harm and love, she is: two dark lapis eyes, hidden in a mist, blinking as she blows a kiss and exhales pools of weed, burnt

After wandering like a speechless cloud over meadowland, you’re reminded of her, the numerous days of recent rain, and gray time, then the wordless seconds—

I. I wanted someone whose slender fingers would slowly rub the day from my shoulders, then turn me over for a kiss. Then I wanted

Riot of Violets walking back to our apartment on the west side I saw you running toward me in your worn out red Converse sneakers

For K   Her lips taste like day-old brioche and a chemist’s concept of cherries. Her kiss presses a thin, scented film, onto mine like

you rush past me with the shopping cart and it wrenches in my gut: i will lose you someday, drowned in fire or atop white

Watching you turn away in the early dark the bare flesh of your back as you depart, moonlight reflecting on your skin shining forlornly like

Somehow, we speak telepathically. And also with my voice when I’m alone. Our shadow selves, the unseeable, were created stitched at the seams in union,

Your eyes are not a metaphor. I just meet them and stay there for a while, And I just keep looking.   They’re more like

You’re still in my contacts even though my phone is new. It’s the third upgrade I’ve made without deleting you. I might have pocket-dialed you

After a year, I consider cleaning out her work desk, the one and only place she wrote poetry, a nook under the basement steps, no

Today is our fortieth wedding anniversary. Divorced for thirty-two of those years- Happy Un-Anniversary. Did you pause an instant to          

He comes in stocking feet, moving on tiptoe through the dark, sometimes while I sleep, because he never sleeps. He occupies himself in small ways—

My sister told me today she keeps a poem I wrote her on our wall. I haven’t stepped foot in that house in ages (months,

She’s cleaning out closets, boxing up unused crockery and sorting through bookshelves. Everything is a landmine of memory. She’s promised her neighbour a bagful of