sunshinegypsy

sleeping
one arm flung
          carelessly
over your head
i see your heart flutter
like a trapped bird
    fragile blue-white skin
    trembling over the warm pulse
of your life

pressing my fingers at the base of your ribs
                     i ache for you
and your tremulous hold on this world
body struggling for survival
          even while you sleep
dreaming of the possibilities
of the end

when you are awake
   i cannot touch you
you live terrified of death
hovering below the surface
rushing through your veins

you ask me to leave you,        daily
            but lying here
untouching
night
after night
i am watching you die

as every intimate part of you
                      falls away
i have never known you better

someday you will let life go
- you will let me go
releasing your half of the string that binds us
and they will steal
                    your body
      away from me

and i will be left loving a slab
of granite that has
nothing
to do with you

my only course to plant
peonies and the memories
            that lie in their
heavy scented heads

will you fight them at the end?
or walk gladly into another’s arms
       they bring peace i cannot give

i hate to think that leaving me
will bring you relief -
that i will have to smile
and let you go

when you reach across the breakfast table to hold my hand
it’s hard to believe anything has changed
between us and the intimacies of body
tell me what your words will not

is this enough? you ask, again
and i smile
but what is enough?
      i don’t want enough
i just want you

you who refuses to die
on someone else’s terms
but it is no longer a choice

as if death were a wave
that crashed over us both
irregardless

and they take me away from you
into a cold sterile room with a cold sterile woman
to teach me how to say goodbye

are you embracing your sorrow?
             she questions me
reproving

and in that instant i already miss you
for i must acknowledge the truth of her words

yes i am embracing my grief
as i once held you
tightly to myself
buried inside my heart
unmovable

what
         you would say
is one passion over another?

this is the only thing that will fit the hole
you left inside me

the world rushes by on sharp heels
striking linoleum
the beep and hiss of machines
that will someday hold you closer than i
in spite of my best efforts
an enemy i cannot fight

but now your hand clenches mine
surrounding us in numbing quiet
your breath ghosts out unsupported

and you perch on the balcony from which one day
you will fall
                      or fly
stepping off into
another life

that waits patiently in the wings
with outstretched hands

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the hallways are not dark, you
are afraid, but the elevator hums happily,
you think about how your grandchild would
love this elevator, about where you
might go for dinner, or
ice cream

or walk
long around the angry lake,
waves flung high

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I cannot sing these words,
the leaves scatter shadows on the street like
petals waiting for the storm or
the darkness naming himself.
I tasted you in my last cigarette, the smoke
climbing
to the ceiling, the magnolias ripening, the bursts
of laughter from the swings across the street
I feel you in the caressing wind
from Colorado, or the letter she sent on the back
of a receipt and
the leaves hold themselves hostage,
I am a prisoner of war,
a pink elephant hiding in your living room
if you do not call I will dissolve into the pavement under
Route 66

je t'aime

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Today the sun is sticky-hot,
my sweat thick as oil down the hollow
of my spine,

thick like rage that burns the eyes and
shallow breathing.

The pen was slippery so I cut my nails
for you.

I will write you no more poems, you
misunderstand my words, which leads to
more words and then
silence.

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there is a colour in my brain, I write the word colour,
I ramble through a box of crayons from years ago, I touch robin's eggs, I
see a colour and name it peace or maybe war

I drop my pen and come up with a paintbrush, I think desire and watch the
wings of a pelican change colour in the sky, disappear, flash back, think of
a day, black and white,

I read about a flower that is yellow, but I
don't want yellow, I want the sun against my skin, the colour that
an exhale makes in the summer when everyone tells me you cannot see your
breath

in the summer, there is a trembling in my yellow, there is a quickness
in my breath and you cannot paint quickness, you cannot write
yellow

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I
you imagine the woman you love in your bed,
the creases and hollows of her skin ending and the blankets
beginning, imagine falling asleep to the rhythm of her life

II
you tell me to write a poem about it, as if I had the words,
as if I had not cut my tongue from my body

III
you imagine love on an airplane, a song you will write some day
with a girl you call Delilah because you were always Samson and
some day in the not-so-distant future
everyone will forget how

IV
you call to make me smile
as if a specific set of numbers had weight, as if
you knew I was comparing you to a pelican in flight and
the rush of their wings was our laughter saying, I love you,
I love you, goodbye

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M,
I can't remember the last time we talked.
I learned how to be angry, or
I never forgot.

S,
Keep singing to me, that
song with no words, sing
me to sleep.

D,
If I was in prison you would not
love me.

P,
You bury your head under my unsuspecting
hip bone and dig under my body until I
am forced to roll over.

K,
I don't think anything can help you.
I think you are destined to burn.

Love,
Kate

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I told you I dreamed your
name, which was a lie.

I dreamed I loved
other women

and they were not enough.

this is an important phrase,
other women,

I have not dreamed you
into the stagnant safety of a man,
penis hanging at the ready,

I dreamed you as childhood friends, the
fire-burst hair of my first lover, I

dreamed your hands in my short hair,
stroking.

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they have a particular kind of stillness.

I read a poem about failure and
the word is embedded in my body,
leached out of my ribs, I send the poem to a friend and
she has already read it,

I think about writing the word failure on my
forehead but you tell me I am writing a
new language

the woman with the guitar,
her voice rough with misuse,

the cancer of her days
unravelling

this is a symphony of
bitter truths, coffee
too long on the plate

my daughter stacks cookies on my notebook, the crumbs slide
into the binding, nested
like two people naked in a bed, pretending
this is love

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there is an exhaustion in my heart, it
speaks with your voice,

this street, unnamed, as if no one had
walked these places before

the ugliness of my toes longing
for the sun, the shivers of a body,
undone,

as if I were an island or a ship
at sea, rocking myself
to sleep

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