i feel like i owe you a love letter
(or at least an apology):
my love
letters have always been born
of spark, burning bits of bark
or grass, ash -- elements consumed by morning
fed to wind
departed

i do not love
you flash and fade
surge then break

you are underneath all the soil
you are warm and solid and everything
we move together everywhere, slow
but always together moving:
until the heart goes ice we are
together moving, and even in silence
in darkness we will be together
unmoving

i do not love you thunder
i love you stream:
sometimes roar but often murmur
heard but hidden somewhere among the oaks and maples
not tucson wash that flows twice a year
but new york stream that ices over,
floods springtime, bows deep into late summer,
always cuts
steady etch deeper every day until we are
grand canyon love,
see it from space love,
lasts like mountains love

i wish
i could write
these words
smaller,
origami them
through your pores
dissolve them into
your blood

feels
too true
to be
louder
than whisper

he's on the news again
all anyone talks about is
how they wish everyone would stop talking about him

i try switching off the radio, the newsfeed, the idle coworker chitchat
dig down to that layer of earth somewhere safe from winter bite but not quite mantle heat
and i bury my head in that goldilocks soil

my mom always said that if you ignore bullies
they go away so my ostrich head incubates
among the worms until i feel like maybe
it's spring and i start to hatch and send
my shoots up toward the sun but
when i wake up everything is
shadow because
he took my silence as invitation and grew and grew and grew
and now there's no room left
not even to breathe

he said
write something that scares you

i'm terrified of heights

i climbed up a cliff
in the shawangunks last weekend
there were no poems there, just
rock, just
chalk and cracks and rope and harness and
shaking and don't look down and
me

i don't conquer fears but
sometimes we cuddle
i am always the little spoon
it means i cannot feel the full shape of them
only the small part pressed against my back
the part wrapped around me
the part breathing on my neck
every sound a promise

some days are too many pictures
falling fast like tetris blocks just before the end
and i twist-try to fit in the gaps between the incomplete lines
my body fills the spaces that i couldn't close
i try to brick myself in corset-tight
stretch the laces and slather the mortar until
there is no room for breath,
for pause, for reflect, for what if
all of this is wrong if maybe
i'm playing this wrong if maybe
i just need a pickaxe to break through this wall
of juggle, of yellow-light-gas-pedal, need to
tear down this wall and build a
cathedral, a place to rest,
something beautiful that always points up

it is enough
to have a body, to
stretch and bend my body, to
drink the radiant warmth of
other bodies, to press our
navels together because we can
grow no closer (only stronger)
and a thousand tiny threads stretch from
our hearts and weave together
until we are cloth and cartilage and sinew until
we are tapestry
it is good

iridium flare:
   when the sun-glint off a
   satellite shines meteor-bright
   before geometry and gravity
   turn things wrong again.

---

i have my own iridium flare - it
sits on my night stand, my
sad-lite -- machine-made splinter of
sunlight to remind my solar cells what
summer felt like

my depression is a discharged battery:
i turn the engine but the engine doesn't turn
doesn't matter that i have to go to work, or
already paid for the class, or my
friend is waiting for me

ivy grows over me   heavy on my limbs

i need something stronger than volition
than one twenty volts or ten thousand steady desk lamp lux
i need lighting, mjolnir, asteroid
fire from heaven to
burn through these roots to
repolarize these synaptic terminals

i need july and hollow bones and
feathers   need mountain tops and
sunny days   need summer breeze
reaching underneath me  lifting me from
ridgeline   elevating higher until i
am cloud   am stratosphere   am
escape velocity   until i am starburst   am
pre-dawn august constellation smiling
down   smiling and finally
meaning it

Deep in the creek
where speckled light kisses the saline shore
and mud hole bubbles leave crab trails
I knock upon her door.

She opens with a whisper on her skin
licks my **** with her southern tongue
winds rise the dusts within
the mangrove falls quiet to her moaning song.

I doubt it could have been good
It smelled like fruit set on fire
With a crunch I don’t think was intended
And the conflicting taste had me unsure what I was eating

But love is a strong flavor
That makes burnt air smell like vanilla
Ashes taste like cinnamon
And make me say “I love it”