A misting veil,
two incandescent lights
in parallel beams
reflect individual droplets—
a stream of not-quite-rain.

Among the morning shroud
live a host of furtive sounds:
gravel steps, inaudible susurrus,
a turning, silenced not-quite-heartbeat.

Where there was once
noisy trips to the beach—to sneak away
with each other in the surf and plant
kisses on the tops of each other's ears
—there is now only silence.

Where there was once
loud lines of poetry brought to life
in the screams of youth—in anger
and in sadness and in love
—there is now only silence.

Where there was once
dance floors and dresses—
the music of a million lovers
clasping hands and setting their
feet in steps against one other
—there is now…

The inventory is unpacked
and counted up from each of those
long hours I have carried since
those pale blue cottages on the beach,
since the barroom poetry readings
and the holiday dances.
The shell no longer sings the ocean.
The sounds that filled the vessel
have all but gone away
from us now.

Tied to the world
by the hands of grocery clerks,
by the blue aprons of baristas
and the fresh smells of cut bagels
in morning market stalls.
Tied to the world
by parked cars in parallel lines,
construction cranes climbing
back to life.

The moorings of a vast
and darkening ocean,
an anchor tied with twine
and small impersonal smiles
of welcome.

Tied to the world
by tall vines of ivy like scoliosis spines
rooting themselves upward in
the chipped bricks of
abandoned factory buildings.
Tied to the world by
small strings to hold us against ourselves,
small cracks in sidewalk pavements
where grass might one day grow again.

The earth spins at
a bearable speed when
the morning peeks through
curtained townhouse windows
on a quiet city block and the
birds make just enough
noise to be beautiful.

I remember we took a walk most days that
allowed it. In step down the sidewalks,
we might have laughed at something
or another that I had said,
there was plenty of laughter
to go around then—and plenty of sidewalks.
They stretched around the river and
laced up the streets past the gym
where we met towards the house
that became our home.
Walking back, you might have smiled
or playfully slapped away my hand
from the small of your back before
leaning in to kiss my cheek.

Affection was neither of our strong suits
but it was a suit you wore better
than I did.

I remember you wore a black coat on our
first date and shrugged
out of it as we walked up to
the restaurant—baring a lone shoulder
and my first glimpse into your past.
I held the door and you rearranged
your hair, hiding it again.

I remember the scar was barely noticeable then,
me just a stranger and concerned
with so many other things.
How would the food taste?
How would the service be?
Would you like me enough to walk
those sidewalks home for another drink?

It was not until later that I would
find out what a burden that
small slip of flesh truly was.

I remember you had a slight fear of those
sidewalk cellar doors,
just enough to step around them each time
with a bit of a blush on your cheek
as if it were something to be ashamed of.

How strange, these things you remember.

This place to me now is not a city,
but an old ruin full and full of sidewalks
and, like a child with imagined lava,
I fear to touch them for the burn
of what remembrance they might bring.

when the sun might set forever
and the anywhere of where you are
might just be the right place at that
moment to be, so long as you
take a long pause—maybe waiting
on the crosswalk while that last car
swings past right at the red, or
maybe watching the elevator
ping to ground level and letting
the old woman step out first
with her bags—and use that
silent moment to see the Sun again
and notice it there even now,
this late in the game, and if it
can hang as heavy as a thousand
earths a thousand times over
up there in that big stretch
of sky and space then so can you,
right there
wherever you are.

Back then for awhile,
the fire-escapes were
balconies instead of
warning signs.
We would share a couple of
cigarettes so you could shed the
guilt of smoking them alone.
Cars would yell past at timed intervals,
a welcome reminder that there
is always some place else.

We never touched one another.
It would not have been proper—
though whether it would have
been right is now lost to us.
We stood on the balcony.
Staring over moonlit traffic lines,
spaced a breath apart,
wondering where it all went.
Cigarette ash blew off into the air
and we were old enough to feel
nostalgic for the first time.

Back then, for awhile,
the fire-escapes were
balconies instead of
warning signs.
Convenience store lights
glittering on the road and
the landlord ready to kick
you out—for good, this time.
You were getting married and
said the traffic lights were
giving you mixed signals
to stay, then go, then stay again.
Cigarette ash blew off into the air
and we were in love enough to talk
of maybe’s and might-have-been’s.
The light flickered green and the
traffic sped off to some place else
and we sat sharing cigarettes,
close, but not quite touching.

Is it morning? I think I imagine it as a
spring morning—you with a coffee mug
in both hands, the early breeze
sweeping through the white curtains
of your bedroom, and the just-now-breaking
coverage of clouds parted by
the rising sunlight like the words
of a lover passing through gray lips.

It is not quite spring here,
but you can tell that the world is
beginning to awaken to itself.
The trees fight to bloom just as we
must have once, two strangers
scrambling out of the darkness.
I remember you
as a child in large mittens,
hands always cold even later
when your fingers had become
long, sensual, and painted dark against
your now-gray-but-once-red lips.

