I think of gray, sometimes, when I’m feeling replaceable
I usually don’t think of the red
veins twisting through white
or the red veil covering all of it in the morning
when I blink awake
enervated by all the waking I did in the dark
instead of resting

when I think about the color of your eyes
if I’m being honest
I can’t remember what it was

I remember my teenaged phantasm and I lace soft boots to draw
tall grass and sand dunes and hothotsummer,
a pair of teenaged lips on my teenaged lips in sundown,
the little wreckage of the family behind walls invisible from distance,
and the perfect quiet of strong teenaged hands, the I-never-want-to-leave only
in that we know so certainly we will
come fall—
the beauty in the shooting of the star
and not the star.

I tilt the rearview, sweater on, and leave to you.
I picture the soft reeds and pebble beach with-you-near-you and I think
how I could take you there and live a baby flame fantasy with a flair
for the dramatics and more fallapart than meets the eye or the mind’s eye, even.

I could kiss you behind clapboards
like goodbye is on the weekend
and cry to Cassiopeia that why-does-good-always-*******-go-away.

But it doesn’t always, not just yet, and so I leave my young Hollywood vision
to my young Hollywood visionary and I take your hand to pass
the quiet sad beach at miles on miles an hour, because I want
you for longer than the starry summer
and Dad’s averted eyes.

I turned bated breath on my blind eyes and tick
tock
tick
tock
august strode away. august bloated on july and june and
god knows what because august is a bit of an alcoholic,
if you’ll please be discreet about that—we don’t want word to get around

the curtains drawn and folded, I balled my fists and white
knuckled touched chests and abdomens and shoulders but never doors;
somersaults between my ears and over
and over
and over
hardwood against your cranium
you feel it eventually
or I do

and then august screams a marissa-by-the-pool scream but not aloud
and she doesn’t talk to you she doesn’t
talk to you
she’s got nothing to say and you
you
you’ve got nothing to say and

everything is better now it’s so much better
but she doesn’t shake hands for more than a two-count now and
you don’t feel your heartbeat in your ears, usually

when he died, his jackets all went
to the grandkids (world-war-two-chic was
en vogue), his medals to his sons, and his
meticulous preparations for any far-off
hurricane, blizzard, fabled connecticut sandstorm,
power outage, overheating engine,
skinned knee
to the big and elegant dumpster.

his wife in her heels-for-every-occasion, in her
quiet knowing
languages and recipes and birdseed
loved him even after she forgot his name
and hers.

they built this house bare-handed
and in the shade of the trees
and spiders and cell-phone towers
it will stand as ever
it always has.

mid-march sun kisses your shoulderblade but then it rains
and your equilibrium is temporary it collapses somewhere out of frame
and the voice that has been everything says you’re doing something wrong before it dissipates
and different palms on your back say you’ll be okay but I know it hurts
and he almost understands
and they almost understand
almost.

mid-march sun used to drop in every once in a while but now
the ten day forecast says rain rain rain and now
there's no one to blame
and no one to tell.

there exists a breed
of butterfly that lives
on the blood of departed
human bodies.

from afar it is mistakable
for a monarch--
the covergirl fireflower
of the insect world
who drinks from petunias.

small pieces of paper stuck to her molars
she wasn’t from the country she said she was from
ex-PAT! her charming garbled R’s were
gone that one night.

we all said, J’ACCUSE! and she was like, what
because she wasn’t french.
she could’ve passed though,

if she kept her tongue quiet. I mean,
it moved the right way, at least.
and she was beautiful, if I may speak so plainly
and very susceptible to the cold—
blue-white hands tucked up into sleeves
when she sat hunched over with a hot tea listening
to a radio broadcast from 1970.

it was in san francisco that she fell in love
(not with anyone in particular, but that’s almost
always how it works, non?)
after 1970, but she hardly knew the difference
except that the cars were more aerodynamic
and all the boys had names like Blake and James
and Noah and it was harder to come by a bed for the night.

she had small lungs, the better for whispering, but she
felt like she was more grand than a whisper.

french girls could whisper and still be grand (ma chérie)
so when she packed up and erased the country, she took
a new name, more cosmopolitan, with her,

ma chérie.

