This Heart

It is no longer those dreams
woven from words,
brilliant as blood,s
the translucent green
of sorrowed days,
moments serrated
by regret and momentary joy
that hold us within our skin,
curled in sleep
against the coldness of morning.
But remember after all
we wake. Remember
those fingertips pressed to your lips,
the sweet salt of every word
left unspoken. And yet
how the sound of some fragile thing,
irretrievable and broken,
threads the fragile silence
as the sun rises.


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What Has Become of Us

What has become of us,
Beloved,
Now we step as quietly as mice,
the pine floor, smooth beneath our sock feet,
creaks in gentle protest
as the round eye of the world turns
into a moon the color of pumpkins,
of blood oranges,
the deep regret of leaves.
This is the way the seasons remember
what once was iridescent, luminous
in the palm of an outstretched hand.
And how it rose into light,
a small and broken thing long passed
to fragile skeleton, a barest wing
curled to the memory of flight,
the windowsill,
a ledge as close to freedom
as memory will allow.


---

Don't Tell Me

So many words
lay between us,
each sentence a pale ghost.
Take my hand instead
and feel how breakable
the bones are.



---

For Lent

Of insufficient faith, these
cupped all small bones, wings,
and the smudge of ash
placed just so-
Who then decides the sky,
the rise of birds,
their brightness held prisoner
by the very air
that carries them.

---


Green Hallways

Speckled stars were woven through the floor-
almost wings, almost
butterflies, bright flags, their small dark bodies
pointing towards the door.
This is the way out they believed
and so it became a certain place
of exits and quiet dyings.
Whole days died there, you see,
the clank of metal lockers moved the hours,
and like the pages of a book, our youth
rustled through the air
with the scent of musk and longing.
At the end of all the borrowed doorways
and wide windows bolted from the inside
the space remaining was narrow enough for only
two lean children, you and I.
The vermillion corridor became a river. This we knew
was love, and falling into its undulating current, we swam
following the glinting colors into flight.