my greatest hope
is that, in time,
I will be able to look
Within
for resolution
instead of finding
the tired echo of

                          I do not know

but when
or if
this day will come

                         I do not know
                         I do not know

I have you head in my head
spilling out like coffee light
one morning when we were in a cafe
after court
a green day
time was sewn up like like a rip in reverse

I felt myself tip toward you like
the western hemisphere toward the sun in summer
drawn in
you were the moon
I was the shore

your skin was warm
the river pulled at us
you were so warm
you held me up

one night you smiled at me that way
and turned around again and I kept watching you
the chilly night air and streams of smoke made it obvious
that they belonged to us

I felt a good thing then
when I was there with you

Imagine loving a sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth.


After you are together for eight months, let that sober alcoholic Gemini biker with a chipped tooth take you out in to the ocean, when the waves are cresting at six feet and you are terrified.  You almost drowned when you were a child.  He tells you to come out further.  Turns his back on the wave, just like your father said never to do. He looks you in the eye and says I will never let anything happen to you, I am not him, you can trust me, I will not hurt you.  
So you dive under the wave and he has you in his arms and the sun is expanding through the water droplets on your eyelashes.  It’s cold but not too cold and it feels clean.  You believe him, and believe that nothing is truer than this moment right now with the salt drying our lips and tangling our hair, nothing is braver than trusting someone despite the past.  This is one of the greatest days of your life and you never want to leave the coast or his tattooed heart because this is what is real.  

Imagine that you two part several weeks later.
Imagine that he begs for forgiveness.
Imagine that you go back.

Because you remember the beach and that day.  And every day in its consistency when you are together, and how your anxiety subsides, just for a little while.  Things do change, for a week, maybe, but then the past arrives reading The Book of Power and she is hungry.  Wrapped up in memories, she plants a green kiss on his cheek and he leaves you in the water to drown.  You are treading water trying to seem like you are swimming but you are failing, failing miserably, and when he finally drags you to shore he doesn’t pump your lungs with oxygen, he watches you choke as everything comes up.  He tells you that he loves the past and he is waiting for her to come home and always has been.  
So now, you do not even have the past.  He took it from you and everything you thought was real.  You cannot tell the difference now and ask and ask Could he have loved the present, just for a small while? Does he look at your chair in his house with his dog and think of her? When he looks at the ocean, does he taste you?
You are the past, too, just not the right one.  

Imagine this but do not live it.

x

the scream come from daffodils and parchment wrapped around dead fish
and demi-loaves of lunacy at new moon
succulent remedies to what not
and whatever... you remain altogether opulent in your nonchalance
whatever you wanted is dust; but you're not in France
you're maimed in false lies
of the ripple...
you're the noose garnet
swinging from the harpy's tongue
an impolite brigand
in the hate place
of your
miff.

and for what ?

He was limp
And small.
Smaller than I remember
But I remember
Clear as day
When I held him for the first time.

The coarse fur scratched my skin
And reminded me
That gentle things have
A roughness
About them.

The heart that pounded in his chest
Was one that would remind
Me what life sounded like
When my own
Was
Very
Nearly
Silent.

His eyes were endless
And a thousand souls could have found
A home within them.
But he just had one.
And the one he had,
It was plenty enough.

I sift my fingers through the
Coarse
Gentle fur
Across the hollow and
Silent ribs.
Unashamed at the wetness
Of my cheeks.
With these words, over and over,
In my head.

You wonderful creature.
You beautiful, beautiful beast.

Your thick, long hair
Your sun-streaked lion's mane
Falling on my cheeks.

Your drowning pool eyes
And their shattering shade
Of blue
Erasing my good sense.

Your Cupid's bow lips,
Soft and pliable
(I know because I've studied them every time they've formed my name),
Tasting my mouth and my yearning skin.

Your hands.
Doing what they do.

And your body
Against mine.

Oh.

If only.

An arm hung across the rubble,
draped like a broken swan neck,
decorated by intricate patterns of blood and dust.

I couldn't have known who the arm belonged to, but in that moment
I was sick
to my stomach
with devastating surety.

Those were the fingers that had twined through mine in gestures of
love and
desperation,
painted my arms
in strokes of comfort, and of loneliness.

The palm that had confidently gripped a weapon,
and had carried groceries
into the house.
Palms that had pressed hopelessly against rain-washed glass and
gently
against tearstained cheeks.
Those palms that willingly cradled my uneasy heart.

And the arm.
The arms that stretched into
the sparkling star-strewn sky,
the grey and
pouring rain,
the sun-baked air rippling in waves across that embrace.  
Arms that had wrapped around a struggling body
with grim purpose and
aching heart,
softly beneath a wiggling puppy and its
pink kisses,
easily against the warmth of my breakable ribs.

I saw the broken swan and I felt something heavy,
maybe my heart,
slip from limp fingers and
break
into glittering shards
decorated by intricate patterns of blood and dust.