I thought
I know—

I'll write a poem about another love,
one of those boys from
one of those poems
that I wrote
before you,

and in doing so
I will ease this ache,
I will appease
the part of me
that just wants
to be wanted,

you know?

But, no—
I couldn't conjure their kisses,
nor did I want to.
They were just 
boys from 
those poems
that I wrote
before you.

In the early spring,
we hung brightly colored yarn
from the low branches.
It would slowly disappear;
above, brilliant nests were built.

Born of the same star,
you and I,
cradled in the arms
of a spiral galaxy;
our dreams for  death were

bird, volcano, reef

and we did not go easy—
no soft snap of filament,
or  cosmic campfire left to smolder.

We were spectacular;

but that was a billion years ago.
Now we have no word
for the infinite nostalgia
of those aeons spent sleeping,

no reason we can think of
that every night before we met
felt like a thousand light years, collapsed.

When I was eight, I threw a rock at my cat.
I wanted something to love me, and he
didn't. Unfamiliar with rage and unskilled
at throwing rocks, I missed and hit the fence.
I was and am ashamed of this.
I wasn't that kind of kid.

Once, a boy sent me photos from Scotland,
daybreak over  the snowy moors where he
hunted grouse with his father. He was skinny,
and sweet. I stopped writing him because I
had a thousand words for love, and he
couldn't spell any of them.

And once, I took your love for granted. It was vanity;
I felt like the lost works of a prolific master.
I wanted someone to delight in discovering me,
to wonder where I had been. It was easy to
blame you; all those years and you didn't
know what you had.

If you believe in all possible universes,
I aimed for the fence and hit the cat.
I married a sweet, skinny boy who will never
love a poem. I never had anything to prove
and I don't need you to forgive me.

I only said I love you once,
one early morning while you slept.
I was quiet so as not to wake you;
I said it softly, then I left.

I wasn't sure I meant it then;
if I loved, I did so badly,
to let it wait until the day
that I could only say it sadly.

When the word over finally made sense,
I shook you from me
like water,

like sleep.

I let you walk me home last night
in a freezing March downpour;
I said you shouldn't love me
and for that, you loved me more.

I want you to miss me so much

that when we kiss
I find our last kiss
still melting slowly
on your tongue.

these things are best written about later,
when you could be anyone, and I can lie
(as heartsick yet composed narrator)
about small things, like *'I really tried.'

Bedtime, little moonbeam.
See the stars? They're sleepy, too—
all blinky-eyed and snuggled in
like you need to do;

but the very, very moment
that you drift off into slumber,
the whole world sighs and smiles
at you, its dreaming little wonder,

and the bunnies in their hutches
and the sparrows in their nests,
they sleep, too, my little moon,
all fuzzy, warm and blessed

to have spent another perfect day
with a perfect girl like you.
Now tomorrow waits to meet you,
and I'll be waiting, too.

a distant dog barking
at three a.m.
because the night is big
and the chain is short

and sometimes
from another dark backyard
another murky alley, lit by bare bulb
from the end of another chain, tied to a different tree,

a commiserating howl.

letting her warm the sheets
of yesterday's beds,
time and time
and time
again.

When you said
what we have is magic
I didn't think it meant
you'd disappear.

Felt good to be warm. Felt good to find
somewhere quiet. Felt good to be ankle
deep in the river, to be knee deep in the
river. Felt good to get your hair wet. Felt
good to let the mud on your legs dry in the
sun. Felt good to dig your hands through to
cool earth. Felt good to close your eyes. Felt
good when he touched you just as a breeze
went hushhh through the trees. Smelled like
rain, and God, that felt good. It felt good.

Evening swells and spills
across his back and farther.
I collect handfuls.

You obviously don't speak silence
or you would have heard me say

*Stay.

we grew up poor together
and didn't really like each other,
but when you have nothing, it's nice
to have company,

so we did what poor kids do; we stuck together,

taking breaks from being poor in the afternoon woods,
where nobody was dressed nicer than us
and the creek didn't care
that our shoes didn't fit.

Anna, I love you because
nobody knew how sad we were.

The moon only wants everything,
her net always cast;
greed versus gravity.

The only things Earth cannot
hold fast to
are oceans and imagination.

Seeking refuge,
I appeal to your memory
of love.

If you remember blithe abandon,
the thump and swing 
of a heart unhinged,

then light a fire for me in this dark night;

if you know that 
what the eye discerns as reluctance
is often fear

then kindle something brave in me
and fan the flames with patience
until they become
inferno.

Love made, pillow fight;
you draw moons on my eyelids
and kiss them goodnight.

Silken assassin, pharaoh of swift,
serrated deaths— you look so cute
with milk in your whiskers.

I think of something I'd like to tell you
in my bedtime voice, from a shared pillow
into your warm ear, but can't – so

I hide our secrets inside verses and
I author universes where, despite love's
disappointments, you're still here.

The cold crouches.
Perched, ankles numb,
I quake with joy—
thorny with cold, slow
but hopeful.

On white horizon,
fire licks sky.
It comes
like comets, like horsemen.
I knew it would.

You rewrite me.

