The first time we met was six days ago.

Your hair spilled down
from under a yellow salt stained cap.
Shimmering vines of copper and gold.
They plead with me:
Just pull yourself up,
meet my gaze,
crash into the overindulged lips that I frame.
And press against the freckles that map
these perfectly delicate features.

Until we meet again; in a summer or two.
You’ll be different.
I’ll understand how this feels.
The idea of you will become more complex
and I’ll know what you meant to me.
That one summer, in love.

But we’re blood.

If it’s cold enough, I can taste it after just the third mile.
It reminds me that I’m running from something.

A sweetly acrid mist settles in my throat,
unable to fully flush out.

I am seduced by the rhythm of my pace
until there is only my breath.

Drifting through the shadow of my pain
there is only time. Soft, pillowy time.

Down the middle of my thigh.
Down in the valley when the light catches it right.
Muscle wrapped over muscle.

It’s how he used to kiss my legs,
his arms wrapped around my knees.

After a shower it looked like purple moss
pressed up under my skin.
I’ll tell everyone it happened at softball.

It’s all over the floor, I thought.
I’ll never get these towels clean.
This time it split like a straw.
If I could stand, I’d surely slip
and break my neck.

The first time it came in rivulets of pink.
I thought of jumping back in,
never to surface again.

I welcome Spring
If but for the passage of time.
Old blood rings through soft sheets of unmade flesh
until new sails fill full with flight.

Put down
a breath beneath the sheltered rock,
spill cold and brackish blood,
seep down and rise
from death, from dark, from rot.

Let fists of roots so clench the earth
that soil and sand do weep new verdant shoots.
Take up the deep and settled sleeping water;
fill your breast, rise up, and part.
Burn on through the gray of winter
and set upon the lap of summer.

Breathe in my bleached and broken bones.
Bathe in the blood of my blood and be renewed.
Grieve not for the form of my past.
Care not for the place I take and
help me shed this mortal burden.
Fill my cup, take my hand,
and walk with me among the stars.

My vigil.