Last Year

I put on sadness like a shroud;
just like Charlie Brown in late October.
Much more solemnity than that.
'Cause after the party it sticks to my skin
to fade like a scar.
And I've been walking down December sidewalks
since spring, watching imagined futures run away
like leashless dogs into streetlight.
Sometimes I reign the dreams in
to hide in my throat, behind my eyelids
like love. Or set them out on display,
flies on a windowsill who sputter and stop—
final breaths too subtle to see.
And that's why it took me three hours
of back and forth underneath slate skies
to notice the gold-auburn leaves.
Standing outside like a monk before a temple,
in a t-shirt with the autumn breeze of soft pins and needles
I could see myself again.

our things

under the torrent of her twenties
and three fifths of phillips
i'm watching her erode.
moving but not, shouting her silence
in a room of former friends.
the air is like a stone,
out of which she carves a temple
to life without regrets,
white rock sanctum
to hide from something she might remember
or maybe never knew.
but i'm just a sidewalk witness to the crash
too far to shout stop,
too close to ever forget.

Time was

Your sweater was a sprightly light magenta
and we didn't care who heard.
Sun stained south windows
like ichor in the spring
two thousand years too late.

We didn't notice.
We were waiting
happily, for the stream of life
to usher us like feckless salmon
to the rocks.

And two months later
the sky was so blue
it felt like our last forever.
We were lying in the tall grass,
wildflowers too close to focus,
when the wind whispered one,
soft syllable of separation.


You danced away
on autumn air

like a paper doll.