I want to
remember every sensation
taste every word
feel every look
touch every whisper

Chain-link clatters,
her small pickup nosing through.
We’re here for a refrigerator,
her new apartment,
first time I’m meeting anyone in her family.
She’s beautiful,
nervous in the passenger seat,
told me her brother used to be a skinhead.
Now: better, odd jobs,
an Asian wife.

Sparse walls, half an office building
pretending to be a home.
A baby crawls on the kitchen floor.
Mei: tired eyes, lipstick,
business suit, late for work.

Her brother just waking up,
empty malt liquor cans,
talking too fast,
about jobs, about not sleeping.
I’ve seen this math before:
people who struggle to get their life straight,
their day straight, their time straight.

The fridge is light as air,
a few condiments rattling inside.
We slide it out:
black square on the linoleum.
The square bursts,
roaches bloom and scatter at my feet.

Thinking: pick up the baby.
Mei already has her,
no expression,
like this scene’s happened
a hundred times before.

"We’ll keep the fridge outside,
- just a day,
use boric acid, no smell."
I smile when I say it,
like I’m just talking about a squeaky hinge.
Inside it, insects crawl around the compressor.
My girlfriend looks away, down.

Fifteen years from now:
A faraway post online,
in memoriam,
her brother beaten to death.
The baby, the family, now
gone from the map of my life.

Only the black square remains,
still crawling
in the back of my mind.

I have honey sunshine in my mind
from when I left my shoes in your seats
said I’d grab them tomorrow,
and you, of course.

Honey drips
on a sun-blind mind’s rewind.
Sticky memories don’t spoil
they crystallize,

then golden-shine
in your lullaby eyes,
because I said
you’re mine
for the hundredth time.

Drunk, we walked west to the ocean,
drop soup and sake,
sloshing in our guts.

You would marry in twenty days.
I stayed close,
swallowing the words
that would’ve ruined it all.

In seven years,
I will have a son.
You will bury yours.
We will wonder - quietly -
if souls can be traded,
if grief moves
like a current
between blood that is not blood.

The tide was electric,
a woman waded in,
cupped bioluminescence
like an ember from the deep.

We stood apart from the others,
two men
bone-wet and wind-bit,
trying to scratch our names
into blue light,
signatures gone
before the next wave came.

I never told you the future.
I let the dark reclaim our feet.
You laughed,
drunk and perfect,
and I looked away
as the sea
turned the sand
back to stone.

Harry bends over the grill,
beefy with years of drink
and culled anger,
scrubbing until silver shines,
a bullet waiting for my shift.

He believes if the French Toast is perfect,
she will appear in a halo of steam,
peacoat and Mary Janes,
ready to forgive the life they never had.

Outside Brother Juniper’s,
Peachtree Street is a kingdom
of late century's lost:
druggies, rent boys, drag queens,
pimps preaching Jesus
to the homeless in Piedmont Park.
The smell of grease stitches it all together.

Inside, fluorescent light
makes faces soft as wet clay,
ready to be remade by morning.
French fries sizzle like whips,
blintzes bleed cherry onto chipped plates,

and Tati, round as a blessing,
delivers soup to the sobbing girl
whose mascara becomes a confession.

I clock in,
busting knuckles and boots,
young, stupid,
just trying to keep up with him.
I know he wants her to return.
I know she won’t.
I know he’s getting older.

I watch Harry’s grace and sweat,
watching the city believe
in one last plate of salvation.

At dawn,
he’ll stumble across the street,
feed the jukebox Ray Charles,
and search the sidewalks
for her red hair in every stranger.

you lifted me in a dream,
like it was nothing—
like the years hadn’t passed
like storms
through our bodies.

we spun until dizzy,
grinning like we used to:
in a world filled
with lollipops,
doorway dates,
and curfews.

you never kissed me
the way stories end.
you only loved me
in the narrow space
between your name
and your friend’s.

you told me
i should be with someone good,
someone who could hold
all my stories.
but never said,
someone like you.

you held my heart
when it spilled,
drunk, full of ache,
and my hand on a bench
before life swelled
and whisked us away.

no fallout.
no fight.
just the silence.

SOUL MEMORY  

Aligning core below to above
Sirius clapped in glee
urging group into Time out of Space
Pyramid, triangle of my refuge
and direction

Mercury watched soul circling Squinx
Dogons ancient guiding mission
bronze arms encircled axis
Africa cracked from Asia
Amma rejoicing

I knew not then
that in a Southern land I
were to disembark to
stand firm with fearlessness
time-split generational embeds
with carbon and consciousness
oxygen the catalyst

myrrh rained down
to cleanse
Last Supper was still to come


Copyright: GhairoDanielsPoetry&
Song

Twenty three years of age
She works, and she plays
Oh, she plays!
Controller in hand
The Sims is the plan -
A boring play-style, really,
Fulfilling her what if's
Of marital bliss

                                  What a twist

Cascades of pixelated children
"I think I'll name her.....
Quellcrist!"