The attic

 If you must know, yes, I still collect memories of that sort.
To take you out, every now and then,
To reawaken what I remember of it all,
To believe in significance
To think you are the only one to ever live.

Yes, like an old crone, yes, reminiscing
Glory days
yes, I still take stock and count the suitors
soft professions and eyes across the room
Just the thrill
How new touch vibrates, pure and electric,
And the salty taste of closeness

Yes, I like how bright they are
Thick and sweet remembering
Of little things, of sighs and lingering fingers,
I long for that red hot core
The feeling that struck in my youth

And that trickles in like
Morning sunlight through the blinds
Words you can never take back
When I sneak up to the attic
to soak in all you’ve said to me

Lodged

 You and I carry out
An endless acquaintance

You may not know
Often I suspect you do

Sometimes I retreat
Into your voice

Your words
My eyes as corollas

And how the shadow of eyelashes –
Petals on soft cheeks

Something got lodged in me
Like a splinter

Something of you
My skin has grown over it now

Words that carried so much
Weight, I think they molded me

You said I was like a peach
(soft edges and a hardened core)

I still think of that – often
More than I think of you

Swiftly

 I stood at-top cliffs today
I saw the moonlight balance lightly on dark waves
I dipped my toes and got my dress wet
I swam out past the post, later
For living, how we hinder it
I am bouldered in
By burdens
That I carry and call heavy
Everywhere are obstacles
To the life I’m meant to live
Some people watch the moonlight every night
Tomorrow there’ll be coffee

Pleasant Av.

 Each day another morsel
Devoured by the unhungry
Goodness, I crave
I come to each day creeping
Can you believe we are here again?
This heaving crowd
Clutching at our throats
As we turn in towards each other
Souring in our splendid overflow
To mark out enemies
All of us far from the bleeding rivers
I cannot fight evil
But you my neighbor
Your veins are exposed
By your bumper, your mailbox, your streetfacing window
And we make simpler targets, you and I, dopey and predictable
In our household ways. They blast us full and so resentfully I
think of your children and your faded wedding dress
How it would squeeze the life from you now
Settled, trapped, I know you long to claw at something
Your middling search in life, I recognize it
Yours calls me to arms
So now, avow
the high ideals where we seek anchorage
From the evidence of our tired sameness
Fight me, family
Division is the seed I sow
Away from the bodies of the dispossessed