I am the morning
mist that coaxes
exclamation from the sleepy
world we exit questioning.
What to do next?
How will the day unleash its oceans?
I melt off waters in pink and blue ribbons.
I color this place where we share one sky.
Still, the knot in your
stomach, the hornet’s nest
appearing season after
season, in the same spot
where you scrape
the remains from the
ashen reassurances of our past.
I am all expression,
love’s lightening rod, bedroom
belle époque. Paint me
into a different picture,
where we fuse again
like feathers on pinesap,
footprints in moistened sands.
I am the choir
voice rising above the
melody. I clap thunder in the face
of angels. Hear me, ask
me never to keep silent.
I am the long
bomb you bobble in
your hands, a pulse of
heroin flushing veins, jonesing
for the crush you once had
when I sang my song
and played with fire
in your mouth.
I am waist deep in
demands, wading against
a spillway of deceits, goodness
and light in thigh-high boots.
I am swollen with what
longs to be given away.
I am the poem scratching
at the screens, yelping my
yowl to be written. Hovering over
a crime scene of memory. I am
who I was, what I wanted. Your
girl next door, gone mad.
I am how I am changing,
the atlas with a missing page,
floating beside you
a hundred miles away,
wanting to be rescued in this
cold sea of invention.
And when you reach out, will your question be
to love me against the shifting tide, or cast me
back to the waves in which I’ve
already drowned, and resurfaced again, swimming.
