a bard believes in love
with all that he is
and all that he has

holds it in
his two trembling hands
regards warily sometimes
as judge, jury, garroter

making a home on
this island in the middle
of a vast ocean was
an act fueled by love

and maybe there’s a story
to be written here
about the lines in a
sea captain’s handsome face
carved there by roaring
wind and raucous laughter

maybe there’s a story
in the way a siren’s flame-red
hair fans out around her lithe form
where she stretches to gift
the bard pearls and a promise
of never being alone again

and maybe there’s a story
in the way a kitchen witch
welcomes the bard into her home
and a seat at her grand table
holds him steady against
the rocking of a weather
beaten pirate ship

there’s a story in these people
the bard has willingly tied himself to
how he immortalizes them in love
and the written word

keeping the lighthouse
like a beacon and a promise
of a love not like a choke-chain
but a fistful of flowers freely given
again and again and again

it’s something like a love letter,
the bard thinks to himself,
draping a well-worn jacket
over the captain’s shoulders

you’ve returned to me again
followed that bright beam
from an island lighthouse
out of the ocean depths

and over the wooden floorboards
to this table,
laden with the kind of soft
cookies you like,
and just the right amount of ***

and certainly there must be
a kind of magic imbued
in the way the captain
glances at the bard
with a twinkle in his eye

that hints at the star
he used to be,
when he sailed towards
a much closer horizon

and watching the captain
wrapped in his coat for a change,
the bard remembers why
he fell in love with the captain
all over again

and when the captain
has sailed out upon that
vast and salty ocean once again,
the bard will press his face
into a jacket sleeve that

the smell of the captain
still lingers on,
and pretend that fabric
were his wind-worn skin instead

and think to himself, yes,
there is surely something like a love letter in this

you made me feel
like i was hard to love
and that’s something i
can’t find it in me
to forgive you for

after all, what good
am i to you
if there’s no ***?

seems like the answer
to that is a naive and
generous $400 and that
hoodie you stole from me

i told myself that if you
were happy, that was
enough for me,
for 5 ******* months

and what do i have to
show for it?

a last dinner together
that you were 40 minutes
late for, that i ate alone,
which is ironically the best
meal i’d ever had with you

and i think of you
years from now
doing to another partner
what you did to me

and in the midst of this
anger and hurt, i pity you

because, dearheart
when it comes to lasting love,
selflessness, reciprocity,
and symbiosis

your cup doesn’t
runneth over

it just runs out

the pecans i buy
are not for me,
can’t justify a price tag
like that on myself

but when i see them
on the grocery store shelves
where the star bucks baristas
know me by name
all i think about is you

pecan sandies, mostly
but it goes good with pumpkin, too
and i know you’d agree

and i think about all these
things i have baked for you,
like trying to fill that hollow place
in both of us with sustenance
will make that darkness
a little less oppressive

who’s to say it won’t?

and there must be something holy
in the flour dusted on my black shirt,
hot oven in an even hotter kitchen
when you asked me so sweetly
for something i had never made before
and how am i supposed to say no

how could i?

and you weren’t mine to love,
much less fall in love with

but, just the same,
that’s not something i can bring
myself to regret

stranger with my face,
where have you been?

i realize in therapy today
that i do not know my father

can’t remember the color of his eyes
or his address,
but i still know what he used to drink
when i was a small boy,
and surely that counts for something

old crow grog,
bottle pushed far back enough
on top of the fridge that i
couldn’t reach

and i guess i should thank
him for that,
shouldn’t i?

but if that’s all i have to thank
my father for
whose dna i share half of,
then what’s the ******* point?

tell me how i find the poetry
in a father that abused me
and then abandoned me

this man that didn’t want me
when i still thought i was his daughter,
and really didn’t want me for a son

what do i do with that?
how do i make it stop hurting?
how much gauze must i pack into
this gaping and gangrenous wound that
my childhood left
before it stops bleeding for good?

i was a kid,
i was just a kid
that needed his father,

but that’s never been something
i was willing to beg for,
nor should i have to

a bard falls in love
and then lies to himself
about it for what feels
like a very long time

easy enough to say
that flashes of long blond hair
and blue eyes could just be
a trick of the light

surely this kickdrum in
his untrimmed chest
is the same as a pounding
headache from trying
to drown out this aching
with a different kind of amber

but when the bottle is dry
all that’s left is a steadfast
kind of certainty
that the only lie here is
his own fears

and the heart wants what it wants
compass he’s not quite sure
how to read

pointing in only one direction
leading him around the bend
and through the nights
to your front stoop

knocking with steady hands
and hoping you’ll open
the door

the witch comes to visit
with soup and a story
sets an old *** on
the bard’s little wood-burning stove
and he watches as she works,
perched on a stool

and the witch, she tells
the bard about the stars,
how they always remember
and live for thousands of years

there is one star in particular
she weaves a tapestry about
with her words,
but only where that star cannot hear
taken by pirate ship upon the waves

she speaks, with something like
fondness and resignation
about how this star,
he fell in love with the moon

and when the moon was
too far for him to follow
his love turned towards the ocean
and how it stretches from
one end of the horizon to the other

the bard knows this star well,
of course, often wakes with him
slumbering still, between the
bard and the closed bedroom door

the witch then asks the bard
what he is tied to
and the bard tells her who
he is anchored to

and, setting a bowl of
soup on the well-worn table,
the witch says, with unmistakable
fondness this time,
“then you are a fool, bard of mine”

the bard nods in agreement,
almost tells the witch he
only eats lunch for her,
but suspects she already knows,
so says instead,
“aye, and a fool in love
is the very worst kind”

and the witch will agree,
because the bard is right

but, she will also tell
the bard how this star,
he loves a man
with scars through his eyebrow
and across the palm of his hand
from building a widow’s walk
with the star’s name on his tongue
the whole time

and there is an honesty
in loving someone to the point
of creation again and again,
is there not?