What I wouldn't give
to know the comet tails of thought
obscured by your  ellipses …

From wind and stone, sand.
From faith and prophets, temple.
From beast and hunter, blood.
From my heart and your heart, monsoon.

I want you to miss me so much

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

I'm not beautiful—

no scandalous, empyrean beauty;
not the beauty
of long legs and sleepless nights,
not transcendental, not diaphanous; 
no ambrosia, no absinthe;
no earthly Aphrodite
to crush your heart 
with slender hands.
No,

not the kind of beauty
that makes disciple 
out of man;

but

our secrets, they rhyme darkly
and your heart is beating sharply,
and tonight I'll make you love me
while I can.

This is how we love:
First with fire, then without.
Who was tending the embers?

Because my love cannot be the orchestra,
I have hidden it in the glissandos;
do not listen for it when the music swells,
but in the resonance of in betweens.


Because my love cannot be the whole summer,
I have strapped it to the legs of bees;
do not look for it in flowered fields,
but in the pollen stuck to window screens.

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.

Though winter stripped the orchard boughs,
I still think of harvest kisses.
I loved you then and maybe now;
my first bite, my red delicious.