Daydreams slip from your fists like pennies
Dripping copper sunbeams to light
The places you first forgot
When did your lamplight leave my skyline?
All the trees died in the lightning
Even the ones shouldering green
And we met in the valley
Where I lost you
In-between
The nonsense of brilliance lingered
In the evergreen
Where you’d been trying to trace maps
You forgot how to read
Between the
Blush of
Sweet wine
And burnt coffee
Barefoot march
Through the trees
Cradle eyes
Watch over me
Head held high
Rosy cheeks
Starlight peels
Through bitter breeze
I’ll show you places
You thought you’d lost
Soft light and faces
You cradled, forgot
Between the
Raised voices calling
Your comfort to bed
Well stop here,
Sleep well,
Rest your tired head.
When I met you the poetry
That once domino-ed from my fingertips
Flew like flocks of sparrows
From the aching bones of willow trees
I try to write you an epic
And instead stand up to pour another cup of coffee
I wish that I could craft something
That would echo off the sunspots on your shoulder
Syllables that seemed sweet in dreaming
Can't catch the butterflies in my stomach each time I walk through the door
I don't know how to write the tiptoed bubble of our laughter
When we're dancing across the kitchen floor in sock feet
Words never felt so hollow
As when asked to presuppose
The entirety of
My favorite verse
I want to ask you to tell me a story
Tell me about the time we spent the twilight chasing dreams under the old oak tree
Till we fell into the grass, our laughter singing symphonies with evening melody
Hold my hand and tell me
You’ll still love me, when my arthritic fingers
are bent with age
Open your world to me
Let me step in quietly
On toes soft as the first steps of the night’s last waltz
Dance with me,
And when the song ends,
We’ll teach our hearts
To hum.
Joni Mitchell at 2 am
Held your soul like a church bell hymn
If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is
You’re bright red blood on these chapped lips
Closet walls still bear the scars
Of making wishes in the dark
Charcoal drawings you stole from me
Home got lost in memory
When I was a child I would sing to you
I'd climb up to the wooden rope swing in the old oak tree sheltering the tiger lily meadow
My hymns and summered legs keeping time to your beating heart
Acorn, lavender, and molasses moonshine
Confetti down from the branches you cradle
Summered soles on warm tar
You can be daytime tomorrow
Let me hold you while they sleep.
Shush the tiptoe second hand on your watch
For the way my heart beats on the off-beat
On the off-chance that these holes, all along
Were the seams of your stars
Wash my bones
Till they’re cleaner than my conscience
These lungs on loan
From the day my dust was light
Call my bluff
Tell me home is where the heart is
You’ve had enough
But your soles keep touching ground
When the dust of my bones
Is folded gently into soil
Turned with water
Bled from swollen clouds
Breath broken and chilled
Inhaled by roots of rivers and willows
I hope my heart won’t shatter
When you hear the noise
The rain makes as it whistles
Shushing hollow homes
Tasting ripe apologies
I’m sorry
The sour insincerity
Quietly anchored
In shaky hands that just won’t still
Ever and always a sullen reminder
These knotted storms with beating chests
Can’t sing.
I remember skipping stones
Touching notes I’d never heard
I remember stepping stones
Pebbles between my toes
I left a daisy crown on your bed
Wine drunk and half asleep
The dust of days
Wrapped in palmed pages
Read them when you're alone.
Little sparrow with your broken wings
Why do you always look so sad?
Build me up and break me down
All that shattered was my trust
Don't worry, sweet morning bird
Fractures heal
And you can sing.
Daisy dreams in the wide palmed plains
Bright-eyed lullabies
Drenched in some orphaned sun
Find me waiting for you
Holding my heart across my chest
Beating
Beating
When you try to count ravens
But forget how many mean life, luck, or loss
Sunlight splinters draw lines on their land
Fragments full of the only solitude you've ever held hope in
Still I believe.
As the headlights first dawn across your cheek bones
Scalding sun on a reaching horizon
You'll understand stillness is a question
From somewhere behind yourself you'll watch your body become someplace able to be broken
Spiderwebs will bloom through glass, meandering tributaries unwinding to some sea you don't know your toes will ever touch
That single breath suspended
In the sacred space between open lips and clenched fists
Fragility and the tabernacle you’ve held it within
Will ignite in place of the sound your lungs hoped to make
Little white sighs of expectation etching their songs into silence
As the trembling begins to crawl into your coiled bones
You’ll touch places you thought you’d never mistake
Some sweet dust of faith brightly blurring words left unsaid
The gentleness of unfelt cacophony
And the carillon of ringing in your ears
Bells never sounded so sweet.
I want to buy you a cup of coffee on your best and worst days, write you notes and leave them scattered around your house, show up on your porch in the pouring rain with my ukulele just to say hello, send you postcards brimming with adventures and run away with you for weekends with no maps. I want to love you in a litany of little things.
I love mornings best, I think. I love the coffee sips and the precocious weight of an empty day.
I think I’ve been afraid to write
Because if I opened the door the tiniest shutter
This heartache might just spill out in a kaleidoscope of paper memories
Stamped with your name
Three letters I wish spelled something simpler
I-O-U