how is a life with a father?

i will never know
though i have always wondered
if he would have lent me his honda
a sage with pearl words
to a woman’s soul

what does it mean to be a father?*

a young boy shares my blood and face
precocious and brooding as when i was sixteen
it is not enough, i do not know what will:
he knows and chooses not to know me
in our silence blossoms a lifetime
of living and not knowing
if there is a presence in the absence
of words silver, diamonds, or coal
not just to woman’s
but in each of our souls.

when four feet and four eyes,
each halved into pairs
so they may face each other
with eyes set on separate skies,
how many suns and full moons
does it take to bleed and leech
the colors from each shape,
blur each stroke and line
from the canvass portrait
of a friendship once born on that night,
as if like the first star in the first sky
until it finds death for its dying?

because silence is a mouth
gaping wide with sharp teeth
and little by little she feeds
on the memory of your voice

your voice that wove my name
between far away cities and strange skies
between houses without lights
empty snake streets and dead hills
a string of white light in the dark
stretched out so i may find you

then there is a silence
forged from unknown materials
darker than black
wide like daylight and night sky
full of constellations, comets, stars
burning bright to dust not just eyes
nor ears, memory, or hope:

your silence.

you have touched me woman
with more than just your delicate hands
my form you traced with not just your fingers
nor felt as faint lines and shapes on my skin
nor you kisses were mere contact with my lips

even after the last of my tears
fling themselves, sacrifices for what must be
falling to the earth where they will die
even after the last word of our goodbye
cast into the wind where silence is a hound
with sharp teeth and an appetite for each syllable
there is a reason why human love has
always been chained to a mortal heart

i could not really explain but you are in me
the blood that flows from and into my heart
carries scents, sights, and sounds of you
to each and every province of memory
in the republic of my mortal body

as long as i live
i am yours
and you i love

they used to be rooms
grand and wide as hotel suites
but it was you, and i wanted life
and it just so happened
i had this cabin, out in the woods
where the night sky horizon was free
from the glare of artificial lights
i knew you love the moon and stars
though they were always pale
compared to your eyes and your smiles

we had everything we needed: us.
for the things we wanted
no trek was too long or boring,
everything and everywhere
the mundane shed their old clothes
to reveal their secret selves
between our senses
dancing waltz, house, rave, tango,
our fingers like vines,
with your head on my shoulder
i discovered the true gift of time

but one day i came to an empty room
i waited, perhaps you were out
on your solitary musings
just like i at times crave for my own
it was facebook who told me
you were alive and well
by your distant self
happy even without me

knowing about not knowing
without you, i wondered
should i raze the cabin to the ground?
defile every memory for the surgery
i could not find nor afford?
i sought for familiar pattern and routines
should i sweep the floor laced
with soil and minerals collected by our four feet?
should i straighten the sofa, the fallen lamp,
prop the pillows and unravel smooth
the tangle of sheets and blankets
shaped by our last night’s passions?
these and all others, preparations
for when you would come back

somewhere, somehow
from all the waiting and musings
it came to me in the silence
of the end that was never happening

there is no reason for housekeeping
for this is no longer our home

after i stepped out and closed the door
the faint memory of the purpose of keys
the dirge of the open faucet
they did not matter you

you. who is…
where are you?
who is you?
ah, there is only me

feet on the earth, i felt myself rooted
veins charting out paths to subterranean passages
through rocks and buried things
while my eyes saw again the stars and moon

and so before the ashes from dead stars
could find themselves and gather in my pockets
i tilt my fedora to my right
eyes rimmed and clear as lenses
walking out of that place
the faint memory of a cabin
of someplace with someone
carved out from the woods and bushes
reclaimed once more by wild roots and cold fires.

when you snuggled through cold distance
for the memories of fire in my arms*

to wake into this morning
where you greet me with your goodbye
the wind became still with their feet

my chest the steel cage for hope
who with every breath exhales into exile
the memory of how to fly

to write about the light of night stars,
how they pale against the harvest  
she gathers in her eyes from only the sun
would be like tracing the outline of a scar
with a blade, to bleed in silence
for the lust and addiction to old memories  

thus, there remains no reason to write
about passions when they poison;
for longing when one does not belong;
nor for desire burning into cold fire  

without a reason for love and living
i will court and be intimate with dying