We build temples
to eternity, shattered into moments,
to the fleeting animalistic poetry
of humanity.

I run my fingers
across your skin,
bury my head
into the strength of your shoulder.

For weeks I will dream
the taste of your kisses,
the tug of desire
at the center of our gravity.

But I build only temples,
places to worship memory, to call out to god.
I will leave the building of homes
to other bodies.

I write poems
because I cannot
distill the touch of your hand
to a clear essence
and pour it into a bottle
to store on a shelf
next to the taste
of a ripe tomato
fresh from the vine,
and still warm from the sun.

I write poems
because I cannot paint,
cannot hang on my wall
the memory of that night
when I told him I loved him
and he looked not surprised,
but sad.

I cannot keep joy
in a jar with a shaker cap
next to the stove
so that I can add to soup
the taste of our laughter
that fills the night
as we drink cocktails
and play video games.
Instead, I write poems.

“Where men can’t live gods fare no better.”
-Cormac McCarthy, The Road

We build our gods
brick by brick
from our beauty and our kindness,
fill them with what love
we have to offer,
with what hope we have to spare.

We raise them tall above ourselves,
looking for the light
that can reflect
from the gleam in their eyes,
which we gave them
to see us,
to remind us,
lest we forget
in the day-to-day
fighting of wars,
baking of bread,
and raising of children
whether we ourselves
are made of something good.

I am walking to the office,
cool morning, colors muted,
clouded,
grey
concrete sidewalk
peppered with dark red,
knocks my brain out of step,
a fearful pause,
not drops of blood afterall,
but rose petals
damp and dead,
centers darkening with decay.

February is the month
when hot house flowers
take the stage,
extravagant productions
where they proclaim
“I love you
as I am expected to.”
Gold chains are draped
to signify
that the answer to “be mine”
was affirmative.
And boxes of chocolate
feed the dreams
of love everlasting.

But the clock ticks forward
and the resplendent red flowers
coddled and coaxed
to produce blooms
expensively out-of-season
droop, drop their petals
where I find myself standing,
relieved that the sidewalk
bears evidence not of life ebbing
as I’d initially feared,
just symbols decaying.

Friday morning the dawn refuses to break,
cracks slightly but then turns
its fire-tinged breath back on itself.
By 10 a.m. the world is a strange orange haze
and as the ashes fall she wonders
when the sky became a metaphor.

Thursday morning had come hot and clear
with promises of normalcy on its lips
and she had floated carelessly into her day,
driving east through the sunshine
across dirty downtown streets
draped with the city's history.

She woke that night
unable to shake the feeling
of his skin against her bare shoulders
his lips against her cheek.
In his arms, she took a breath, two,
too many, before she pulled away.

Friday she cannot breathe.
Her lungs collapse inward
with the heat and thickness of the air,
She stands gasping at the top of the stairs.
Fire, she whispers, I can't breathe
because of the fire, not the wanting.

I dream in color,
inchoate deja vu:
brightly lit room,
your lips against mine,
my fingers tracing
the lines of your chest.
Once, a rendezvous in a park,
your hands full of flowers
–bright red carnations–
lead me to a bench.
And I wake.

I possess nothing,
claim nothing,
exist only as a sidebar:
pleasure taken surreptitiously.
I write poetry, dream,
imagine your fingers
tangled in my hair
pulling me toward you.

I wait for a sea of change,
some stunning feat of
deus ex machina
that wraps the impossible
into a bow-tied happy ending.
But even as I whisper
my love-lorn confessions
into the darkness, I know
I am but one ghost in this machine
and I possess no miracles.

Someday I will look back on you
with glassy-eyed sadness.

Perhaps by then I will live a life
where love isn’t a game
played in quick moments
of life’s intermissions.

Or perhaps by then I will live a life
in which I am smart enough
to not use words like love
to describe my binding
to men like you.

I feel as if I have stolen you
slipped you quickly into my pocket
while her attention was momentarily drawn
to something else:
a crying child, a pot on the stove bubbling over.

But later,
when I reach my fingers into that pocket
to offer some sweet caress
and find only loose change and pocket lint,
I understand.

I am raising my voice in song,
filling the night with the keen
of forgotten lyrics,
wordless notes that weave the tales
of love unrequited, hope lost,
and the pressing urgency
of dancing through the darkness.
I am telling the story
to palm trees and bougainvillea,
to the moon and Venus,
whoever will listen.
Having bled out all hope for redemption
the first time I kissed his lips,
I am left with a chorus
that traces the path of losing
for the sake of reclamation,
a strategic cutting of the flesh,
heartfelt amputation.
Just because my tongue will wake
chanting his name indefinitely
does not mean I am willing to continue
to wear my needing like a noose.
           

Clouds hang low in the sky
forcing their weight upon us
but I still breathe
despite the weight of missing you
which rests upon my chest,
despite the weight of longing
for someone, for something
that pushes in around me.
I must admit to a bit of melancholy,
to a strange desire
for the impractical,
to a desire
for the sort of passion
I've always had
a desire for it to have direction
besides towards you
so many years buried
in the mists of time.
Like the clouds
I seek release
wet and falling.

Each hurt swallowed is a stone.
-Rita Dove

Quebecois frogs sing
a familiar, comforting song,
duets with crickets, shrill and trilling.
I palm a smooth flat rock,
and stare into its grey surface,
like a mirror of the water.

This bank could be home,
my back to a decrepit farmhouse
with three cats, two black, one grey
waiting their turn to curl on my lap
as I sip green tea and read
in the circle of light from my mother’s table lamp,
passed to her from family in the hills of Ohio.

Instead I am 1200 miles north
of my parents’ Wisconsin home
on the bank of the Lac des Deux Montagnes.
Behind me is a house devoid of cats and table lamps,
infused instead with the smooth tenor of French,
a nonsense lullaby that soothes me into sleep,
but by daylight locks me out.

I send my flat rock sailing,
arching out into the cool darkness.
Its edge hits, shattering the glass surface.
It skids across the water and skips twice
before sinking out of sight,
interrupting the frog song for only a moment.

With eyes closed, I hear only
the splash of the breaking water,
the brief missed beat
of the banks’ insistent opera.
I can pretend my silence is a comfort,
that I am not swallowing my only voice,
not throwing stones to break the peace,
because I love you.