I was a creature of spring and autumn; I made no bones about being temperate
even-tempered, even temporary, alive only as many hours daily as the daylight
sinking when the sun sank, sleeping early like a child, sleeping till the dark passed
staying warm under the down until the dawn, where I woke if there was color out the window
but there wasn't always, and on those days I slept.

There was a time that spanned awhile when I thought "alive" to be synonymous with
to not-be-dead, that to die was to stop breathing; to stop living was no different.
I was only alive between the hours that the graveyard gates were open, and even less,
as the grayer days and I never made our acquaintance, as I had made my acquiescence
and my peace with the perpetual proverbial graveyard shift.

I misjudged the patterns of the wind one morning and arose with the milky light
and, tricked by the mild breeze, was caught in a flurry on my long walk. It was cold on my skin
a shock to the system, to my lilywhite hands and my overwarm blood. But my god
it was the most beautiful thing my oft-closed eyes had ever had the pleasure to take in.
And the not-quite sun went down as I watched, and the snowflakes turned to stars, and hung there
weightless, like me, and I was all-at-once electrified and new and I thought childishly
to perhaps stay here for the night, and forever, and watch the seasons change extremely
because it seemed a shame to resist extremity now that I knew the meaning of, and was,
wholly, inextinguishably alive.

this morning rings no bells of my first time
moving lead-legged through elm-split mist
to your doorstep

that day was tinted mustard-yellow
i had my eyes covered tight
and the trembling was mine alone

this morning is all green
like the inside ring of your iris
and the trembling is everywhere

i wait patiently
the mist moves
and not much else

dividing time by years made sense for the aztecs
they clocked the cycle had begun anew
the ice had melted just like before
they guessed—crossing all their fingers—
that it would again

walt whitman divided time by breaths
his line breaks echoing his full throat

cross-legged on new year’s morning,
I think that I don’t want to divide time at all
just one long hum
to keep the beat

“Be careful walking home,” stout Patricia
told us through a mouthful of affogato.
“The wild boar aren’t out much this time of year but
watch for the porcospini,” she snickered
wickedly,
“the porcupines’ll smell the grappa on your lips.”

my head spun in the moonrise,
the Dutch husband having poured glass
after glass after glass after
at first we were consp—hic
conspiring to cover the taste of the mushroom soup
hic—
don’t stand up just yet

eighteen year old legs for ages and a sweet
American peregrina sundress stupor
dizzy for the first time and feeling the
Tuscan drought on my lingua and in my mani

when I tell the story I remember there being
two dogs asleep under the table
but when they tell the story they
insist there was
only one

*e noi non siamo di qui

I noticed that you left a footprint on my patio
the brand of your sneaker stamped across it, it was the shape of North America
and that’s where you were, quietly moving through
my little city, my little between-the-ears
my little muscles, contracting with the thought of you
expanding like the thought of you
when you are gone, and I only see the ghost of your misshapen bootsole
it moves faster than a train, and I only know that you are in North America
and it is too big to find your small quick step
but I sometimes remember that you are North America
and then I feel you everywhere.

refracted sunshine pauses on boxwood leaflets before
whipping around to color white walls white and whiter
just shy of blinding, shy of why’d-you-ever-look-away

quarter-miles before, a stone bridge frames a roadway with
one wrinkle, a painting you’d **** to catch on canvas, if
you could stop the car and hold it in your iris long enough

this morning, you woke from fever dreams to an it’s-all-right-now
I’m-here, and you saw that he was right as they faded and shrank
in the daytime and remembering it was you who once was

so insistent that the world looks good in gold

hello, sweetheart in the lightbluejeans, what’re you thinking of
whatever happened to gumdrops and thankyou notes and long skirts that say
‘I am a forward thinking woman’

