Empty Wandering Hearts

I haven’t known the way that you taste in what feels like two hundred years, but I still see the press of your lips in that old elevator whenever the clock strikes ten. Or, no, that’s not right– it was the way your tongue slipped silent over mine in the back of a taxi 11:59 on New Year’s Eve, heads ducked cheeks flushed hands clasped together as if being quiet enough could hide ourselves from the universe, like the driver not noticing would grant the wish we were never asking out loud. Where anyone could hear. This year I have cried a thousand tears. Tonight I still owe it a thousand more. I don’t know in this lifetime if your eyes are gray or green or gold, if they’re still the blue of a perfect storm-tossed sea. I don’t mind. Wishes don’t come true sometimes, no matter how hard we didn’t say. There is an elevator here. There’s a taxicab outside. There is an Eve around the corner, waiting to whisper in my ear all the things that she knows. She will say them out loud. They will still be just for me.

I haven’t known the way that you taste in what feels like two hundred years, but I still see the press of your lips in that old elevator whenever the clock strikes ten. Or, no, that’s not right– it was the way your tongue slipped silent over mine in the back of a taxi 11:59 on New Year’s Eve, heads ducked cheeks flushed hands clasped together as if being quiet enough could hide ourselves from the universe, like the driver not noticing would grant the wish we were never asking out loud. Where anyone could hear. This year I have cried a thousand tears. Tonight I still owe it a thousand more. I don’t know in this lifetime if your eyes are gray or green or gold, if they’re still the blue of a perfect storm-tossed sea. I don’t mind. Wishes don’t come true sometimes, no matter how hard we didn’t say. There is an elevator here. There’s a taxicab outside. There is an Eve around the corner, waiting to whisper in my ear all the things that she knows. She will say them out loud. They will still be just for me.

I haven’t known the way that you taste in what feels like two hundred years, but I still see the press of your lips in that old elevator whenever the clock strikes ten. Or, no, that’s not right– it was the way your tongue slipped silent over mine in the back of a taxi 11:59 on New Year’s Eve, heads ducked cheeks flushed hands clasped together as if being quiet enough could hide ourselves from the universe, like the driver not noticing would grant the wish we were never asking out loud. Where anyone could hear. This year I have cried a thousand tears. Tonight I still owe it a thousand more. I don’t know in this lifetime if your eyes are gray or green or gold, if they’re still the blue of a perfect storm-tossed sea. I don’t mind. Wishes don’t come true sometimes, no matter how hard we didn’t say. There is an elevator here. There’s a taxicab outside. There is an Eve around the corner, waiting to whisper in my ear all the things that she knows. She will say them out loud. They will still be just for me.

“will the darkness end?” she asks and I say, yes, you are the moon a star fire blazing through the night. it holds no fear. she whispers,“what of the light?” that, too, I tell her, but clouds and trees caves deep underground shade your soul in the midst of its heat. “and where they meet? what do we do there?” we try, my darling. we try.

“will the darkness end?” she asks and I say, yes, you are the moon a star fire blazing through the night. it holds no fear. she whispers,“what of the light?” that, too, I tell her, but clouds and trees caves deep underground shade your soul in the midst of its heat. “and where they meet? what do we do there?” we try, my darling. we try.

“will the darkness end?” she asks and I say, yes, you are the moon a star fire blazing through the night. it holds no fear. she whispers,“what of the light?” that, too, I tell her, but clouds and trees caves deep underground shade your soul in the midst of its heat. “and where they meet? what do we do there?” we try, my darling. we try.

we are westward seeking fingers over collarbones and poppies, a California gold rush all our own. the trail’s line stutters through the plains, gets lost in South Dakota, winds its way past your bellybutton in the swell of the Rockies. have you tasted snow or skin lately? when was the last time you felt them glide across your tongue? we are not broken, babe simply crossing the berth of that continental divide, wet thumbs tripping down our thighs towards something greener. when you reach the ocean, pray for me. when you reach the ocean, pull that salt lick out of your calf muscle, bury the drought in Tornado Alley, throw your wrist’s cast back across the Mississippi. when we reach the ocean, grab my hand, bury your toes where the tar sticks, spread your laughter past that county line. carry your gold with me, rush forward into the space where we find ourselves lain across the sky.

Let us light up your lobby with the way our bodies shake full of the greed and desperate energy that comes from tearing at our skin. Did you not feel the earth start to tremble when your leaves touched my lips? We are waking forests, a stream of reasons for bare bones shivering rushing tomes and fallen limbs broken messages lined with frost founded in the quiet morning light. We are waking. We are waking. Let us breathe.

I will not say we were magic. Our skin was too bright for that– artificial flavors dressed as scraps of construction craft paper cuts, too far removed from the earth we formed in to touch its power. But there were days you held me when the sky smelled like lilac blooming in the backyard, stars falling in the shape of leaves.

March came with pomegranates in the palms of her hands and green in the streams of her hair. We bathed in decay of once-gone-bys, fed off of remains where we fell when our bones stopped shaking, aching and cold and worn brittle. There is no space to this spring, no truth or trick, only waiting to find what comes from too much rain.