You came to bed late
So I folded myself into the drawers of your heart
Tracing the lines of your goodnight whispers
I became paper
You the scissor
Cutting your way past my defenses
Tossing me out of my dream

Outside there is a breeze
How easily the night conspires against calamity
The blinds closed like a secret
The unspoken sigh you left drifting between us

I lay awake in the hush
Imagining myself as something fragile in your hands
Like a letter folded
Like a pressed flower between the pages of a book
I recall our time in the Caribbean

And when sleep at last surrendered
I saw it: the tenderness of it all -
The boy I once was to the Man I am
It made me ache for the soft architecture
Of more nights like this
On the verge of collapse
And yet
Always enduring

___________

Our limbs scribbled over the canvas of our bed
While the shadow of the moon
Chases the wind beyond our window

You crashed into my heart
Which swells like a poet's grin -
I whisper apologies for my haste
Brushing thru the breeze of the soul
Past the formalities
The cathedral of patience
Receiving a quiet relief
For the wounds
I did not know existed

Folding into the night
The closing of our eyes

________

The moon slipped its silver lining
and fell
Into my coffee

I drank it down
Anchored to the rim
and listened for your footsteps

The night before
I arranged my affections
As quiet offerings

Found sketches of poems in our whispers  
Written in lipstick and fevered kisses
- The scent of your perfume
Even the shadows alleviated faded aches

You pulled the sheets
Closing my wounds
The sound of your name in my mouth
The threads of your spine
Where the room goes dark
and the lampshades serve no purpose

We never spoke
Things that weren't true
Switching off the world
In the place you last touched
I soon fell asleep
Inside
Your Yes


__________

Your lips
A question asked by the moon
Against my skin
Tumbling down my chest

As you near
The stars grow quiet
Even my breath
Crumples like a cocktail napkin
Under the weight of our intimacy
(The way you twist
To reach your cell phone in bed)

I have kissed you in elevators
Between raindrops
and reckless thoughts -
A secret party for two
As sacred as a lone cathedral
In a century that never happened

Love is the soft ruin of better judgement
It is not to be understood
It is to be held

_________

Moving across moments
Barricaded & barbed

We were as close as bride & groom
Leading me on with those eyes
The eyes that stole my heart
Such a low blow

It's so dangerous
To not know what you want

Your precarious sapphire sea
And deeper I sink
Cut adrift
To a place
Where the waves call my name
Those salt-water kisses
Watching myself descending
Dissolving
Into
The
Blue

Into
Solitude

______

The Sun
A silver note
That sings like your fingers
Spilling light across my ribcage
Curling out skyward

We float in the blue whispers
Of the sea
How your lips taste of salt
And the breeze
Twists your hair

When you speak
It unbuttons my day -
Stretched over the warm sand
Naming the tide
With each heartbeat
Till the hammock of evening
Crushes our flirt over drinks
Sealing this sweet tongue
Into your grooves

Our silhouettes drift into orbit
Like intimate boats on the horizon
A comma, pause
Following the thread of your voice
(quiet as the moon)
Pulling me closer
Swaying the palms
Between what we can know
And all that we haven't said

_________

They tried to **** him
They tried to jail him
They tried to discredit him
They tried to remove his dignity
They spread lies about him
Tried to throw him into the fire

All it did was sharpen his resolve
He rose to meet the challenge
He refused to be broken by them
He refused to bend the knee
To their hedonism  
He welcomed discomfort
He was relentless
And did what needed to be done
Fight, fight, fight

He has earned my respect

__________