how your eyebrows in self-photograph are the spitting image of your grandma’s
and how she never had a funeral and neither
did
you,
but you’re
****-sure not living anymore, not since the world-bruise and the ankle-bruise
and your protruding soul-bruise (your soul is in your hip bones; it bangs on the doorframe
when you walk into the kitchen every time)

you don’t remember the year but there was one
when you knew it all would be beautiful
for you
how could it not

back up to that long-gone January. that evening in your best friend’s car
when you choked on the phone that it physically hurt to listen to the sharp voices
no matter what, but especially when you knew what you knew and you *******
knew what you knew and you couldn’t
forget
not that January

not that May, when you told him you’d decided to be better
not that December, when you told somebody else
not ever—you were better but you wouldn’t forget
not ever

you set your course on what you didn’t know—what you didn’t know
would never, never hurt you, and

your best friend said go. he said do what you love he said
no one loved like you and you had
a smile and a way with words and the world deserved you and your
big, big love
you were full of love
you were love

and then he left—your big love wasn’t the kind he needed and you survived,
but a little less wholeheartedly because you were missing a little bit of it
and you saw that sharing the whole thing was
what everyone said it was
after all

you were a little smaller the next time when
somebody else told you what you were—beautiful and big and
worthwhile—so many times that you said what the hell and you
kissed him
and he took that kiss and turned it into red
red
red wine
and you had no heart to tell him you preferred white; he had you already
you had him already
and no one would go un-
bloodied

and what do you love? your best friend that day
assumed you had an answer—so did you
but what the hell was it,
you ask through the *****-fog
what do you love?
do you?

and now
what’re you thinking of, honey
how the next one and the next and the sunglasses future
is cracking summer ice, not stone, and you’ll
kiss but not say
iloveyou
it will be misty and gray for you
you’ll plan on only what you know in sweatshirts and quilts
and you’ll shut the shades

and even this January
not forget

not since the world-bruise
and your own

the evening when you have-to-realize
your voice is steady soft but your eyes give you up and
he holds you closer (just because) because you let him, now
nothing-to-lose while you lose him, now
and your eyes give you up while your voice--
This Is What You Wanted.
and he touches your jawbone featherlight with strong hands
instead of talking

the last days the most beautiful, per always
and tears on call for a drop of coffee on your jeans
or nothing
or writing in your datebook with the pen that was his--
This Is What You Wanted
the room to move your elbows,
and level ground

and the scratch of his chin on your forehead for
not-quite-the-last-time
and remembering before you memorized his cheekbones
and fingertips and the song he didn’t know would make you sad
remembering when you shook hands and talked television, siblings, weather

you wake up for the new dawn and the
It Will Be Okay, but first, it won’t

in four, three, two

one

your young smile, not metallic, caught me off-guard and quickly. it belied your voice, which was apt to project across the verdure, and was so much stronger than mine. we caught the end of summer and wisps of each other’s colds, but only from across the table. minty breath in words, never louder, the crook of my arm with a scent like I think yours has. we slid downhill, momentum loosely attached to our shoulders and flying out behind us. and like a careful demonstration of the unreliable nature of time and structure, we stopped hard at the bottom. and we waited. and then when the sun set, we disappeared. or rather, you did: you and your young smile. your voice gone from the verdure and no mint in the air, my throat clear and my hands empty; never loud and never closer—caught off-guard and quickly.

on good days, I deal in thoughts like
why do banana peppers taste like that
can I carry twenty-four water bottles a three-quarter mile, or
I think this tree’s a little taller than a year ago

on other days, I deal in
how

your voice is vertical somehow
mine is hoarse, still

I remember shouting
into pillows, hardly muted
playing back your new york inflections
like a cassette

constructive critiques
transcribed in your palm lines
obscured by clenched muscles
I didn’t know what was written on the last page

