oh entropy, i am a leaning tower.

     i am a patchwork raincoat
     i tried to fill the holes
     with someone else's fabric
     but the rain comes in hard
     and my patchwork is destroyed

     i am made of brick
     and slowly i am being disassembled
     one crumbling red slab after another
     until fragments of me
     lay scattered and naked in an unsightly pile

     i once stood tall
     carrying my own weight
     carrying your weight too
     i once had strong shoulders,
     strong mind, strong heart

          but i am a leaning tower
          and slowly i am being dismantled
          my patches are being dissolved
          and i am returning to Nothing,
          to a place where i can be rebuilt.

the color red was never so warm
     until you taught me how to fall into it,
     until you wrapped me up in its richness,
     until you.
the morning was never so gentle
     until it began to tangle our bodies together,
     until even its light couldn't part us,
     until you.
the parts of me that were missing pieces
     were never so full until you filled them,
     until you showed me what I was missing,
     until you.

our home was a ship.
I loved our red sails
and every creaking board.
we took turns as its captain
to chart the gentle, desolate sea.
the morning sun was warm
on our bare and rosy shoulders.

our home was a ship
away from which I have been torn along with mossy memories and bleached sea shells,
and though I cling to this debris in hopes that it could lift me up out of this choking unfamiliarity
I still sink further,
my body numb
and breathless,
up to my bare
and icy neck
in the foggy darkness
of the cold,
deep,
and begrudging water.

our home was a ship.

my home was our ship
and I am stranded -
stranded, but even now,
our red sails and
creaking boards and
you are a misty silhouette on the horizon.

your peacefully sleeping body is unaware
of the breath-taking gratitude I carry;
as July daylight settles upon the landscape
of your softly rolling bones, I meditate:

even the warm crimson sheets don’t know
of the tender, reverent gifts which you gave me;
that gentle evening, a delicate Love Dream,
my pieces became a whole and we shared in it:

my threadbare spirit slowly mends under the
meticulous lacing of your fingers together with mine;
my once-blind eyes blink into the bare clarity
of some uninhibited purity onto which we now hold:

and somehow, your enraptured, calmly sensual glow
still eclipses even the radiating fullness of my feelings;
the upturned corners of your smile and your contented voice
still brush the long-forgotten blush onto my cheek:

but even though I twist these words into the shape
of my adoration, they couldn’t shine brightly enough;
it does me well to simply thank you with my lips
in the sweetly-lit lightness of our happy silence.

silver beads of summer rain collect
on the silk petals of your skin
and in whispers i trace the dew
like a frantic scattergraph serenade

but the taste pools sweetly on my lips;
it trails warmly over my chest, dripping
into your eyes like a river symphony
against eager candlelight applause

then into the smoky midnight air
your breath flutters faintly and fades
like the shadow of a hummingbird
cast against the kitchen wall

i have been blessed with the beautiful burden
of being your first love;

i carry you in my heart like a pail of sea water,
salty drops falling down the sides as it
rocks in the gentle green tide, overflowing

and though my feet are pierced and burned
i tread on, cradling the pulsing newness
of your love, your naked and innocent heart

knowing that my love for you will give you strength
and one day you will return to the water to be free;
i have been blessed with the beautiful burden
of being your first love.

you may come to do or say something absentmindedly
that leaves a scar - a dark, chipped blemish on the porcelain white;
(but will you forgive it? Will you love it?
this is love.)

you may come to accept the past and future
as gifts which you cannot change or predict respectively
- and that hope is heavy like a second overflowing heart;
(but will you trust it? Will you love it?)
this is love.