The most basic of desires is that
pit-of-stomach desire for a loved
one’s happiness, wherever it is that
they may be. And so I hope that you are happy.
I hope that the wind blows the sunlight
in through open curtain windows softly
like a whispered word and the coffee
is always just warm enough to keep
your fingers from the chill
and that it is always spring,
wherever you are.

Just turned nineteen, we sat
along the bottom of the bunk bed—
holding hands and nothing else
—reading from the big compilation
of Bukowski poems that I kept
folded up and tucked in a pocket
of my backpack as an anchor
through those early years.

The cottage was empty and quiet
except the circling ache of the ceiling fan.
Only blocks from the northern shore,
the others had gone to lay blankets
in the sand—even in a mid-spring chill,
with sweaters on—to drink the cheap
wine we stole from the corner store.

You told me you enjoyed Bukowski
because he gave voice to a self that you
had never known you had.
A self you wanted to explore and better understand.
You—with your suburban, two-car
garage upbringing—had never smoked
a cigarette until we met.

In the million hours since that hour
that we sat and took turns yelling out
lines of “Bluebird” to get a better feel for
the words as they took shape in our mouths,
there have been more cigarettes.

There have been more drugs that left our
outlines in sweat stains on the mattress.
There have been more broken glasses,
shards in-between our toes, and
mistake tattoos penned in our skin.
There have been more falling-outs and car crashes
and fathers with voiced, finger shaking disapprovals.
There have been more curses and
hospital visits and apology letters
turned to kindling or tucked in drawers
to be left behind.

There have been fewer poems.

A parking lot off the coast
of Madeira beach.
A thin trail of smoke trailing off
unfinished into a dew-heavy evening.
A pair of headlights illuminate tall reeds
like thin yellow towers,
toppling in a sudden breeze.
The streetlight flickers,
buzzing in the slender hum
of electric current before surrendering
itself back towards the silence.

An evening as any other evening:
tall dunes of ochre that have been
built and rebuilt by time–
un-eager hands, molding slowly
as the earth careens against itself.
Reeds in silhouette against the pale headlight,
shadows bending in shapes as ink,
laid out along thin canvas.

It is something for memories
to dance as ghosts.
Fall into the sand as young lovers,
laugh and shout, call out
to the ocean into its own
low and distant rumble–
as if it were in on the joke.

The ocean laughs still, in similar tides,
though the ghosts have gone.
There is humor in its breath,
thick and heavy with salt.
The joke is old.
The punchlines thin
with age and poor taste.

An evening settles into itself.
A car pulls off, the gravel gives slightly
beneath the weight.
A streetlight blinks dead
and then awakens again.
Reeds purr and shake
into the ghosts of darkness,
the ocean hums a tune.

How many years has it been now?
Filing cabinets full of minutes/hours/days.
A lifetime outlined in manila folder.
Five times now, it says in your record,
but where are the receipts?
Who falls in love and doesn’t get a receipt?
You can write it off and claim it
as a loss at the very least.

It has been seven years since
anything happened, another thirteen
since anything made sense.
The numbers don’t add up.
Where did the years go?
Each of their folder slim as if
they were never there at all.
Placeholders of a life lived in
hole-punched margins.

Tall, white birch trees,
tight-rolled cigarettes leave
tobacco stains to drop dotted
lines across the evening pavement.

The raindrops outpace the autumn leaves
in long, cold daggers of not-quite-snow
that rip the bandage off the topsoil and loam,
that beat the earth into its seasonal death.
The weather is cold and the world is dying,
the moth has made its home
beneath the lampshade.
‘It is enough to get by,’ someone shouts
into their unhappiness, ‘It must be enough.’

Another leaf falls, lies flat.

Tall, white birch trees,
pale and blistered fingers
reaching for leaves that fall
away from them again
each year.

I watch the schism shift beneath us,
lengthening shadows in a fading afternoon.
Gaps appear where the mountain
once stood strongest.
The glaciers fail in the never-melt
and fall to the ground as water,
as loss.

All of the world is tilting in
an endless and slight off-kilter tumult.
All of the world is spinning in
an endless pulling apart at the seams.

I watch the schism grow beneath us,
yawning darkness in a once well-lit place.
Handholds become razor-sharp ridge lines.
Features that once welcomed now
yield little but hard stone and
a long climb back down again.

I was on my knees, leaning out
of the window in the rain.
The rainwater flooded around the
drains in pools and the fog spread
the lightning across the night sky
in thick bands of bright smoke.
My hair was wet in my eyes.

The rhythmic sounds of
pattering droplets on the pavement
reminded me of being a child.
I had been in this exact spot,
somewhere else.
I could not decide why.

A streetlight let out an old, yellowed light
and large puddles around the gutters
pushed the light back upward.
Lightning struck, the streets were
Smells of fresh water,
of earth and wet grass.
There is a name for that smell.

The phone buzzed a flood warning.
The clock read 1:37 AM.
The apartment was dark except
for the open window, which was
illuminated by the streetlight
and the occasional broad flashes of
lightning in the sky.