I feel it all slipping through my fingers
I can see the darkness creeping in
The highs and lows
I can feel my love for you hiding
Running away
To where she is safe
I can feel my heart
Closing
Trying to run
I can feel the gulp in the back of my throat
The feeling in my stomach
The tears on my cheeks
And I can see the road ahead
One that I continue to walk alone

I designed on a string from my ❤️ to yours
the twists and loops of yesterday
Celtic rings in tactile squares
a monochromatic dream sequence
in patchwork futures of sutured memories

large squares of Bay Bridge yesterdays
smaller ones on seagulls' wings
I'm still working on a future
every stitch in time lost and loved

it smells like me...

a gift to wrap the long and lonely nights in love
where months of me are woven into miles
that tether my ❤️ to yours

I'd hoped to be done by your birthday
it lies unfinished
a bin of fragmented dreams...
...maybe I'll finish by Christmas

just to feel close to the ghost of you

262 555- 5555 and i
can see
well enough to drive.99 pages

I am swinging my arms.

I take my white hand
and in your freest moment
I will
dress wounds whose polar
regions,

like my heart, sigh with
slogans.

Be mine says the moments
transcendent.

Catch me through the rye.
You will hear the singing

Grass Harp telling you of
love and growing things.

"Love is a chain of love"
wound around the
farthest star.  

Listen to me.  December
Is a stone's throw away.

I fall and there are
little kindness especially
holding me. Precariously

I wait for a season's
diminish.  A cry of

     sadness
in the face of
Winter's approach.

         Stay me then
into June …

and. Beyond.



Caroline Shank
10.31.2023