I write love letters
in a language I don't understand
delicately etched into the leaves
outside your bedroom window
traced into the sheets of a bed
I haven't been in for months
The sentences, the stanzas sound stranger written
than they do when you speak them
mixed and matched
my pen tripping like my tongue over
words and sounds I've never been able to speak

it has been two weeks and
the fantasies are starting
the daydreams where you show up
in the middle of the night hands and breath
shaking
clothes anxious to take their place
on the floor in the corner
where we are no longer lovers
in name or shape
we are sea and mountain we are
paint mixing spilling
into and out of each other
the daydreams where we stay
laced and woven
beneath your grey blanket
until the doves start whispering about us
sometime around seven in the morning

I'll lie to whoever comes next
"I don't like being called baby," I'll say but
what I'll mean is that
it will never sound as good in her mouth
as it did in yours

a light powdery layer of pollen settles on my laptop, my coffee cup, my toes which are seeing the sun for the first time in seven months.

the sun heats my right leg and I find myself strangely anticipating the day this warm kiss will become a hot red burn.

the birds have been yapping on since seven in the morning, and I can only assume that there must be plenty of gossip to catch up on since last august.

I'll not write poetry
until the poetry
begs to be written

february was a siren
each day—a breath
each hour—a heartbeat
each moment—the tick of a clock
the wind is not the wind no the wind
was a whisper, a call a beckoning
to both the cold of january and
the wetness of march april may
each of them a lover themself
she doesn't know and the moon
won't tell her what she is
not a siren, a nymph
the breeze—her kiss
the sky—her soft cheek
the trees are her dance and
the night is only her shadow

what do we do with



the vast sea of silence



between the small spaces of sound