Do you remember the rain, love?
I try to not.
Why?
When I do, I remember the trees. The colors, the greens and greys. The heaviness of the air just before it. The smell when it finally hits the thirsty earth. I remember your smile. All the things I miss too much to remember.
I still smile.
Not like you did when you heard the first thunder of a storm.
Fair.
I really miss the way you'd come alive like that. You'd be at your desk, pen scribbling with the same speed as the splatters on the asphalt. Happy. The clouds, the rain, they brought out the life in you. They watered your soul.
Sort of a blatant analogy, no?
I suppose. But it's true.
...
*I want the rains to return.

The sunset slowly dies and
I collapse into your bed
breathing in the echoes of your scent
this extinct perfume I'll never know again
hands groping for any remnant of warmth you left behind.
The pillows miss your precious headweight
and I sleep in tear-choked sorrow, grasping to a slowly fleeting
memory of you.

Endless oceans separate the space between my ears—
How I wish you sailed in them still.
All I hear now is the distant sirens’ song—
they beckon me to heed their call.
But I know their voices aren't your own.
I could spend sleepless nights searching these waters
until I found a trace of you,
a ghost, nothing but a memory
that forever left its imprint
on this ever-aching heart.

A mourning dove flew inside the machine shop. He perched on industrial piping near the ceiling.

Half the day passed.

I struck up a conversation with him.

"Pardon me, but I don't believe you belong here."

Quite perturbed, he chirped,
"I'm well aware."

"Then why have you been here for so many hours?"

Nothing.

"You could fly right out that door."

Silence. He preened his feathers.

Angrily,
"You have wings! A song! A love, I'm sure! Yet here you sit and sit and sit, while freedom is just outside! Why?"

Finally, a response:
"I could ask the same of you."

Oh.

He placed his head under his wing.

The next morning, he was dead on the floor.

I've been busy
too busy to write.

I'm too busy loving you to write you the love poems you deserve.

I'm too busy working so I can have money to buy you the things you like to write you the love poems you deserve.

But I'm going to continue loving you,
continue kissing and holding you,
I'm going to continue being yours.
I'll never be too busy to love you.

Who needs love poems when you're in love?

The mockingbird in arbored sanctum
rehearses his newest musing
an addition to his lifelong
plagiaristic monologue

satisfied,
he ***** into the chaparral
to declaim his litany to
anything with ears.

I.

Smoke rising to an endless sky
fading twilight in your moon-bright eyes
crickets cry in crooning lullabies
as we kiss the world goodbye.
We lie beneath the stars while
embers from our fire fall
singe our skin and float away
like firefly kisses, like reminders that we
still aren’t dreaming
moonrise and a
soft "I love you" in the dark.

II.

Love,
let me be your now and your forever
let me be your somewhere in between
let me be your ever-loving shelter
for you are everything to me.

Let me be your comfort in the nighttime
let me be your never-ending dream
let me be your sunrise every morning
for you
are everything
to me.

This is my dissonance: I
live in a
sad place
in the shadow of my former
self

in a narrow world
with work and sleep and
not a single sunrise

in a small space with
rats in the attic
a never-made bed and the
ever-present realization:
I must leave or be
consumed.