All By Heart

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.