38 St. John's Street

you will wake and the world won’t be new and neither will you. day breaks, skips across the sky and falls into night, dream first. the stars remember your face but the dawn paints it bright. explore the wilderness inside you, curious and unafraid. you, the sun, and the moon will break and fall and dream and always always rise again.

(as the ground thaws, spring will knock softly echo our hearts beating and beckon you back to the world stronger for your slumber, you will clamber out of me hungry and steaming in the new green)

at the risk of sounding too earnest, i won’t write you (another) poem about love, though i do love you. this is instead a poem about your loveliest feature. i love your feet. i love how they emerge from your ankles, how they wiggle and tap with excitement. i love your toes, each one individually and also all of them sitting pretty in their rows. i love your feet naked and i love them in your shoes. i love your feet when they walk you to me. i love your feet next to mine in bed. i love your feet for every step backwards, every side step, misstep, stubbed toe. i love them because you’ve always hated them. i love them because they are a part of you, like your dainty ears and perfect lips. i love the way they've traveled the world with you, taking you from place to beautiful place. i love them because they are always with you, in a way i cannot be. i love that they hold you up. i love that they are grateful when you rest. i love that they are the first thing to touch the ground on mornings you never wanted to wake for. i love your feet for the promise they make you, the chance always for one more step forwards, for one beautiful foot in front of the other. for every footstep still to come. i can’t put (another) ring on your finger, but perhaps i can find you a different kind of ring. is there a ring toe for toe rings? let’s find out my love.

it has been so long, and i fear i too am changed- how will i know when we meet again? by laughter perched on each shoulder, joy in surround sound? by the press of a hand, tender, warm, reassurance made solid? by grace given and received in turn, hearts shared entire? eyes closed, i turn to you sure as the leaves of plants curving into the sun’s warmth, impossibly certain as the birds flirting and flying on the wind’s breaths. i find you, here where you have always been like a heartbeat, a melody, like the rhythm of life, and of course, of course i know you. it has been too long, love, for us to rush now. let us linger like the moon hanging in sunlit skies, and unfurl like the last late days of summer, content, and unhurried, and so sweet.

after we part, i breathe you in every exhale now made farewell farewell for now

i cry most when it happens. we don’t think about this. i cry at the funeral. we don’t think about this either. i cry at my apartment door when i arrive and do not greet you. also, i cry when i leave and do not say goodbye. it is hard to be in the apartment.  surprised, i cry at work. a cat in the drive thru, you see. his name is nox and he’s so friendly, she says. he would let you pet him if only we were closer. i cry as i put away your things. they live in the closet waiting like a dowry for their inheritor, next playmate. i can’t find your favorite toy. i know i will cry when i find it. i cry at three am bleary eyed, refusing sleep like this will stop tomorrow, like this will prevent going to bed alone in a bed all wrong, too light, too cold, too big. i cry on walks and i cry in the coffee shop writing this. i cry and i cry, and it does nothing to bring you back. i hate that you died alone. i hope it was so quick. i hate the passage of time that takes me far away from days and nights spent with you, more precious now for all your sweetness, for the swiftness of your leaving. i cry for all the love given, and mostly for all the love left over. it should have been yours, sweet boy.

and i think, enough. enough.

my lover calls me her sweet girl, says she has never met anyone  so sweet in her whole life, and i know she means it. know she thinks of me like cotton candy, spun sugar made delicate and fragile and fleeting. carefully she pulls me apart with her fingertips, and for one delicious moment i am undone, dangling in anticipation before melting in her mouth until nothing is left of me but an aftertaste, cloying, a sickly stickiness lingering on her tongue. in my dreams a new lover calls me honey, names me for my sweetness and knows it will last, and still licks traces of me from the corners of her lips. still she savors each taste, deliberate in her devotion, and i am not carefully undone but instead thoroughly devoured, like honeysuckle petals pulled apart for nectar, delicious and abundant and perennial. this new lover calls me honey, and i do not know if it makes her a honeybee, queen of my honeycombed home, but i think it means that we will never go hungry. that this saccharine love will never spoil. in my dreams  my new lover calls me honey, lets me kiss it from her mouth into memory before waking.

