Discretionary Love

If you ever called in the night’s dim desperation you’ve been diagnosed your he can’t take the heat I would say friend forever I would

A place is not a place without you. A room is just a space, with nothing to define or recommend it. A street is just

The “City of San Francisco” uniformed dining car porter a middle-aged black man walks the coaches and observation cars taps a simple chord on the

sweetness before she began, she placed the glass jar between us— filled with fresh, golden honey—and a sizable spoon. homemade. an amateur apiarist, she kept

As time gnaws on my bones, and I stand hunched and bow-legged under the weight of my scars, I look not to the heavens for

You hold my love like a bird  With a broken wing  You nurse what feels like  A forever alteration  And fix me a splint — 

As I stare from a distance, I remember the chart of your body. I am a shell of loss, and I listen for the call

smelled you out, sensed your heat, clung to you those long 36 hours, feeding off your life, drinking you in. I wonder if my love

you were home to me for so long until you just became someone walking around at night in the rain showing up one last time

Proskelyte¹ I see your thighs, the dusky patch between, dark fires ignited, promising. I see your ankles, alabaster white and beautiful, pressed against me, stroking.

I have nothing to give you, and nothing on a piece of paper will help except that having lost everything, you have less than nothing,

Before my first date with my husband, I stood him up twice; why he still came that Friday, honestly I’ll never know. I cry once

We stare at each other with the viscosity of honey, yellow against the warmth of a star. Sticky like the clouds you pluck, sticking them

There is no time in her life for dreams and the first sparrow of the day never sings at her window.   She rises swiftly