Teach me words I can use to love you with. Help my mouth meet new shapes and sounds, form them between my teeth, and blow into them life and love. Helen, I go back to your voice notes again and again. It is like a dying man in a desert finally having had sight of…
If you are looking for a sign, this is not a sign.
This is an emergency. Moments of startling clarity and then, nothing. Days spent with you a fog in my brain. My mouth full of sounds that mean nothing in a room where silence reigns. I am collecting words like memories because my words and I, we don’t speak anymore. You’re no longer here and there…
Burying
Thunder in my chest Earth under my nails I dig a grave For my own heart
No Detritus
Neglect litters the shorelineThe hug of one giant waveAll is forgiven
Saltwater lover
You are saltwater Tears, sting, and ocean spray My perfect thirst.
Let her have roses
More than anything tonight I want to give you roses. But not another’s words or laments. Not another’s passion. My own. To pluck a seed from my chest and bury it into the black fecund earth and wait for love to take root. I would lay with my belly flush against this soil and whisper…
Come on in, 2022
I wish you cause for great laughter. Genuine connection. Deep conversations. Authenticity in all your encounters. I wish you joy – pure, unadulterated. And peace – quiet within and calm without. May you chance upon fleeting moments of excruciating beauty. Sunsets upon sunsets. Cool breezes on the warmest days, sunshine on the coldest. Ice cream…
December is for letting go
I still carry her last words. “Look after yourself.” In my broken brain, it sounded like, “I’m not going to.”
So lovely you make my teeth hurt
Today I saw photographs of you I’d forgotten about. And the breath I took in was taken back out; returned. My stomach sank and touched my toes. My mouth went from rainforest to desert. You make everything ordinary almost too beautiful to bear. When I remember you, you are not a photograph. I’m not thinking…
part-broken, part-whole 