leaves flutter
and shake in the wind
then spin
and land on proverbs:

the prologue to any journey
all told in cryptic poems,
so I keep turning the sheets
to demystify this moment

insistent omen
it’s about the wishes we had spoken
i promised, no, i told them they’d been chosen
and then stood frozen
to have everything out in the open

we are that we are
inherently? alone
so i said it’s even more important
to love yourself
than to love me

denying each replacement
like nothing could be above me
crumbling sugar on grapefruit
call it bittersweet

Wan smile
with a hint of a question
tugging at the corners,
like making a bed
to eventually lie in

How does one answer a multi-page letter
when something much better
is unfolding before them?

It crinkles and creases,
then restores a soul
previously shorn to pieces

It did all turn around

I sink my roots into stable ground,
extend my wax wings as far as they can fly,
turn a wary eye to the massive sky
and harmonize the sound of your heart and mine
syncopating time

My friend! My foe? My someone—
Is feeling this all allowed?
As for our fate, I don’t know why or how,
but there—we’ve gone and done it now

pebbles are hitting my windows
they crackle then drip down
Are you up late again? I am,
but it’s because of that we were able to cross paths

I hear you like clouds without rain
the color green
playing in the landscape of our mutual imaginations
What have you ‘seen’?
I mean, what do you think
of these awkward machinations?
Bashful patience turns to brazen flirtation
and rain to libations
subject to subjective curation

Engrossed in the mysteries you’ve hidden,
I flip flippant through pages—
love-bitten, type-written
I sit in constant search of your truth displayed naked,
I witness a new birth of a new self
—Will they make it?

I thought I’d put up a good fight,
asking for
a hint, a sign,
a hint, a sign,

but more importantly—you have been picking up on mine,
right?
The clouds tap on my windows to
come outside, come outside and play.
Do you swear you’ll remember,
you promise you know?

that we are
two people,
one universe?

This, my reward for time well guarded:
a gentle collection of meanings
residing in the ellipses of our laughter

When she said my soul is radiant,
I couldn’t swallow it
and kept chewing on it after

Goodness just follows us
in the gaze of the moon
who pours through windows
we imagine we share;
tumbling through space,
I picture the sweet mystery to discase,
the deep history of this place
and the promising embrace
occasionally absent
but always there

I know something about this now.
Would it be terrible to let you know, too?
I tell you I’ll tell you
when the time is right.
You say why not now?
I reach over
to switch off
the light

So it’s not that I have anyone to talk to,
it’s just quiet at 4 am

And if your mind was like mine
(which is to say

a butter churn
exhausting
all the endurance I could muster
turning these complicated memories
to something sweet

or even worth bearing)
you’d also stop caring
and grate color into it
just to keep from despairing

you’re supposed to get over things.
so that’s exactly what I do.
it’s not something special that I did for you.

and when it stops mattering
who thinks that you matter
the chatter goes flatter
your senses get sharper
and sure enough,
you shore things up
and stand staring in the sun
in the stunned wake of the disaster

they couldn’t share it faster
but you don’t care
because you’re 
the only 
one 
who was there
and you’re still here to hear it after

So maybe I do have someone to talk to

who knew

I like to watch
your frozen eyes
grimace
across the screen,
you wait
but no one comes
until I decide
to tell the truth

You said silence
is loyalty

so I signed
everything I needed to say
and swore on every god:

This time, I prevail,
and you cannot haunt me anymore

There are too many summer stars to count
in the black cradle of night
but still, I try to number them
like the reasons I’m enchanted
and eschew the old constellations
for new creations
of my own imagination

It used to feel romantic,
the rain in warm sheets around me,
legs crossed
and a deep desire to ground me

but as I let it surround me
it consumed me
as quickly as it had found me

so that the hopes I’d planted
rotted and were altered profoundly,
left maladapted,
pedantic and confounding

I hear it in the silences between the daylight
felt in the jagged vibration of the speakers
rattling like coins in my pockets

So I take some memories
and scatter them on the ground
falling behind me
like apple seeds

just to say
you don’t know what I smoke about

Curling up in the air,
smoldering nothingness

I never count their growth

as the sound still followed me
and the silence rattled me,

it was better not to look back,
for fear
you’d still be here

1.

You were tricked into believing
the key to your literal survival is to sympathize
and “make” him happy

If I could get back everything I gave away,
I’d cherish it more
and move more deliberately
I would lie in the grass and read
as many books as I could,
absorb a universe of knowledge

Unfocus my eyes,
learn to hear colors,
like a Mendelssohn octet
in paint-by-number horses
and watermelon wallpaper

Deny anyone access
and dwell with the mountains
with a vow to escape
to a world of my own

2.

The intermittent “good times” were a key part of how it worked

Here lately each morning is a triumph:
I seized a chariot and chased joy across the sky.
Four flaming horses
cantered with a throaty cry.

I don’t really speak about it
but for so long I was petrified,
weeping through the dark, dark nights
tortured by awful buzzing
and flashing purple lights

And I used to care about such unimportant things:
what so-and-so said or thinks
or how slow time seemed to be,
which was very
very
short-sighted of me

3.

It’s like malware on a computer, running in the background
without any awareness or conscious decision on your end

When I sleep at night
I connect to my visions,
so I try not to sleep at night

4.

You can love him with everything you’ve got,
but if you stay,
you will sacrifice your life for no reason

It turns out
I don’t like the way anyone sounds.
I stare at his stare
and catch him looking down

“Cauterize this compassion
and don’t cry for monsters.” I lived in the village
and meditated on meditation
until I came to the realization
that all time is borrowed,
and whatever luck he had
is simply what I gave him.

I lived in the village and re-learned existence,
a continuous combination
of teary fear
and stubborn persistence,

resisting any binds
and biding my time,
borrowing lines
in the well that I wished him.

So that when I left the village
and looked over the scarred streets
where stares once meant violence
and quiet translated
to quiet defeat,
I desired the quiet
and eagerly circled its feet,
running in place,
as if in a dream.