like a wreath, wretched over
my front door.
Pray, do not enter
nor seek to tempt fate
(she showed me her hand long ago).
It begs me,
always pleading,
listen, listen, listen.
Words cannot heal
the wounds they painted on your skin
and as you turn your shining
eyes toward mine
and you waver
on the precipice of past tense,
and the beating on the door grows
louder and louder.

I’m tiptoeing around
my tsunami,
the same one
that drowned you.
I dried that bouquet today and
cried for the day you gave it to me.
Forgive me, darling,
for all my tears that should not
have been yours.
I want you
but I’ll settle for words
that dance around your likeness
teasing to capture
the beautiful face
I crumpled.
It gets harder
every day
to tell myself
it’s not my fault.
I’m cowering
six feet under you,
trying to look away
and let you live.
I will shrink myself
every day,
if it means you blossom
and with dripping cheeks,
I will tell myself
I am watering your garden
from three hundred miles away.

I’m too in love, honey,
I can’t breathe when I see you
I’m flattened by you
and I stare at the sky
like I’m pavement
created by man
and screaming for more
than calloused tires.

This porched morning stretches
oceanward,
until it rains.
This is no happy summer:
it is weighty pondering
it brings heaven to earth
in a bolt of lightning
it electrifies the sea and
casts airbrushed stripes
of light atop the horizon
but it does not rain
yet.
The shore is
damp from the night before -
a thousand half-thought words
pattered down
smack, smack, smack
little bird feet running
towards and away.
They smell rain,
coming soon again
they love the wind preceding.
The air is expectant,
whipping pages
back and forth and back
and forth
the book will finally
snap shut when it rains.
The ocean rears and curls and sways unsteadily
nature inhales and bites cold.
It feels almost wrong
to be here, now,
solitary
without sun
awaiting the rain.