I wrapped my hands up in your hair
to feel the pulse - your heat, your beat.
I reach again
feel naught but air:
the essence of a love,
retreat.

Often do I venture back,
roam into an abandoned past.
Dis-embalm these memories true,
packed on ice
yet damp with dew.

Cat treads heavy the surface of heart,
imprints
      indenting,
              g,         d
            n             e
           i                 s
         d                   c
        n                      e
       e                         n
     c                             d
   s                                i
a                                   n
                                       g,
scarring my thoughts, my rhythm,
my whole.
Shifting my sacrum,
sheathing my soul.

Doggedly I trail behind
with a twisted eraser
      just "try the eraser"
      you said with a smirk.
But still I reach and I reach and I reach
rapt in your attentions as a wave to a beach.

There is a grain of sand in my eye
that can't be washed away.
Salt, fresh, spring
they all caught her.
But I've tried every type of water.

Still you persist,
a rotting orange's mist.

I allowed you to come; I also let you leave.
I remember with crude clarity
what happened in between.

Go, my love you let.
Go, your love I let.
The only question now I have:
Why then can't I forget?

Have you ever held your hand still
Just above a river’s passing water
Liquid rushing by reaching for your skin
Jumping up; eager to commune with you
Beckoning you to dip a finger in

And we'll move into the forest with the pixies
And they eat newspapers for breakfast
And we'll eat newspapers for breakfast
But when they come to take us away
We'll hide below the ocean
And in that bed we'll start to dream
And escape from what we remember

We like our steaks ******
my daddy and I
wear plaid and glasses and slippers
and hibernate in the winter.
I steal the pens out of his desk
and lose them.

I steal the wedding rings out of his dresser
and stare at them on the bedspread.
Sometimes I wear the gold one
and remember that time I found it
in the glove compartment
with the rest of the loose
change.

It is ritualistic.
and it makes me aware
I’m scared to become him.
But I know he did what he had to;
I will do what I have to
when my time comes.

My time and the easy way out,
I am already so much like him.
But at the end of the month
there will be a new package of roller *****
in the desk drawers
and he won’t say
a word.