I woke among a labor of love: snow-capped, evergreen-dotted twilight.
You show up in pauses—
the words I never said,
the breath I didn’t take,
these rose-colored memories—
too baggy on her frail frame
The slow grief of mountains,
is an everlasting
Earth’s mute lullaby.
I have been here longer than your language
and may exist long after
The girl would pretend to think, but eventually she would start crying too, and together they could stay suspended in the thin threshold between dream and reality
Touch has a dialogue all its own. That feels
vestigial now. What I will remember is the scent.
I carried you like a field dressing.
Wrapped it around my arm,
arm I don’t write with like that would preserve something.
Rain splashes down from gates of heaven
in a mournful tone
Mindless ebb and flow of the murky Sound.
No longer any purpose.
Merely necessity.
And disgust, disdain, dismissal
Through years that slip like sand:
one, two, three, then ten, a hundred.
I’ll get stuck in a raindrop, be in the ocean, the sky, the air, the trees, your water, your showers, your pools, your drinks, your skin, your eyes, your spit, I will be everywhere
but at least we saw the fireflies and know that their lights are prettier than the city’s.
So I kissed her goodbye.