Standing in the kitchen window late afternoon heavy in the Southwest United States and he is looking at her and he is thinking and he says it out loud
You are looking so much better
And more so much more
Alive your cheeks are less like the caves and more like
The peaches in the orchard that we walked before the innocence was taken

Through the window old trees converse about the passing breeze and there is a chill in what they say for it is never for us to know.

She turns from the pane and she looks at him and she nods her head and she says
For a time, before it happened, I believed that all things passed and that was so wrong for. Nothing passes, nothing heals, and nothing fades. It is all right here in me like it were the minute before. *She quiets for a breath.
It was not until after, long after that I learned this
That this meant also that nothing dies                                  she looks straight at him now
Nothing dies she says again
Nothing dies and I see the most beauty ever to weigh on my heart
in the face of an illegitimate child disappeared in a swinging screen door or in
the time I am alone awake before anyone wakes up
Or in the neighbors along the way putting a candle in the window for Christmas.             do you understand?
I don’t know why but I live to see these things
I guess because someone must see them. When they come I am the only one that is there to see. And when they pass, they justify my place here and right now, for I am the only one that saw.
The last syllable of her sentence is uttered in a calm note and everything follows and is right,
ugly as it is,
it must be seen and every part of the story is and will be what it is.

They in this moment in this place
among a million
always passing but never passed
always they share the same air, the same words upon this page.

*He has nothing to say so she turns back to the window and its okay and he thinks that he loves her but he does not say it out loud this time.

it is nothing I could begin to say to you
for it came to be without words
without sound
but not quiet

it was with the sound of something as you look upon it
The hum of tiny waves
shadow   not shadow   and the space beneath, that is to say,
between

life without a need to be
without purpose,
failure and not failure so close together because (finally I saw) they are not separate

it was steps that unfolded to infinity around the block
and around again (sic transit gloria mundi)
it was arms swinging like pendulums past ribcage clock faces
waving away the concept of time
In this small corner of the world
it was saying thank you for handing me over to solitude and meaning it
dying in order to let me heal you
it was following the jet trails with fingertips touching them like you taught me to
it was letting the poetry come in and pass through and move off
not holding it in, anymore
When I learned for the first time, to write.
it was when I heard something behind me
it was       I am.
it was when I drove on the freeway and the cloud broke and we passed out into the sunlight at 67 miles per hour, even though I was alone
when I was disturbed with the thought
today (dei gratia) I am happy to be alive.

Green was your favorite color.

with my heart
and when it broke, my soul
and with time,  sacred and ethereal, that too
bent beneath you

then it was with only with might
that I was able to hold your head to my chest
as you cried and as

in passing,
you overcame that too

impossible: still I loved you still I loved you *still I loved you

Something in the way shapes take tonight
The lilt of cello bones
tastes of far reaching

I think the trees moved
reaching into the road
light pools
to put things into my head

I want to lay each sentence into lines
in the way that heart beats
thick and heavy
only to pick them up into my lungs
little devil hands little devils hands

to
lead me off the road

your eyes and
the night that I forgot to drive on the wrong side of the road
drifted slowly to meet the mud bank
anyway
gaze intent at my hands in the half light
Wrapped around roots like a farewell embrace
that moment of elongated suspension

like the last time they spoke

pause and breath
pulled in and pushed out
and
lift
For the first time since I was five
The rush falls away
there sits the world

goodb

--
*ye

Conscience, consuming.
My stomach has turned inside
and in on itself.

My eyes have rotted
and reduced to such lifeless,
stationary orbs.

Today is the day,
I ***** my weaknesses
to teach myself strength.

I won't spit out your bones.
Instead I'll carry them,
nestle them under my throat, bear
them like I bore my love for you:
That is, carelessly,
cutting at my throat and ******* until
my forearms stain and an earthquake
thunders down, showcasing the other
fossils I have buried before you.