She tossed the kindling:
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the bridge.

The wind whipped her lace dress,
as lightning flashed,
and she gave a secretive grin
before the thunder raged at the night.

She hummed something;
not quite a song,
but not not a song either
while she longed to laugh
like the people in a painting
or cry like a widow on the news.

The flames danced gracefully
under the angry sky,
and she danced too;
small feral motions,
and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing,
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered,
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

She tossed the kindling
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the sturdy bridge.

The wind whipped her white lace dress,
and lightning flashed
as she smiled a secretive grin
before the thunder kicked at the night.

The flames danced with so much grace
under the angry sky,
and she danced with them;
small feral motions and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

Your love is addicting –
like…
******* in my beard
on a Tuesday night.

Teach me to see
as an infant:
I need everything to be
for the first time again.

I want to watch you bleed –
into the subtext and margins
of my notebook
so we can dispense with the periods.

Your sweat is bitter
like dreams deferred,
but I still long to lick
your mind and taste your voice.

Our humanity does not lie in our goodness,
but rather it exists within our flaws,
for it's our flaws that make us interesting,
and it was because of this that I found
my aunt to be the most interesting person in the world;
for she was flawed in the most exquisite ways.

She was nothing short of a legend in my family.
Her deeds were not spoken of in day-light,
but whispered about late evenings
amidst closely clustered kitchen tables.

I remember hearing lurid tales:
she's been married twenty times -
she's been arrested before -
she's knocked out a boy's front teeth.

I never knew if these tales were true or not,
and I hope to never find out either.

I'll believe them; I'll believe in HER -
as she believed in me before:
as she believed in love and excess.
We talked shortly before her death,
What good is a life without regrets?

He sat watching as the love dripped out of her,
like broth dribbling off the spoon back into the bowl;
each drop of pho causing ripples of warmth.

He wished to plunge deep inside of her soul,
to penetrate her mind and pause briefly, but
long enough to see how much love remained.

He watched as her hands became a swarm of bees,
her brown eyes turning to fire as she spoke,
and in this moment she was still beautiful.

His heart writhed while slowly realizing that,
it doesn't matter how much you love someone.
Sometimes love just isn't nearly enough.

In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;

When all around you saw darkness,
you gazed at the stars.

Everyone wants to paint their pain,
but only you, Vincent,
channeled that awful torment
into beauty
immaculate and sublime;
only you, dear Vincent
saw the beauty in the shoes, the bedroom, the weeds, the washers,
only you saw the beauty when it wasn't pretty.

To suffer is human.
but
to find ecstasy in the ordinary
and transform the banal into the magical
is something only you could do,
my dearest Vincent.

Merci;