I say goodbye to you often,
in letters and scribbled clouds, penned and hidden
under the keyboard on your desk.
tucked small and sleepy, as I pack in
your wake.

and just as frequently,
per month,
you greet with
wishful kisses, me teetering
unbalanced, off the escalator,
luggage strap, cold nose, bags dangling.

a myriad collection, sealed with "love you" texts,
taxi chits and spoon wrappers.
is this our way now?
our days, a matrimonial, cross-country conundrum.
a strung together , part time marriage,
intermittently stamped by the vested men,
marked by my travel clock,
wrapped in your worn out coat
and bolstered by the broken bed...

back to our separate hemispheres,
in such a hurry.

thread by thread it
is Cut.

scissors crafted from entwined roads
battered cities,  unknowingly sheared away by miles
promises snipped.

blunt cost computed-

Paid in full.

balancing on the tops of trees, I
see everything, still,
in clarity, in the sharpsmooth confines
of my frustratingly stoic pre-frontal cortex

I sluggishly struggle through  the snarls and tangles
of my "emotional conundrums"
to quell the misfiring synapses still bouncing wetly within.
no pressure to focus
no tactile center to make it stop
the speeding car we nearly didn't miss
the feeling of this space
gently and dangerously adrift.

the shakes of a savior
who feels like a fool.

I  really didn't want
to have to skip school.

I didn't know that
this is how you see-
how you feel
how you do
how you survive...

Unaware of the fight
waging silently in your guts
or the marks of the years
upon your wrists,
like the partial rings of a tree.

I have the ears of a listener
The rules of a King
but still, all your words often fall deaf
on my nodding head-
What kind of guide, am I then?

I give you license and praise
to mark the stone
bearing mind that I feel false,
in my own direction-
a fault of my own.

She lives in

the shaky in-between-place.
the sigil behind walls.
the cracks through which
daisies spring,
where the
cold sunlight falls.

I am the Autumn wind
blowing its way through...
Harsher than a broken
spring.
Tougher than the tightest trap.
And  even yet, Zephyr,
I still feel I've
failed
you.

I ache with Alone
we are hand in hand

empty to the bones
the lines I can't leave
on the surface of my
Maybe skin.

Sorrow is the hood
with which I cloak my ears

All I do now is
wait for the Rain.