Looking down on clouds above
The atmosphere,
I let my eyes close and
Hear you whisper to me
From a dream of a night we spent
Kissing and passed loving and
Holding tight.
I told you
I was yours to keep
And you said you'd hold on to me.

Now I glance up: in the aisle
Waiting eyes for watered down
Coffee and a pleasant smile;
I oblige.

           Out the window

Pillow clouds, cotton white
And blue below my eyes,
Below my thoughts of you
Soft by deception, not the truth.
Though part of me would like to be fooled.

When I look at the moon, I feel someone looking back.  
He, something, knows how lonely I am.
I turn around; I cannot shake the sense
That standing
Just to my back
Was someone watching me watch the moon,
Helping me to hold you
In my heart.

How do streams decide
where to go?
I guess they just
follow the mountain down
until the down
is going up.

And when this is true,
you cannot call it stream,
for it no longer moves.
It is still and calm,
and ripe for swimming.

So let's disrobe and
celebrate the death
of stream,
now turned placid,
forgetting it's dream
of meeting the ocean
in salted praise.
Is it strange
to pity a lake?

Sometimes I think scary things in the shower—
How it would feel to really hit someone,
or what if I dropped out of school?
You died and now I am forgetting
your voice.

Sometimes I don’t think
anything—I just stand,
letting water slide across my shoulders
course down my arms,
pool at the tips of my fingers
and fall.

I used to sing in the shower,
but one day I quit
and now my voice sounds foreign
so I keep it hushed.

I start to sway,
catching myself with a ****.
Swiftly consciousness comes
dripping back down my wet face.
My hands are wrinkled—
I’ve never hit anyone,
or stolen grandma’s ring.
I can’t get any cleaner.

On nights before a storm
I can hear the sky
A quiet rumble
Rising from the earth,
Ancient in its echoing

As I lie next to you,
Wondering if you’re wondering
The same thing,
How the sky seems so unending
And yet is not,
I watch your eyelids close,
And think how we are not unlike
This sky

Sometimes raining
And others pure,
But we’ll climb too high
To breathe the atmosphere
And we’ll descend
Into the echoes
Of what we could have been

How strong I can recall
Summer’s cut grass
Damp from the thick
Southern air
We danced with plastic castles
In our arms
Dodging sprinklers
In neighbors’ yards
A child’s bliss
Ignoring calls
Of supper and setting suns
We ran on

Wet concrete
Beneath my feet
Felt like sand
And salt marsh breeze
Wandered gentle
Through my hair
Not quite a beach
But nearly there

Then quietly
The whirr of mowers
Disappeared
Summer’s white noise
Cut from my ears

We ambled home
Tired in and out
Called back by good request
Of stomach’s pleading
And light’s arrest

My chest was forged for your head to rest on
Made by a blacksmith with the best intentions
Your head seems light, made so by affection
Which grows each time I catch your faults