I get the hunch that the ashes of kindergarten,
Lunchboxes, the national anthem
Are floating from the edge of us
So many sophomore stars from a cigarette’s tip,

Somewhere down the mountain we lost our winter coats
And bicycle summers, and plastic sailboats,
No puddles and rainboots, or slick soft dogs
And paper flowers, captured fish and frogs

We try to jump in puddles, and we float

Deep-bright and hissing in the city chill
Childhood traded for strange soft skin
Grumpy cats and boardgames for mixed drinks and casual ***
And the cicadas gaily chirping fall away like

Fishbowl-helmet astronauts, lost without gravity
Mercury, Venus, Youth,
Maturity, Jupiter, Saturn

We are never kids again,
Nor adults until we die

wait until the phone rings
and the teacher goes inside,
under the slide at Recess:
you can put your lips on mine

When I first sold myself there were
black cottons, brass buttons, iron crosses, steel machines
All the marks of war
All that searing heat
With all that pretty malice
Spilling Paris in the street
‘Twenty marks’ I called
‘Twenty marks’
That was 1943
And Piaf was doing well

Nurse, do you know what it is like:
To have a man inside of you
that you could never love?

There was, once upon a time, a pretty little ****
black cottons, brass buttons, iron crosses, steel machines
Lying on my floor
And Maman was starving, and my sister, too
Dignity wasn’t half the tax it seemed before
He gave me a baby, and a disease,
That was 1944:
Piaf was quite successful, then

Doctor, can you fathom:
Having sores all over you?
Yes, down there, and
all up and down your thighs, your body burns.
Can you feel that?

Then, the Germans left, and the Allies came, all
black cottons, brass buttons, iron crosses, steel machines
All of that decor
Fleeing, running out
On the French horizon
Retreat
The Allies were the same
‘Three dollars’ I called
‘Three dollars’
That was 1945:
Piaf was languishing
Paris had died

Jacques, my dear:
Those were our times
smoky cabarets, sculptured croons, fine wines
your rifle on your back could wind my morning with worry
and with my scourges, you took me all the same
but what I remember is:
black cottons, brass buttons, iron crosses, steel machines
then:

nothing

“Monsieur Boursin - she has passed.”

He sobs,
it sounds like
war.

I long to talk to a stranger and ask them:

"

Ever worry that,
in your blood there are antibodies
to make you nauseous towards
every.single.person.you.get.close.to?
That we are peering - naked, wet, shivering - into an unfathomable loneliness,
balancing on our toes,
inching, with our mistakes, ever closer to the most personal,
most frightening,
most loathsome loss
we will ever experience?
That you will never reveal yourself
Never be vulnerable
Never be loved or
love the one person with the
right size-of-wrench to fix you?

Your infernal heat, to guard against probing hands, will scatter any hope that the right hands might intrude, and you will die inside, trembling, small, at the thought you will REMAIN ALONE FOREVER.

"

And then, grin, and pause, and they walk away from the unthinkable phrase that describes...
All our bad or separate moments.

I dipped my hands in the volume of an immense love,
once, when time had not yet folded my spine
and it taught me that even kinships born of so little as
a lost word or an early sentiment are written on us,
and in us, and their existence never quite erased.

I have dreamed of being a tiny cutter clearing
the ruined towers peering from your open surf, the ancient arches
easing from the waves. My ship's skeleton leasing
its buoyancy from the mercy of the tide - I became
so much flotsam at that structures' side.

This burning question put to paper hearts,
consumed so hotly tall dreams and false starts.
It ate us up, and left behind it, ash -
the ink left on us, as before it passed.

