Sometimes at night

quiet you gather
pieces of yourself
and stitch together
The silver moon’s
light and a promise
that it’ll be alright
it’ll be alright later

when the sun rises

To the man who taught me to
put cinnamon in my coffee, put
a little swing in my hips, leave
a little smile on your lips

in the middle of an empty room, in
the middle of winter, slowly exhale,
breath our hopes in frigid air, let
them linger in soft space between

dreams and reality, dreams and reality, dreams
dissipating like the cinnamon spots, sun spots
in the middle of an empty room still lingering

i am a collection of pencil shavings
fickle and fragile with rough edges
that ***** your fingertips and drift

my small colorful piles gather
against the white bed sheets
that you carved into me and left

When we kiss I taste
the sweet saltiness of the
ocean's lingering graze

When you laugh your eyes
glow like sunspots dancing
on the water’s calm surface

When you breathe in my ear
I hear the gentle roar of waves
And when I trace behind your ears
I feel the the soft underbelly of seashells

Late at night when cars sound like
Waves hitting a distant tidal line
You whisper "How can you love me
when I am like an ocean and you
have only glimpsed the shoreline?”

But I've stood in enough tides to know
The hypnotic pull of the unknown
And coughed up enough water
to know the pain of drowning but
there's something that keeps me
returning and yearning to swim
deeper into this ocean's expanse

"don't go, stay please"
hands around waist
body pressed against
the doorframe your
tongue tracing my
the back of my ear down
to the neckline as we
show ourselves layer
by layer and suddenly

it is five am and I am
tracing the outline of
dawn on your back
and you turn to hold
me again and our fingers
interlace and suddenly

it's two weeks later and
i am staring at the dots
on my phone at two am
whispering alone again
"don't go, stay, please"

Yesterday we drove down past the
Thickest thickets in the garden state
Listening to whine of The Shins with
Our windows letting in the tiny bugs
Dotting the sky between twilight hours  

You had sticky chocolate hands and
Salt specks from unfinished french
Fries on your plaid shirt tucked into
Your khaki shorts secured with a firm
Brown belt around your small hips

In the rearview mirror I watched the
Sea shore tuck itself into the small
Sea town tuck itself into the green
Fields until darkness enveloped us
And we could not sing anymore

Some days my bones weigh heavy and I
Can hear creaking down the back of my
Spine it sounds like my grandmother's
Chair in the middle of the night when
She sits in an empty room and knits
A spool of thread jumbled forgotten
Slowly unraveling this body of mine

Some days my bones weigh heavy from
The lives I am not living and from the life
That I am and my chest constricts my
Heart thumps as fast as the hummingbirds
Wings and my ears fill with the sound of  
waves crashing on some distant shoreline
washing dried remains of a moored whale

Today I am carrying my bones forward
Pressing out the air bubbles between
The ligaments and presenting them to
You in a porcelain case bound with a
Scarlet ribbon darker than my blood
So you can wash them with a new light