How do you measure the distance between satisfaction and settling?
At what speed does wishful thinking blur
beyond a second thought into clear,
emotional ink-work. Haunting, deceptive
, an individual burden laid bare to those loved past the point of return.

I am a novelist without a novel.
An insatiable bipedal need to place it all
on paper, before personal need begins to bend narrative
to match will.

Some days I try to explain myself but everything comes out wrong.
Her face just looks lost and sad.
She wants me to stop trying, but the smile glinting her eye just won’t let me do it.

I’m a coward and I should be shot.


I hate the sky. And I do
that which is parallel to the shrubwork
Bland. Alone on an armless bench.
“I love you” to a cold grey sky. No one has made me say it.
It means everything.

Names most worthy of rumination exist as gnawing, skittering things
scratching at the backside of our brows.
I don’t smile so much as express variations on a skeleton.
A parade of crushed faces in leaves grown auburn.

One morning our cat crawled beneath the porch to die. She
never liked to be touched much. No idea
she was full of tumors
until her sagging body was laid beneath the backyard sod.

It’s a terrible feeling really,
to bear witness to love’s presence.
Hear it. Feel it.
Hands lashed to the asphalt as the smiles rain upon your back.
On those days my spine sags past breaking,
I will beg for more weight.
Perhaps then I can begin to wear your wounds.