With night sky
there is usually
a moon there.
Usually.
But not always.
A pale surface
beaten into—
An expression,
as if saying,
"I am tired.
I have seen too much."

So potent was the resemblance,
so rich the imitation,
of meadows of wandering green,
with some red (tulips)
breaking through.

But careful not to chip the paint.
You drunkenly mistook the vivid
for the real. It was not real.
Here is the origin
of your sadness.

You were once enchanted by
the atmosphere we created.

Like emerging from childhood,
the world filling in. Frame by frame.
Into something more miraculous
than you thought possible.

So we laughed at a brittle winter.
The sharp tree branches not to be feared
but to be loved for their nakedness.

There's a song
that forces my memory back
to a train in Chicago.
I watched through the window
the trees passing.

Two days.
The warmth of your body
and the warmth of the fire
indiscernibly bound.
Embraced as we were.
Woven as our hearts were
in the Winter, just west
of Chicago.

The two of us, suspended,
stunned but not questioning,
our ability to feel
the absolute brilliance of things.

We all swing back and forth.
Half the time there is darkness
which we get lost in.
Sleep:
where we again meet the people
who at some point made our hearts bleed.
And again,
they do that.
This time in darkness, but still with the color.

The dawn breaks because the world turns.
I see that the Sun exists.
Which it also did yesterday.

When I remember
pressing my face against your neck
and tucking it under your hair
and kissing your ear,
it's the smell that overwhelms me.

In memory, it's more like a color.
A brand new color.
A more beautiful color.
In delicate hues it comes and goes as I breathe.
I breathe deeply to try to capture it.

But I can't steal the rawest of your beauty.
Although I may, for a moment, remember the joy it gave me.