the first time i said, “i love you”
we were lying in bed
at your apartment.
your skin held the hue
of the afternoon sun,
but a frown
pulled at the corners of your mouth.

a chill that had nothing
to do with the Florida summer
came like a cold-snap
and, in an instant,
covered us in hoarfrost
smothering as a blanket
racked with smallpox.

the scars in the crook of your elbow
had all but healed, but an itch
crept across you—insistent
and incessant. for a while,
i read The Myth of Sisyphus
aloud, moved by Camus,
wrestling with the one
true and serious
philosophical question:
suicide.

i searched desperately
for the right string of words
to convince you
the razor isn’t a solution.  
i made “prayers of my hands
on your body” and sang hymns
like honey. i sampled
salted, caramel apple—
you hung precariously
on the tip of my tongue.

wishing i could wrest my eyes
from my skull so you could see
yourself from a new perspective.
Beloved, this may well be
your war to win,
but in every struggle,
we need comrades.
in solidarity, i remain.

i refuse to leave you alone
to fight the shadows
lurking in back-alley
neuroses. in a world
that is utterly absurd
only three words
make sense anymore.
three words. a song
that fills our lungs:
“i love you.” partner,
dance with me
to the beat
of a new drum.

After years you know this:
that the course of reliable love runs
not through a slough of habit

but along a curving hillside
where even familiar landscape
offers daily surprises.

Those palms, those pine trees
outside the window, that stretch
of shoreline, this sleeping face,

so surprisingly familiar, still
catch you unawares in
a shock of recognition.

What you have done before
you do again:  you say yes.
You wake, and turn, and are thankful

to rise even from the happiest dream
into what, solid, factual, still strange,
you keep choosing.

Practice makes more deliberate
the thing you’ve done a thousand times,
each time an act of consent:

you pour the coffee
you feed the cat
you turn off the bedside lamp,

loving the simple labors
of shared life, loving
the changing light, evening and morning

and the currents of dailiness that run
deep under the whitecaps
and the waves.

There you are
Taking my body
Into your arms
Telling me
Yes
Yes
You can
Do anything.
I breathe a sigh of relief
I am finally
Here
I
Am finally home.
Thank you
For handling me
With such care,
For covering me in sunshine,
For
So patiently
Waiting
Watching
Me grow.
I am in constant bloom.
The real beauty
Is that
You have no idea what you have done,
You
Can feel
Love strengthening your bones,
Breaking your ice.
I
Am
Your home
As well.

There was this grief of a
Permanent kind
Etched upon her face –
Light playing shadows
Christened, “Solitude,”
And a dark that’d dance before
The grace of those long gone.

And so, he’d grabbed her hand,
Nudged her cheek with a
Nose broken crooked,
Tender was the trust bent her back
And failed was the promise
As “tomorrow,” never was;
It’d never ever be.

Sure, tomorrow, the day after
And tomorrow once more
Happens for others,
But one more year, for her,
Would be carved upon brow
Come one more drink,
One kiss and the other, dead.

That door’d been destined to slam
And soon it did with tear drops
Abandoning the never delicate face;
Eyes like a reservoir missing fish,
Pupils with paddies depleted rice,
And once again, but one, “tomorrow,”
Shy an hour or twenty.

Crippled, she’d carried, crippled
And carried on, All the way
And with only pennies to show
With a back bent epochs and
Crooked to bury crook; Under dirt,
Under home and alongside
The love she’d never lost for him.

My body aches
in the middle of the night
awaiting your tender touch
Your whispers finding their way
into my deep hidden places
My urges strong and sure
Needing a connection
before I head to the other side
of my pillow