on soft twilight mornings
when the world
still sleeps soundly
the blackbirds singing
their daily sermon
i stretch lazily
the crisp sheets a shroud
i feel the warmth
of the sweet summer sun
kissing my back
and i smile
knowing that you had once
done the same.

It hung on a hook on my closet door.
Soft plaid flannel,
blues and grays,
softer with each wash.
At workday's end  
I took off my daily armor
and slipped my arms into sleeves
that hung inches past my hands.
I fastened buttons over bare *******
and tied the hem around my hips.
I held it to my face, breathed
and thought I could smell your scent,
lingering after dozens of washings--
the musk of masculinity--
an essence of strong sinews,
curly chest hairs
and work-worn hands.
I wore the shirt to bed  
and drifted into sleep,
knowing I was not alone.
The memory of you clung to me--
the softness of unspoken intimacies,
the warmth of domestic familiarity.
In slumber, forgetting

I should have
sought your hand as we walked,
slowed and not swallowed
my next question

I should have
asked you for one slow dance,
danced instead of imagined
decades on

I should have, could have,
perhaps would have
had we slowed
and given ourselves time

In time I will become a beach
an hourglass of falling sand
when eighty tides have washed my face
my youth will be a foreign land
and the laughing girl that once I knew
will be waving from the distance
across that sea that joins us two

Beneath these
satin sheets,
my memory
flutters like
little birds on
indigo nights.

Folded wings
rest in my
mind's eye.
Fingers itch with
visions,
Delta of Venus,
orchids in bloom,
wet with the
sticky dew.

I grip my
virility
and begin
a slow
waltz...
It feels so
good.

Every last of me contained from every memory of you

Afterwards it is

only vague what it was like:


a passion, a pain.

whispers in the wind
of a remembered
tomorrow
that will never
come to pass.

shades of broken glass
trapped in the crimson
soles of tired feet
break apart in
a multitude of
echoing patterns.

a hunger for something
without shape,
without substance,
without the traced outline
of neverending desperation,
howls deep within the throat.

bottled yesterdays
shattered on the marble
of ever-shimmering amnesia
creaking like bones
inside an hourglass on the edge
of an untangling rope.

all that is left is to hope
for a quick bite of the river
that turns all tomorrows
into forgotten yesterday.

from your name
I have built a world
It's made of memories
And all the things you loved
I stole pieces of the moon
from the nights we could not sleep
where you told me stories of your past
and ways for me to be
and now they illuminate
all the city streets
of houses and homes
that you have grieved
and I paint this world
onto the walls of this place
that whisper your name
every day to me
so that I can walk past
and remember
all the ways you taught me to breathe