i have spent a lifetime making my love small enough to hold, but what happens when the want is too big for my hands only? when it overflows from the curve of my cupped palms and spills past these desperate fingertips, wasted? for so long i have measured out my loves and wants in doses, taking sips like cold medicine rationed in wartime against the terrible yearning violence of my heart. when i now link hands with you, dearest, it is to keep you close, but you must also realize that when we join together, when my jagged edges seal themselves like greedy lips to yours, it is to finally glory in the luxury of unrestrained love. it is to dive into a pool of need and want and you and come up gasping for air, surrounded on all sides. how precious then to hold your hands and be held in them, to share a large, dripping love and still want more, to look, lonely, only to find you already within me feasting alongside my ravenous, hungry heart.

once, while my mother is working as a substitute teacher,  she asks me to visit an elementary school class. their teacher has arranged several guest appearances for the final day of their poetry unit, and to my relief, i am neither the first nor the last guest. i read my poems. i answer their questions. i do not remember the specifics of either because later, as i am sitting in a chair that is only barely too small and listening to their poems, an alarm goes off. the kids hush as the air rushes from the room, and for just a moment, you can hear everyone’s heart drop, even over the sirens, until the teacher, whose name i can’t recall now, she says into the ear piercing silence class, it’s okay, it’s just a drill and with a dramatic rush of air, the kids take a breath and burst into motion, pressing backs to the wall, the one with the door but still furthest from the window. lights snapped off, blinds drawn, lock clicked shut, the teacher reminds everyone to be silent, to be still, to sit head down, arms crossed for as long as it takes. i am still seated in the too small chair, now against the wall next to my mother and a ten year old girl,  and in the pulsating dimness between them, i try not to imagine that the slow steps of administrators in the hallway are anything else. i try not to think about which body i would cover if those approaching footsteps were not just a part of the drill but a nightmare made all too often into these children’s reality. i still cannot remember the teacher’s name or which poems i read, but i do remember going home after, ears ringing with sirens, with imaginary shots fired, with my own heartbeat pounding, with a moment of silence in a classroom full of children somehow sounding the loudest of them all.

it’s the pocket knife, i say representative of a can-do, fix-it attitude liberally cut with hotness and a sense of commitment it’s the weight in your pocket so familiar, ingrained its absence only noticed when you begin to feel weightless, less safe it’s the hands that grip and use the knife strong and sure and naked but for their warm metal band it’s the way the kiss of your blade on skin feels less like a threat of violence, of pain and more like a promise of protection, of pleasure maybe it’s even how pocket knife rhymes with i now pronounce you husband and wife how it sounds like the rest of our life or maybe it’s not the knife but you after all yes, you with a sharp blade but mostly you with your soft heart

The morning becomes, slowly. Unfolds itself over the river As my mother would a blanket, warm. Already awake, the birds chirp and dance. Their song shares the air with my breaths, Footsteps, and the rush of water, unhurried. In the soft whisper of wind and under The gentle snow of white spring blossoms, The morning becomes, is with us, And we become, are with it.

she places my hand around her neck, gently as if i was not pulling back, tense as if instead my hand, just as gently, was cupping her and rising and falling with her breath she pulls me in and in and in, relentless, until, just once, i let my hand rest against her and feel my own throat close up

remembering like an act of god and nothing like a miracle. remembering like dying but slowly- death, the bitch, comes for us all.

i did not date another girl with long dark hair and a dog because i am not over you- that would be ridiculous and sad and honestly too pathetic to write a poem about. no, i dated another short girl that talks to me about music and takes my clothes off too quickly and feeds me tamales because now when i find a long dark hair in my sheets, i know it is not yours. when i pull it from my sweater, my memories do not flash to your driveway or the boat ramp parking lot or your front seat. now, when i clean my vanity and curl a long dark hair around my fingers before throwing it away, i remember falling asleep in her arms and waking up on the other side of the bed. 

today i tell my brother that i think there must be something wrong with me, or with my sadness.  it is never right or enough, the way i am never right, or enough.  a funny mirror, grief, the way we see ourselves with or in the dying. the way we learn sadness, and inherit empty reflections.

the moon, bright in a sky full of clouds, helps blow out your birthday candles,  makes a wish with you. keeps yours like a secret in her pocket close and safe,  and leans down to whisper her wish for you.  she says, i wish you imperfect. i wish you imperfect days and nights and sunsets.  i wish you all the red lights on your way home. i wish you dogs barking at the dawn. i wish you ice cream that melts too quickly. i wish you imperfect and flawed and all the more willing to be awed at the endless sun of summer and the first, crisp day of fall. to find joy in a forgotten favorite song,  to delight in new rivers and their bends, to give thanks for the unexpected perfect moments of your imperfect days. the moon, yes, she wishes this for you.