There are moments.
I want to scream
Your name
Out loud
Not so everyone could
Hear
But so I could
Loud and clear
To let it surround me
To remind me of
Your eyes
Your smile
The awkward
The lovely
You are
All these things
To me
You are
Who you are
I would drown in
Your ocean
Just to breathe
Your air
To bask in
Your sunshine
I would scream
Your name
Out loud
So I might feel,
Somehow
You could
Surround
Me.

-D.D.

If we were a tree
I guess I might say,
It's been quite a while
Since we started to sprout

I know we've branched out
But I trace back down
To see the roots have spread
Staying anchored to the ground

The winds may howl,
Thunder may strike
But try as they might
They can't knock us down

As we grow together
Towards the sky, rooted to the earth
This growth it goes to show
The seeds were planted right.

-D.D.

The train changes tracks and
there is a pull, a deep sighing
of engine and steam

We glide from platform into water,
the train dipping beneath cool waves
into a mercury world  

Far down
dragon-fish watch me through the window,
their silver stripes like seaweed
splayed in slow motion,
moving left, then right

Like my sister’s hair
that summer in the Red River,  
my parents fell asleep in the sun
lips stained with wine,
forgetting she couldn’t swim

Her fingertips reaching for light,
a stream of bubbles surfacing,
signaling the quiet struggle

How long have I been dreaming you,
grasping handfuls of water in my sleep,
searching for the memory of your body?

Deeper down the light burns a cold red
The train groans under the weight of the sea

And she is taking me,
the sea is taking me,
a lost child in her great arms
to the red darkness below

The dragon-fish rise,
their eyes a road of stars
I cannot follow.

Sitting up late watching the Munsters and eating cheese popcorn and listening to my teeth crackle and writing down whatever this mixed up mind sends to the hands through the pen that’s chewed to the end and three days of ***** dishes stuffed in the oven where I don’t have to look at them and I wish I was somewhere exotic drinking White Russians and dancing to some Cajun beat with a tall dark-haired stranger I once saw in a dream back in the days of sleep-ins and late nights of laugh therapy before the days of real therapy and heavy sessions of what happened to me when I was five or fifteen or that night I got a little too close to that guy in the other lane and sunrises were a walk home after a night of who cares and where was I anyway?

I stand with the living
under a smoke filled pavilion
where shots of whiskey fill tall glasses
and dogs run free

Someone sings my eulogy on a karaoke machine
children color my headstone with
Sapphire Blue and Burnt Orange #10

The music of my dying
sweeps across the gaping earth on a dusty wind
fills it with the voices of the living

My children fly kites in the field
yelling out the stories of their births

You were born in a snowstorm
You were born under a full moon
I was born at sunrise!  the baby yells

The kites swirl, tangle
fall

They huddle and cry
I feel the world crack open

Remember me, whispers the dust

Outside the sky clogs like bruises
I lay in bed and smoke, thinking
you have disappointed me for the last time

I dream I am in bed with a new lover
watching my reflection in his eyes

The way he says my name, like prayer
like scripture
as if he has come into a sacred place
and each touch must preserve even while it plunders

Last night the bed was a nest of nerves and wrong turns
knees bumping out of rhythm
the scraping of teeth
my ring catching your skin

And the red luminous glow of the alarm clock
measuring the long hours of frustration

Then the crack of a beer can opening
and the sound of your ****
splashing across the toilet seat
in the dark

And in that moment I knew
the problem was you

and not

the absence of my *******.