Commitments so quickly and easily made
burst with the heat of a gentle grenade.
Left in the wasteland, so brittle the fuse -
we burned all the quicker with nothing to lose.

she spoke to me, on the daffodil sweetness of the pasture
while the grasses, waving, muttered their moist message on the wind
of rot, and renewal,
(but hold your lips, be still for an explosion of intimacy, for a moment)

'Are those a constellation?' she asks.
"The Pleiades."
'You don't know that.'

she doesn't care where the car begins, exhaling gently, to stop
and she commends its forward motion
(the keening love of a sodium light
and forgetfulness in every bone of my body)
I love the thrum of it, below my feet,
murmuring vibrato in the pedals.

They have a Huck Finn cave display at Disneyworld. In Adventure Island, or somewhere, or one of us, deep in the vastness of spines and fingers.

Its fiberglass walls are a portrait of America -
the glean of dew a reflection of that spirit
that drove us over the borders, the rivers, to Oregon,
so we could love under a naked moon,
and renounce our lives of glee, and security
for the bright unsettled plantation of the starless fields.

'You don't know a constellation from a cloud of dandelion seeds.'

But oh, my relentless pioneer love, I do - I know a constellation
is made of stars, and rough determination, and I know that,
love is a today thing, and we are yesterday people
that pain is tomorrow, and we will always be children of the dusk preceding
destined, dear, to find our love receding

Are you prepared, or will the wilderness this time swallow you?

Underwhelmed with modern magic, I let myself be taken
to a party on a strange night.
Like you, I let my lips whisper abracadabra and
kept my fears in one subtle hand.
Like you, I wanted to vanish the crowd
under a napkin -
to palm everyone into a cup under the table,
leaving a beaming new face - radiant eyes and unfamiliar tricks -
to abandon all the showmanship
exactly where it belongs.

And when all the faces peeled away to
a lively midnight wilderness
you were there, a magician
and prestidigitated into smoke and mirrors
every artifact of doubt.

There is nothing I would like more than
to have a drink with you
to have a cigarette with you
to have anything at all with you
and learn your secrets:
A longing for names unmentioned and eyes still incredulous,
and a reverence for fairy dust.

Watching the room empty,
hearing the soft chatter of their private marvels
we are alone, as we ached to be,
here, to tell our secrets, and they are these:
we are in discord with love
skeptics, so unfit for
the careless faith and
grasping vigilance of hearts our age.

Now, in this cabaret,
"goodnight" is ensorcelled into a curse, and
"come with me," a necromancy uttered
to give to dead hopes new dimensions.

Here, I would read every book under the sun,
work my fingers into knotted idleness,
believe in every fantasy
to learn your secrets.

Under the snowfall, we kiss like Chinese rings
but you know as well as I do
that quick enchantments are a thin fable,
and instant magic does not exist.

it's not so hard to
ask anymore, these questions
intractable questions about
what we have lost and
where it has gone
and it worries me

maybe we have become
accustomed to its absence

I don't miss the suffering
and I don't miss
the uncertainty I don't
miss the clouds, whatever they portended
or any of the times that we pretended
that our love had limits.

but I do miss well-defended
winters, snowed in, knowing
inconsolable sadness, complicated
sadness, and the ease
with which you disentangled it

Look at this, you whispered;
It's like a cat's cradle.
You moved your fingers
and it was gone.

So we are left asking questions without
a voice to offer solutions
so we are asking questions and
they seem solutionless.

I don't miss
clandestine afternoons, and hiding
from confrontation, but mostly
from each other
and I don't miss
long explanations, and looking at wild
mountains, wondering how
they could be climbed,
and duplicity, and things that we resigned
never to mention, and turned from, blind.

but I do miss
sleeping, two to a narrow bed
confined, knowing infinite windows to
your own wonders, and the canyons
so dark, concealing cat's cradles
a kiss and
a question away:
repeating hopes that we could not abandon

but there were some too hard
for you, too hard for me

You moved your fingers, but
this one never disappeared
and while I pray for someone
who can solve it
I'll hide it away again:

An artifact, a tangled souvenir -
to remind me of the things you couldn't fix
to wonder why you didn't persevere -
a question about what I have lost and
where it has gone.