I do now
it’s not much

from your cohabited bed, you say you can’t see out the window
only in the living room do you feel peace, only during economic conferences
do you remember who are without a frame

springtime air doesn’t taste the same without winter giving way
and you say you’d like to be where people wear sweaters and
comb their hair. you still comb your hair when you remember to
and you think you’ve still got a way with words

but you don’t use them much. you blink often—
who’s to say why—and over crackling lines of hi-miss-you
i hear your voice ache for my bricks and long leash
and hot-cold orange future

you don’t know the half of it

cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
on the smaller softer couch blinded like I
wouldn’t have it anyway else
clean glasses for the clean beams
clean left hand for the coffee
solitary where later I will not be

the year of the paper-cut slows to a trot when I squint
***** rug through narrow iris pure white in the meantime
the year of the paper-cut giving way early to first-aid spring

break, break, break they kept saying
cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
say back no, I will not

quiet melting from the gutter
quiet trilling from the guitar
quiet sunshine on my knees
quiet sidewalk waiting patient
for quiet
warm
feet

greece, even, in the nostalgia decades sometimes wore american clothes
but she spoke no english, was starkly unilingual
save for the french "sillage". she was the reason they teach you safe ***
and abstinence: the reason they couldn't trust you
she dressed more american than everybody else; she was a beautiful cockeyed anachronism

your jimmy stewart baby blues on her, brandy-sanctioned
better than the everyman. and a hallucination of your stand-in therapist
asking you "why should there be guilt if there is pleasure?"
and you replying horselike/illogical "it is the unconscious fantasy that i can be torn apart"

"heaven's really crowded," peter said to me
over black coffee on Maple Street
while we watched the kings and counselors
in collegiate sweaters
lose all their religion
like we'd lost ours.
it fell like hailstones—

they all flipped their collars up
and their heads down;
we looked cozy in the window
and we laughed like we weren't
freezing too.

"this weather's crazy," he shook his head
and rubbed his hands together for the friction;
"hellfire looks better every day."
we smiled and put our gloves back on
to revel in our endless earthly cold.

quietly we weighed his words
and decided they were heavy;
we lit a cigarette to share,
blew the smoke up at the holy high school dance
and said with youthful vehemence,
"*******."

glossy paper—I don’t have any glossy paper, I panic
I cannot do you justice on carbon, so I do you no justice
and rely on shaky memory for your being-gone
your gone-ness, your not-here

it comes and goes but it comes, it comes more often
and it’s like when you think there’s water in your cup
but there isn’t, and you lift it, and it goes above your head
and it’s a bruise on your gums from a bread-crust you don’t remember
and when you leave your favorite shirt at your summer home
and the housekeeper takes it quietly

I can’t look at you without the proper paper
I can’t look at you at all
I can’t do you justice in your not-here
and I don’t trust my eyes
to see you after

to not know you takes me back

the year is 2004. the place is oval beach.
the wind is calm. the voices far away.

in a few days, I’ll twist my ankle
in a few drops I’ll forget when rain was warm
it wasn’t always like this

it wasn’t always like you

who was i to be so bold and who
were you with teeth like picket-fences
and eyes like my father’s lawn

and where was i to aspire to that 1955 smile and where
were you when i remembered all the lawns looked alike back then
and picket fences kept my father lonely

there’s an art to
pouring a guinness
to make it taste like
chocolate and
the idea of her

and there’s an art to
smirking at bad puns and
positioning your fingers
on imagined guitar strings
before you pull the rug
out from under her

and there’s an art
to doing both by accident
and realizing one tuesday
the next year

It always rains on Thursdays
except this Thursday.

There were gray clouds still but a little strip of magic hour
And the orange-leaf tree who was early for autumn cast his leaf-shadow on the grass

And I thought

Hey
This is nice

the long-suffering fire
sputtered against my cracked knuckles,
still warm and blue when i
packed up and went.

the air, now, is still wet with memory,
spiders tangled in silk of their own making,
collected in corners,
hardly touching,
hardly touched.

one syllable once stretched across my artery,
small and forgettable,
until blood and letters
stopped in their tracks, and
i became myself in the silence after the sparks.

from far away you can’t hear the matte echo
in pupils small but deep
and skittish.
if you let in too much light,
it all looks gold.

if you let in too much light,
you’ll miss it.