I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Spiked words
Carefully driven
Beneath her finger nails
Barbed even

Black & white Polaroid
Tucked behind the mirror
At an angle
Jaunty
I guess they’d have called it
If ‘they’ had ever bothered
Visiting her bathroom

I think if you were genuine
I’d be intimidated

I think
If you'd seen it
That you wouldn’t have
Asked
No really – I believe
That you have a sense
Of how the scar
the shadow
the blemish
came into being
By his hand
that night

And so you choose
distance over
a tactile
filmic hug

No one on earth
Could ever replace
The one I’ve known since birth

His loving arms
Held me close
Through sickness, sorrow, and mirth

In leaving home,
And all I’ve known
I left part of me behind

I had no one
To laugh with and love
No one whose thoughts were like mine

So here was I,
A stranger in
A land stranger by far

Yet there was one
Who took my hand
And led me as a star

Lost, alone,
And scared was I
But you were brave and true

You led me back
To the straight and narrow
And I was made anew

You gave me hope
That even in darkness
The heavens were filled with light

I learned so many
Wondrous things
That my heart again took flight.

You showed me how
To keep on trying,
And to never forget to give

And when I was hurt
You dried my tears
And taught me to forgive.

I know that I
Could never begin
To replace your only son

But a father
You have become to me
Through fires, shadows, and sun

I love you as
A daughter aught
And ask God’s blessing upon you

But I cannot help
Feeling that
A part of me leaves too

I will never…
Ever forget you
Though I live a hundred years

And I’m not ashamed
At all to say
That you’re leaving shall bring tears