I hate it when you go to bed
and I'm still awake -
which is
every night.
I miss you
while you sleep.

You say the heart just pumps blood in its natural lub dub, lub dub.
If that’s true, my blood rushes through each chamber to the rhythm of you.
If the moon pulls the tide, then the water in my body is pulled by your eyes.
Specifically what’s behind them.
Who you are and how you grind
--just the man you are has respect on my mind.

In the past I have canon balled into the pool with all the bravado of a romantic fool.
Now I’m standing by the edge nervous and hot.
Wanting to swim and feel the rushing cool,
but I’m not.

You sit on the edge, all smiles and ease. Legs in the water, splashing and free.
Yet you tell me it’s cold.
I’m being warned of the water.
While your arms reach up, pulling me closer~

Clouds, flat-bottomed as an iron skillet
slapped down on the range-top of this broad sky,
speak bluntly of rain.
The ground cracks, mud-dry
from summer’s grinding hot whisper that yet
sows blankets of saffron dust and disquiet.
Thunder grumbles, snapping out lighting, wry-
necked and surly as an old dog, denied
his usual dark-cool-under-porch billet.


In just such weather I stand, face turned up.
Stupid as a sheep in the rain, eyes and mouth
full of water, ripped down from the fractured
black belly of the storm. Immobile and enraptured
by the grey drops’ wet weight of broken drought,
dead-end of August overflows my hands’ cup.

See,
the thing is,
I don't believe you
anymore.
Maybe
you used to want to be mine
but that time is
gone.
Now you're just
being nice.

I want your daily, your casual.
I want your stubbed toe and to know if pain causes you to curse or punch.
I want your mornings - quiet, eyes soft, looking into mine~