Beneath a banshee cloak fog
The dying year shifts in her harrowed sleep
tussock hair splayed across December
The ancient ash of her bones
particulate jewels
against the lingering eye of the sallow moon.
The languid turn of the world
Moves with her
the last song of solstice
Hummed a breath above a murmur.
In her brittle, oaken fingers
The last quiver of hope waits
for the ****** year’s spark.

I can only say I miss you in so many ways.
My syllables plunge like suicides
Into the space between us
the cold glaze of your wine-dark eyes
unmoved.

In my memory, they are still bright
Peeking around the old oak as we played tag like children
The scrape of bark across arms
The warm press of your waist in my hands
the sweet brightness of lemon and gardenia cascading from your hair.  
Now when I reach for you
There is only the chasm of cool air
across our bed, the rise of your shoulder
the fractured points of ambient light
illuminating the Cassiopeia constellation of beauty marks  
At the nape of your neck
I once kissed every night.
My lips still remember the feather touches of your hair,
The heat of your back against the curled sanctuary of my chest.
But now we are empty cloisters,
And when I hold my dreams before you
Like pairs of polished dimes
You tell me they,
and I
mean nothing.

You drive one, pink-nailed finger through the cavity of my loneliness
relishing in the slow soft flesh
That will always bend to you
Even when you turn away.
I am the sea
limbs bruised black
From the slamming of waves on levee
And I want nothing more
Than to flood you.

I am tired
Of reminding you that I miss him, too.
That every day
I feel his phantom weight in my arms
Wake in the night
To a changeling’s cry.
And I know it is the grief-bored holes
That drive us into cavernous waste,
Poison the well between us.
I see the wine bottles
You hide behind the washer,
the way you only clean his room when drunk,
Stumbling, teary-eyed, the way you always hit the mobile
When dusting the crib,
and its twinkling notes
Collapse around you.

I can only say I love you
In so many ways,
The folded laundry, sunflowers,
The lingering gaze on your still effortless grace, whispered “you’re beautifuls” across the night,
The favorite candy bar I find uneaten in the trash.  

Can you hear
The scraping rift of each fissure
Running down my back
The spidered cracks
You only drive wider—
Are you only waiting
For the shatter?

In the night
Memories drift like the hair of a drowned man
The waves a callous lullaby
curling around the body of his sleeping wife
the unburdened curve of her hip against the moonlight
The drift of her breath in the dark
Coursing to match the sea wind
That sings across the lake’s dark mirror.
Her black hair spills across his hands
Ensnared, he pulls her in
To the harbor of his great shoulders—
It is the same
As it was on their first night
she is warm, small,
still smelling of the almond blossoms
she gathered in twilight.
But tonight, his impetuous heart is awake
Moving between the woman in his arms
And the messiah in the next room
the love he bears both
At once consuming
And unbinding,
his heart a stone
On which they both
rest.

His eyes were headlights at midnight
The unexpected dawning of a new world
Snatched away as suddenly as it came
Leaving in its wake,
The blinding stare of blue-black patches
Staining the asphalt like spilled paint.
Oh, my dear,
You flew, too fast, too high,
the reckless wantonness of youth
grasping through your wings,
The way her hands once ran through your hair,
what do you have left
But the drag of gravity,
The silver blade of the scream
Just before
The fall.

Men have worn me like a talisman
braided my hair with their wants, twined it round their fingers
Kissed me for luck, whispered spells against my cheek
Slipped pieces of me into their pockets
later forgotten in the washing.
Like so many charms,
held me until I slipped from their hands,
into sand, into straw, into grass,
their hazel wands useless
as I watch from yarrow-stained eyes,
how gracefully
they let go
of things not meant for them.

The terrain of your loneliness falls under my hands
soft as cinders in a snuffed fire
We have both burned, in our way
and under my breath
Embers ignite, the soft glow
And incandescent heat of our palms, tenderly met
Lanterns in a grey sea
we light as beacons
For our lost ships
calling them
To safe harbor.

When the world is hard
Draw your fingers through the golden oil
The balm of your last childhood summer
Burns like the satisfying sting
Of a nail pressed into mosquito bite
The tiny crosses on your flesh—
there will be so many more to bear before you are grown.
You will forget the sugar-sap sweetness of melted popsicles,
The Kool-aid kisses in their primary colors
That swim before your eyes,
The delicate snap of stray crayons under your little heel
If these were the only thorns,
The only broken promises,
How much happier
Might you have been?