it's okay to remember,
keep her with you

memories hurt
but they heal, too

at least,
I hope they do

For Helene.


Ashes on the water, now.
Love's bones like dust downstream.  
At least it got to see itself in our eyes,
Feel itself between hand holding hand

And whispered caresses.
From pillow talk to fists raised at
Concerts, glasses of Portuguese wine
On her balcony to the sound of magpies

We named our neighbours.
We were beautiful.
Began beautifully.
Ended gracefully.

I open hands that held hers and see
Nothing but skin worn by labour,
And air.
Ashes on the water, now.

Embers without a chance against rivers  
Cold with melted mountain snow and
Unyielding differences.
Some loves drown with lungs too full

To cry; others float like a funeral-pyre-
Longboat into the night, ablaze.
King and queen, hand upon hand.
Crowns tied from fresh flowers,

We were beautiful.
Began beautifully.
Slid apart the way a glacier parts from
The hills; slowly, but with the force

Of its thousands of tons.
Ashes on the water,
Where the ghost of our union rests
Underneath the surface of our memories.

I will remember you.
Until the stars burn out, raining the
Dust of themselves like snow upon
These waters that always are moving.

I asked the love inside me
to sleep but not to die.
To fly like swallows at sea,
give me peace,
but please,
be homesick.

I asked the love inside me
to relent it’s doping up
like an Indian Luna
discarding the moon
for daylight.

I asked would it be stoic,
Drown the sun for just a day
and hang dark over street-signs
that have anagrams of her name
or point to wherever she sleeps.

I asked the love inside me
to keep the love-bites
in my capillaries
lest they phosphoresce
like the backs of cuttlefish.

I asked would it be patient
to shine them later,
as inkblots, reminding me
of what the softness
of her lips can do.

I asked the love inside me
to remember and not to hope.
Keep our room everlasting
alight with music,
and like my love,
my own.

there’s lipstick kissed filter tips
and roaches made from textbooks
littering the ash-hardened carpet.
The lift of bra strings over collarbone
tracing a mole
meeting like the Saone and Rhone there.
Hungover afternoons
where the heat stays asleep in the air
circulating with our radiance
as if our hearts fill the whole space.
The time moves glacially
like we’re children
having nothing to compare it with
but the length of hair
and the states of cliff faces.
Two stillborns
meeting in the afterlife.

The first time
and the last time
and all the love in between
is alive.