Life,
Fragile,
Like the surface of a liquid.
We leave our bodies,
Becoming the same body of water,
Carried away in that great river,
Constant and flowing.
Is our ending so final?
Can we too evaporate into the clouds,
Becoming the springtime rain,
Fragile and full of life once more?

If today

I never wrote

I would have disappointed

this spring

I can't remember

last year

or even springs before it

I can't remember how many split

seconds surrounded me tenderly

like water

I hide in the house

can't see the crimson of a certain flower

can't hear the sound

of a delicate bud jumping for joy

I can only

hold a cup of aged green tea

fantasy or speculation

glistening verdant details

of all things

when I look back at so many springs

many years later

I remember this

every breath I breathed

I had waited.

Spring feels like dying this time.
I usually feel like withering,
but because of the allergies.
People used to be able to laugh
at my sneezes; now they feel like
quick triggers. How do I know which
it is? My phone says it’s a Friday.
The calendar says it’s April.
I know it’s both, but it feels like neither

because spring feels like dying this time.
When I go outside I can relax for a little
in the warmth, but I know it’s a false feeling—
that nature is living. No one I know is really
living, but the mosquitos don’t care.
I go from bed to table to bed again,
wearing the same clothes; it feels maybe
like being mummified. I know I’m in a
tomb, with the same walls haunting me,

and spring feels like dying this time.
Not even the loose sunlight pooling
in from the window can draw me out
from my blanket-cave where the screen
light burns fleeting images into my retinas.
I let myself lie there until the hours fade,
like everything’s just one big dream,
another reality where my body is nothing
but goo. It helps me to forget the truth,

that spring feels like dying this time.

what i would tell you about the posies
that gather around
when they overhear my voice
calling out your name,
none would say the same.

for them,
caroused near the streams
that few perennials are but discerned;
springtime only passes by,
and then they are gone.

but how are they able to suss as such?
when these rosebuds
unlatch themselves
only when you are here?

On the side of the path where overhead
treetops meet to tickle
each other, the roots
from two trees are knotted
together.

Meet me by that knot.
Kiss me like you said
you would.

sugar cane berry stains

lost friends life's bends

mountain still, in the end




there and back, i've been

we were kids, you were teens

we learned a lot, what we've seen




one more shot before we go

that sacred breath you always know-

when to call it a day