Where we live.

Over the summer months
I often bought
my groceries
weekly,
at a shop situated
by a clinic known for planning families.

I gained several pounds; they lost more.

Elegy

I told him I loved him;
I told him God loved him.

He asked me
to pray for him.

I knew I’d see him again,
because he knew there was
someone that I could pray to.

Ring

He said his hand felt heavier.
But when he looked in her eyes
His own never looked lighter.

Red

While I was leaving,
my small cut stitched,

he sat slouched against
the white washed wall,
some red on his coat,
knowing there was

nothing else
to do.

Eidolon

I saw her at a party,
for the first time
in a long time,
adjusting her
mascara.

It was not as
waterproof as
advertised.

She left holding hands
with him (I suppose,
as severance).

Acute analgesia

She sat on the curb
in thirty degrees
with only the
light jacket
she hadn’t
returned,
crying.

She told me (when
I offered mine)
“I’m not cold.”

She never said
she was warm.

Letting go.

I suppose I never knew
the extent to which
you would try
to let go.

The doctor said
you could
hear,

so,
you chose
not to listen?

(some time ago)

You were the snow against the window
While I sat in a seventy degree room
With an empty wood fireplace
But a spitting radiator
To bar the chill.

My mother was sitting with my father
By the radiator, hand in hand.
All I was holding was a cold
Smartphone with no
Text messages.

Breathe

the gasp before the leap
is the only air all the way

down(does
she care?)

yes:

parachute gripped
to gravity(only

we are magnetic–
drawn and kinetic.)

breathe.
breathe.

Love (again

or for the first time) is still
tempered steel
wrought by fire and water.

the slow bleeding of hope into real
when what you expected
joined with what you found

wedding is bonding
melded youandi
made more than either

it is we; made sword
helmet, shield (battle-
welded, two-hearted)

we are one steeled blade
wielded before the war
–long before either.