I
The first utterance
whispered with the scent of
black rose mingled with lavender lingering in the wind,
seven hundred and thirty days forward
and even road signs do not know
of all the towns we have been to.
II
Last July slashed a gash
that strapped years to me.
These trembling fingers
that try too often to count
the ticks of time I can’t take back,
and the saltwater that trickles down
these circles of twilight eyes
and the violent velvet tempest tremors
that take the voice from my throat
and leaves my chest a vacant vacuum of ember haloed gravity.
You know them all by heart.
I read an almanac of secrets all mine in your watchful eyes.
III
This springtime, our old stadium
with the bolt scratches on the bleachers
reopens for its last hurrah,
the lights brilliant like their lumens were of stolen starlight
and we are somehow standing burnt out but star-bright,
our hands cinnamon dusted from building towers.
You were alight with an ardent zeal,
as the songs slipped from your lips
all recalled and awaiting the strains,
you sauntered across the stage
like it was yours to begin with.
IV
I have been ghosting,
been slipping in and out of daytime comatose,
confused my soul with pineapple smoke,
pirouetting in a fog of fragmented panic and poison envy.
But each night I try drifting down to
our post-code and pretend the sun rises
only when I want it to —
and when the illusion splinters
the storms roam again like wild, absconding animals
and I have yet to outrun the slithering snakes in the rising water.
V
Still you have been the stronghold,
the anchor arms that reach meters deep,
into trenches alongside all my once-was’s
that still prick in spite of time.
You have built bomb shelters from
bricks of patient promises,
sanctioned in the reigning monarchy
of a soft disapproving polar bear.
In our den, I salvage enough peace
for slumber enclosed in a hold
that will not halt winter
but may unfreeze scarlet rivers
just long enough to relearn
a little forgetting
and the simple act of breathing.