Something Old & Something New

September of 2008(The Past) makes more sense now than it did then.

on tip-toes, i press open the screen door
gateway to my midnight balcony nap
a frigid tumble of feather pillows
and sweeping branches which are
forming a latticed canopy dripping with stars above
wooden boards, creaking and cold, beneath
to remind me not to float away.

i shiver in my thin and cloudy quilt
partly for rapture, partly for chill
i'm alive now in the loneliness
that in my bedroom i felt too much to bear

here i can pretend the crisp edges of night are your hands
running smooth over my angled shoulders
kissing my blue-toned face and
tracing the nape of my neck with cherished subtlety

my own bed feels foreign without you there
but when i slip into the night
you are everywhere



January, Thinking About You While Driving (The Present)

i'll write you a song, i promised
about lions brushing against trees
and the copper willowed fingers that snap
beneath their paws
and how still that moment is, despite all breath.

i won't sing it, but i will write it
with white bird hands across the savanna
of your back,
and ROARRrrr into your mouth,
collecting teeth.

i'll sip from your whisper like an oasis
then with energy like orchestras
take off in a run
barefoot through the lantern-lit grasses
build a nest in your neck, and breathe through your lungs,
to slumber in the jungle that hums with your song.