The yellow spider the size of my eyelash
Walks the lines of my palm
a shadow, an almost-
spectral soul
To be a human—we lament—
is a rather ill-fated way
to survive these wintral
elements
I could have been a spindly
mark amid Spring grass
But I am with flesh
And a bleeding
life force—heart
And still, with yours against my own
in this embrace.

of joy is in its trusted end
today I walk home and the sun lows itself beneath the white earth
a bird chirps in the solemn tree
the tragedy is in the knowing, in that
the brown-winged bird will migrate down and never come back—in that
the song will end
I see in your face but an instant unmeasured joy
and also,
that bird will die
and we will always say goodbye

our love (in held hands, in
enraptured dance),
like lost language dies—
the letters, rose in my cupboard
Polaroid I’ll keep (of you yesterday)
of interim element
belonging to the earth, and so do you

and I—
will imagine you approaching me
one day when you’re not here

today I will not have to imagine the laughing eyes, the curve of the nose, the cheek against my face, your whisper to me that your love is mine
today and always and always and always
today my fingers touch yours, and I trust
with baited breath
in unpromised tomorrow.

(and like a fool replay the
song
for a chance that we exist beyond
the refrain)

there’s a poem in the hands you touch me with
song notes every evening from your lips

I wish that I hadn’t quit writing in my diary
because I don’t recall the date of the night that you first told me this
or which day of the week it was in August
but I will remember how you brushed my hair back from my ear,
hushed the buzz of summer nights so that I’d hear—
how my heart in the split second that followed,
kept its habit till your beat caught up to me
your low-lit face a song I’d hummed
forever without knowing
    and I’ll remember then, how you
    traced your lips across my skin that it might also feel your love

they say there’s poetry in the last snow of prosaic months
and although I miss the chirping summer sparrow,
the skies that set in lilac after storms
I know you’ll keep your whisper in my ear tonight
that I won’t miss,
“I love you more”

on the second snow of the year i came over to your house
(your home has quite nearly become my own)
you smiled and left your desk and laid
your head on me
and i didn't think about microscopic troubles
because they didn't exist
in the midst of snowfall and an internet crash
or even in a measly monsoon
i was just wondering if this was happiness
if this was happiness
if this was happiness

to me, you carry the scent
of birthday candle smoke.
your eyes firelit with
facile wishes
and I'm the match you long
to foment forever

i'm here still
at university housing
a three hours' flight from the hometown where i knew you
the rain outside here's rolling deep like it used to
loudly,
loudly
and i miss my out-of-tune piano where i'd
pray at an altar of sadness to play out the few songs i knew
and perhaps extract a single seething passion in my solitude
now walkersby can see it, the simple joys in a newish love
his stolid hand is the one to hold my own in the grey october
his building a midnight minute's walk from home
with a heart that's kind and strong and stone
sometimes i wonder how it feels for you to know
you're the man i only used to love
university housing is a fortress from emotion
and i in it, am alone:
sometimes quietly happy at jupiter's brighest hone
only when i ever swallow hope
(sweetness) like a quiet, loving home

writing poetry in the dim-lit cabin of a broken sea
dreading some great unseen folly
     i’m threading it through me with needles
i keep in the box
beneath winter coats and unworn textbooks where my roses go to die

it became the sea to my needy heart
we were the poem that fell apart in the first stanza
     by the time you apprehend this kind of sin
     it’s too late
the surface above just catches it; that
feeble light that grows dimmer
     every undulating wave