I learn the hieroglyph for longing,
the derivative of sigh.
Ours is a softly spoken love

and I'm a breathless scribe.

Liz had hers on a Wednesday afternoon
in her car. She tells me about it over lunch;
a backseat full of groceries and halfway home,
she felt something breaking inside her,
so she drove to the lake and sat very still, waiting.

Then it happened, she says, I broke right open.
I wept, then sobbed, then wailed. There was no bottom.

She says she may have even fallen asleep, she doesn't know;
she does know that she eventually stopped crying,
that inside she felt like the fields must feel after a hard rain.

Here, she says, moving her hand to her chest, I just felt brand new again.
I'm a better wife now, she says, a better person.

Good, Liz, good, I say.

I don't tell her about that morning in the shower,
when the water warmed me but could not console me,
or how I'm no better for it.

We were warworn; you were weary with
my wild, wayward theories
and as I worried, so it worsened.
That's the way.

You were waygone from your wanderings;
I was waiting for you, always.
You were wolfish, but
I wanted you to stay.

I couldn't sing the hymns,
but I could recreate you
in the corners of my eyes
so that you could walk through the door
in a storm of miracles
and we could all gather on the lawn
in our summer sweaters and our sweet perfume
to laugh about how scared we were.

There was no battle cry
or first shot fired.
The clip clip of doom's hooves
was far away

and I never felt its hot breath on my neck—
               I never felt its hot breath on my neck

You weren't my enemy.
I loved you
but he thump thump of love's drum
was far away

and I had killed you with an arrow sweetly fletched—
               *I had killed you with an arrow sweetly fletched.

The wrong thing
seduces the heart
into a quiet corner
and the right thing
kills it.

tactic: write very
small so you have
to lean closer.

Should it matter what we call it?
What sound our mouths make?
That's just typology, interpretation;
my love for words doesn't mean
I find them adequate.
Do we have to call it anything?

Can't I just say
*I will love you tonight, 
like that girl you write poems for,
only better ?

On thirsty days
I curse the sun,
kick up dirt and
beat my drums
and call the rain

(it always comes.)

My father, in those moments
of what almost seemed like
hope for me,
would push back his cap,
tap his forehead and say

This is the only thing no one can ever take from you.
It's the only thing that's yours.

His brilliance was his only pride.

When I left his house,
I took only what was mine.

You say
finish it

like  I have fallen upon you
a moonlit mercenary
eyes bright in the dangerous night

to find you sleeping,
unguarded;

like you opened your eyes
to an almost kiss

as I lowered myself for the ****;

like I would sink,
blade deep—
close enough, 
finally;

like I wouldn't love you still.

So you are not fooled
by pretty perfumed bombs
that explode in clouds of kisses
and whispers of yes,

not outfoxed
by foxiness,
sleight of hand
and hips

not suckered
by my puckered
lips

and yet
you gladly fall
for all my tricks.

I learned early
that to speak too soon
or too often
of love

gave words
and weight to
my little prophecy
of loss—

so I stopped speaking.
I carved and polished
my heart into
a Japanese puzzle box

that both discouraged
and excited
with a precise
sequence of 

sliding parts
half twists
secret drawers
and dead ends

so that

by the time 
hands trembled
with the imminence
of conquest

and before the 
contents
could disappoint,

I could be a safe
distance away

saying

*you must have broken it.

Last night I wanted you to stay,
so I gave a bit of me away.

This morning, only one regret;
would I always be a brandished breast?
a glimpse of stockinged thigh, outstretched?

Or could I cool it down a few degrees?
Long enough for you to see

that of all the ways I know to please,
my body is but one of these.

Still night;
eyes keen,
sheets unfurled—
sails.

The night, sometimes,
swims with sad fish.

The night, sometimes,
is a ritual drowning.

Lonely, I consider waking you
to say

*Look—
the stars are bioluminescent, baby.

I have this hot pink heart with lace taped to the edges,
and these deep, deep truths that I suspect might be lies;
I have this system for secrets and, though softly imperfect,
I do have a pair of magnificent thighs.
I have this floodplain soul that's a place for the thirsty
and *****, but sometimes it's still not enough.
I cradle my faults like things that need saving, and
sometimes I burn with shame just like with love.
I have this leaf in my hair that I picked up while walking;
it was pretty, that early, still covered in frost.
It's not much, what I have, but it's more than I came with.
I'm counting my blessings since you counted your loss.

I used to be your
grinning goddess,
tangled, finished,

and you, my proud tiger.

Now it's cool kisses
and a tidy bed.
We're nothing like we were
back then.

The sheets yet to cool and the sun yet
to rise, I've already practiced an easy
goodbye– but seeing you wreathed in
sheets, sleepy, pleased, feels unkind when
you're just a dream I have sometimes.

You have a flying machine.
I have the afternoon off.
Let's meet where we used to,

huddled under mossy eaves,
fumbling with rented keys;

you can call me Gypsy Rose 
and I can call you Captain.

The last time I saw
you was in a parking
lot in January. You
were in town for your
father's funeral; my
oranges had tumbled out
of the cart and into
the snow and it was
really very
pretty.