I. Post Alley

Here, darkness isn't the villain.
It's the anti-hero.
We cheer on the absence of light
in favor of insight
- the kind used by blind swordsmen
who distinguish right from wrong moves
by feeling where the fighting spirit
of their adversary sways.
And so we stay awake,
following the signs etched in the neon,
blazing a path toward our fears
with a howl that cuts
the darkness in half like an alley.
We don't dream here.
We embrace the insomnia
like a cup of black coffee
with both hands,
eyes as moons,
tears as tide.

--

II. Olympic Sculpture Park

Every alley finds its way to water.
They all meet their ends
in a view that floods your eyes
at the speed of ferryboats passing.
It's the there and gone of it
that stops us in our tracks.
It's the childlike smile
you may never see again.
Days here
retain an afterglow
that brightens over time
we can't reclaim.

--

III. Alki Beach

I fled here when I thought the world ended.
I ate magically delicious clam chowder
from a paper cup
at the edge of Pier 57,
where a Ferris wheel that no one was riding spun.
Moving became mantra: a prayer put into practice.
So I flew
as far as I could get without crossing an ocean.
The fog I arrived in hid what was gone.
The sub-arctic air was balm
on what was burning up in flames.
Painters believe that lighting
defines what you're looking at, puts objects
as absolute as Mount Rainer in limbo.
I saw the heart differently here:
it was smoke
exhaled from the top of a building
to join the overcast like a freed spirit.
Love wasn't a concrete word,
but a formless mist
that your eyes keep redefining
depending on time of day: the first morning,
it was a cargo ship.
By twilight, it was a one-way ticket
on the Light Rail.
It was something that kept moving.
That's it: everything became far up here,
as if I was looking at it from the top
of a UFO-shaped observatory in a skyline
from the space age.
The sun itself appears removed:
it checks out at 5pm due to the extreme
northern latitude and lets night check in early
like an Airbnb traveler you'll never see.
It's okay to remain anonymously sad and blend
in with the rain.
Locals don't carry umbrellas on purpose.
I'm not okay yet.
So I return often to keep my cool
on their 51 degree summer nights.
Statistically, this is the city with the most single people in it –
soloists, loners, former lovers who understand that oneness is wholeness.
There's healing properties to that.
Up here, nothing is missing.
I'm so far away from what happened
that it becomes invisible,
or at least
lost to the fog that keeps rolling through.

--

yellow
you waited for me in madrid
blue
your presence granted me pain in granada
orange
within breaks of pain i was granted joy in segovia
turqoise
i truly remembered how much i love you in toledo
black
you hated me in seattle
white
i learned love without pain is not love
gray
you granted me life

I open the windows when it rains
I watch the sky drown the earth the same way the pain of missing you drowns my soul

I smell the wet soil and think of home
             of the way the mountains smell in April
             of how the beach smells after a storm
With the waves crashing into droplets on the cities edge

I'm not religious but I pray that if I leave the windows open during the storm a droplet from Seattle will find it's way to me in the desert

One with salt from the Pacific and sap from the pines

I pray for a droplet from your home to find it's way into mine

Have you imagined in your turquoise dreams majestic mountains and seaside scenes?

Then go West my friend and come to me in endless summer, savoring fruits of joy in sun warmed shimmer....

love is what love is; i've always spoken it into monuments. their eyes would be pearls among cheeks captured in marble, and i spent a lot of time time tracing bone to bone over the bridge of my nose thinking if my touch is the same as others'. love is what love is and i've acted as Midas. under all the suns kisses are dandelions, we run through the blossom. in the scratched blackheads there's pollen and i lie fetal as a raisin and whisper "**** it out". break my shoulders, whiten your hands, **** it out.

love is what love is; I've started to wonder if raindrops ****. intimately, so the pollen pours out at paint's pace. love is what love is what's real is what's slow. i can count blackheads among vacuum suction marks. water trickles down the post, jogs after each other 'til one catches the other in matrimony. i wonder if they ****, if they love, and if the rising action is longer than what i have to live. but love is what is, slowly but surely. moments in time can't be lost if rain ***** forever.

If you're unclear about love,
return your heart to a place with fog
With clouds created from breathing in the cold during long uphill walks that end in a view of the water
Return the way daylight retreats to the grey embrace of the Pacific Northwest sky at the edge of winter, dissipates in all directions like ripples upon their misty bay
Return the way sunset colored leaves hanging in limbo fall back to Earth
Visions to pieces
Tears to eyes as condensation builds
against the glass of a coffeeshop window and distorts the view from outside and from within
Return the way rain lands on a broken sidewalk in Seattle,
not pouring so much as drifting
through what looks like a new morning
blurred with all the dark nights that came before.

Seattle is where it's okay to bury your head in the clouds,
where it's acceptable to walk beside and among their sad water

Here, the greys of puddled sidewalks
give way to deeper greys that extend beyond the reach of their docks

This is the place where you can get to any level of cold and wet, only to be steps away from any given coffeeshop and the steam from a mug held with two hands

This is where you'll wake up and face the rain sans umbrellas
where you'll gain an aesthetic to the gloom, a poise to the overcast
Shrouded in mist at the far corner of the map, you'll draw your energy
in harmony with the ups and downs of their multi-storied fish markets and undulant streets

Here, you'll find your path through faded daylight and breathe in air embalmed by hundreds of rainy days

You'll exhale the weight you carry within your chest into a healing view of a horizon lined by ferry boats,
there to take you across whatever darkness you're faced with at day's end.