When I dream of my father
I see only a glimpse of him
His glancing blue eyes and small overflowing smile.
But he catches my gaze and we see each other
And something snaps in the air
Static and grief and love.
I awake from screaming his name, DAD,
My mind calm and my heart soft and confused.
It is a strange and beautiful thing
To be seen.

I stumble sleepily out onto the sidewalk
Slapped by the maddeningly brisk and groggy morning air
Knowing we saw each other.
I think of home
And how it is slowly dissipating like a small sugar cube
Into the dark smokey coffee of momentum
Of my life.
One stir and it will be gone forever
Leaving a lingering sweetness somewhere deep inside me.
How strangely we've scattered in your wake, Dad.

I feel a wind shift ever so slightly
The same wind that carried and bullied me all the way to New York City
And I know that things will never, ever be the same.
It is so hard to be afraid
With this wind at my back
With the man I love most in this world
Holding my hand and holding my heart.

I miss because I love.
I fail because I try.
I succeed because I am willing to fail.
I fear because I want.
I want because I need.
I fall because the world will catch me.

I love
And I will not be afraid.

When I look at you
I see Bryant Park flushed with spring
and cluttered, burnished with Christmastime.
I see the way your big hands hold my face, my waist.
I see thick snowflakes
catching in your long lashes.

I see the streaks of light we've trailed
in the places we have been
like the flare of a comet,
footprints in ash and snow.

Six months we have stood,
daring the storm to catch us,
daring the lightning to strike.

You will pretend you did not remember our anniversary
and make me laugh when you say so
because you want me to learn
that you forgetting me is humorous
and ridiculous
and impossible.
I'll wake up the morning after,
panicked because it was five months and not six,
and you will say that it makes no difference
because what does a month matter
when you have forever?

We dance
and I trip and step on your toes
but you just turn on Frank Sinatra
and lead me through while you sing, smiling, in my ear.
And on the days when I curl up like a shell in your arms
shaking with untraceable, messy sobs
you keep singing
your lips unafraid to kiss away the tears.

I think I knew you once,
a thousand years ago,
a billion,
when we were stars in the galaxy
lovers in a white palace
dust in the ground.

And today
we are six months of being in love
six months of pure, unadulterated happiness
six months of dancing,
an eternal song.

Sing me to sleep again,
champion of my heart.
I will dream that we are timeless
and your voice will carry me through
until the dawn.

JFC

I struggle
To be back in this place again
Warily treading a gorgeously uncomfortable river
Of crashing beauty
And the shivering memories of devastating pain.
I press my hands to the cold car window
And I let this landscape of thoughts roll through me
Dense and flat
Like the low-lying valley fog flirting with the evergreens.
The beauty rinses me clean for a few hours
Absolves my blue beating heart
Of a loneliness that falls and puddles within me
Like soft rain.
The cold smell of snowy pine is sharp
Like the crack of a whip in the white metal air.
A distended azure sky swells to fill the heavens
Smelling sweetly of snow and wind.
Wind hums gently through dense, endless miles
Of storybook forests
And my heart shudders inside me
As though it has never been touched before.
It is then that  I let myself wander to you
And I feel your last kiss
Burning softly on the lips of the woman
Reflected vaguely back at me in the window.
She waits for you, as I do
Both of us dwelling in two cities so different
That a wide and courageous fjord
Holds them forever apart.
I wait for you
Life's brave soldier
Eyes that still my soul
Arms of kind and gentle steel
Heart of gold and purple and blue
Kiss of waterfall and wildfire.
Come home to me.

Today someone said to me
That there was a certain kind of beauty in the missing
Of two fathers
A blossoming because of the devastating floods
A sharper, deeper kind of romance.
Did they die so that we could live?
I think suddenly of your life impacting mine
Like the two car accidents we could have died in.
I think of glass shattering like a fallen icicle
The stony, absolute crunch of metal
Of our separate bodies
Tossed against steering wheels and car doors
Our bones fragile and temporary.
But we are alive, you and I
And even now
I feel the lull of your breathing
Of your quiet hands
From thousands of miles away.
I open for you like a wild rose
And you know me as I am
Sweet and wary.
Such strange and heavy secrets we bear
My darling, my dear
Such strange and heavy secrets.
Your arms hold me up
Cradle me against your beating heart
And we are wet with kind rain
And shared sorrow
And the tears I cry for both of us.
You grow a beard
And I cut my hair
And no time has passed in heaven.
Come
Let me bear the weight of your heart, my love.
We will meet them holding hands.

Skyscraper.
Such a violent name.
Sheets of metal and glass placing their fingernails on a chalkboard of sky.
Scratch. Tear. Rip. Slice. Howl.
They stand unaffected by the frosty winds that gild each strand of my hair
And make me long for fireplaces and Christmas.
The gale has wrenched the clouds from above me
And the night opens itself coldly to my pleading eyes
Revealing stars, real stars
Even though they are smothered under the pillowcase of city lights.
But the moon dangles in the sky, opulent as ever
Almost full
A dented ping-pong ball suspended halfway back to its earthly table.
I think suddenly, inexplicably
Of dawn.
I think of how the sun rises in Africa
Hauling itself over the cliff-edge of Ugandan earth
A blue dawn.
Night seeping into the birth of day
Soaking everything in saturated indigo
Blue hands
Blue skirts
Blue road receding into the damp air that will soon bow to the sun.
I want to breathe that blue again
To roll it between my palms
But it is a city night
And I must wait a very long time
For the rescue of a pale winter dawn.

You are the dying summer
A burning August scorching the color into autumn.
You are San Francisco rain.
You are what it feels like to walk alone in a melting snowfield
And let the water soak through your worn winter boots.
You are alpenglow.
You soften the sharp metallic edges of a city bursting with cutting loneliness.
You are the first ambrosial sip of green tea after a 14-hour day.
You are silk sheets
And the taste of dark chocolate
And young moonlight.
You are warm eyes flecked with liquid gold.
You are the innocent wonder of the first snowfall
And the ancient silence of redwoods.
You are the heartbeat that drives the tide.
You are the wind fattening white sails
You are so beautiful.
You are the exquisite pain of loss.
You are a howl.
You are silence.
You are a kiss hello and a kiss goodbye.
You are long, reckless highway drives at ninety.
You are red
You are oceans of blue.
You are the arms at the airport that pick me up and spin me around.
You are the final wish.

Ropes of fog dangle the fat moon outside your window
A soft fuzzy halo blurring the cratered outline.
Everything is blue
And the city breathes like a giant slumbering animal
Heaving breaths through the tiny squares of light
Sparsely dotted among the skyscrapers.
I am gently tasting your world
A drop at a time
And I wonder how you take it in tablespoons
Like unflavored cough syrup.
Do long nights give your soul less oxygen
Than mine?
Is it like watching the world die slowly
Bedroom light after bedroom light
Or like watching a bird fly into a window?
New York City is made of windows.
And so am I, really
Panes of stained glass waiting for a rock
Or a bolt of lightning
Or an earthquake.
Is it possible to miss you when you're awake?
Is it possible to miss you when you're holding me?
Make me a cup of tea
And let the moonlight fill it up
And spill it over the rim of the mug
Like too much milk and sugar.
Let it soak our hair and our clothes
In light
Until we emerge, dripping
In an evening summer rain.