If I am you and you are me,
let us pass by one another,

in the ether:

Alone, but not lonely.

Maybe next time it will be easier.
I thought we get to keep just a little.
You were something familiar
and I was safe.

Did we happen to catch a glimpse?

I’ll take your socks and you can have my insecurity.

Grief;
It’s an unstoppable force
meeting an immovable object.

I made a whole universe once.
It didn’t take the edge off.

I’m not done punishing the heavens
for taking you away from me.

It’s your silence.
There was a time that I hated you for it.
Just say anything, I would say.
I can’t, you didn’t say.


Now I just wish I could hear you be silent,
one more time.

It was such a race.
Our boots both casting earthy clay,
perfect little symbols born of tread and sand and sweat.
It’s the ocean, I think: I can smell it.
It’s stone and sand and salt,
but then I know it’s in my mouth. It’s blood.

I look away.
This needs to be dignified, I think.
I’m taking a life. We both got dressed up for this.
The terror, the resolute acceptance of this day being my last,
it’s replaced by the blue-green pallor of your cheeks
and the knowledge that only one of us can come back.

It’s a lie we tell ourselves though;
we all died that day.
And none of us are coming back.

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.

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 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.

The Fence

In upturned pose, a rusty row.
In soft supple skin does nail find placid purchase.
I cut my arm on the fence, I say.
An accident.

Years later, I’ll tell you about that night.
You’ll say it can’t be and I’ll forgive you;
I’m sure you didn’t know, I say.

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.

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

I wrote you and poem,
Just because, or just because I love you.
Either way, I did,

and I do.

Oh, how I fear this day.
My love. My life.
How I long to follow,
that we may wash together,
that we may beat upon the salty rocks,
until the milky flow sinks far below the light.
May we sink until the day burns no more.

Oh, how I fear the time.
Let there be just one last day;
just one last sun
in one last place
that I finally find your memory fade.
May you burn in me the ash of all,
anew.

Oh, how I fear my will.
Forget me,
that I may be ******.
Bind my hands that I may never hold you.
Cover my eyes that I know not when you are near.
Seal my lips that we may never touch again.
Let me slip below; part your fingers,
cast my blood, and set my flesh
that I may never be tested,
and you may never need remembrance.
My love. My life.

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.

Spring is a placeholder.
It reminds me of a time;
I held my breath, a little too long,
but I would not lose face, not in front of my brother.
Someone had to show him, someone had to put him in his place.
But now he lives in Charlotte and his daughter doesn’t call anymore.
He was so in love, once.
I had tried so hard to imagine what that must have been like.
I can’t even picture her now. What was her name?
It doesn’t matter.

She doesn’t matter–he tells himself.

Spring is a placeholder.
It reminds me of my brother;
tight little curls around his ears that made his face turn red
when someone pointed them out.
I held my breath–a little too long–because it was just a stupid game, probably.
But I would not lose face, not in front of him.
Someone had to show him, someone had to put him in his place.
But now he lives in Charlotte and his daughter doesn’t call anymore.
I didn’t think that heroes could live in such a boring place.
He was so in love, once.
I can remember trying to imagine what that must have been like.
I can see myself being him, trying to be someone else.
But I can’t even picture her now. What was her name?
It doesn’t matter.