his lips taste like rapture unguaranteed
and love me so softly that i wonder if i'm free
but lately i conjecture, lately i still see
on late october nights - your face in that debris
(all we are now
is remnants in the sea
all we are now is a raging
memory)

tonight there is a newborn autumn
and pictured in it a little photograph of what
could've been
when a novel rain broke this drought and a
poem in my heart sang like a little wood thrush
almost free
tonight there is a young notion
rendering a rush like october rain
and rupturing this dryness
like his arms around me
tomorrow nears an almost hope
a tuneless number i can almost sing

my poetry is
about nothing
for years it took the misery from
my bleeding heart and made it pray
it cried rhyming rivulets to the skies then
put my tears away
my poetry wears black -
not because it mourns or
because its going through a phase
all my ink dried up in drought
the year the rain came
and now it
spends its extra time inside
just writhing in its grave

his tears are stirring in the hurricane that is
our love
his tears meet mine just where
the floodwater amounts above—
just where i left it, just where
we sought the oblivion thereof
and you still tell me that you miss me
so much, and i tell you,
i tell you exactly:
that the hurricane must evict
us, must allow—
the sun

i think that people take their love for granted
because i—
i’ve spent every waking night
of every aching month
dressed in every shade of you except your touch
i love and lose and hurt
and lust
your memory cannot sustain—your memory
is not enough—
to simply have your presence is the
thing for which i blow—
on candles
angel numbers, dandelions—even snow

and why, i always wonder
do so many that i know
take their love nearby for granted—
that’s one thing i’ll never know

the lights flicker off, and i hear it almost—
this year’s song from last year’s ghost
he plays it on repeat, the one that
fades out too fast like september heat
i don’t wanna sing anymore, but my mouth
drives forward in wintry retribution—
“take me back—” to feel the rains of one summer
kiss my skin until this one freezes over
and it passes into me: revenge,
the weekends, the years i miss the most
'till i watch it drifting through me
like mortality to the ghost

with her face as a canvas she coloured
her cheeks as bright as peaches in the sun, her lips as dark
as cherries picked and run, her eyes as sad
as storms not yet begun
and began the day, the sky her
favourite shade of grey
for once