Pen Pal

A very strange thing-

the first time we met
I asked if you could capture me.
And yes, you held me
through my phone,
in focus,
photographed me
singing words off my mind
in front of the happy cafe crowd.
You wore the mask of language well
like a second skin
until, perhaps, truth tore its way through.
It would be nice to amputate
these memories,
send them floating
down the Lethe-
My pen pal,
my friend
hiding within words.
Who are you in the real world
where I suppose swords
are ultimately mightier?

Return

Cold and confused,
you return to her arms,
her breath loud in your ears
like the roar of midnight
as it crashes into the sky.
Silently
you go.
Your scent becomes a memory
locked in her dark, hollow arms.
She will hold you forever,
that mistress,
that mother earth.
And I am left with nothing
but morning blue,
the lingering dream of you
broken,
in pieces. You,
music notes scattered
across darkness. You,
untouchable, but present
in everything I feel.
You,
littering my sky
with stars.

Meteors

you who

wear your life

on your skin,

sink with me

into the starry soup

of sky,

sing with me

the scars

like meteors

across expanse of skin,

you are a story

too strong for words

to hold,

a moonlight soul

melting in my hands,

if I can hold you

until the daylight comes

will you stay

in this world with me?

Imagination

Some days I let you go wandering.
Born out of my stare, you leave me vacant
as you scale the walls of the classroom,
bashing against its bare surface
in search of a window, of a color,
of a world outside four walls,
that I’ve read between two covers.

I miss you, my imagination
who speaks for me,
who leaves paint on the walls
that only I can see
and watch dry into distant memory.

The Last Man

Hunger lurches in the shell
of his body as he lies still in the snow.
Shivering takes too much energy,
but eyes continue to grope empty sky.

Stomach continues to reach through diaphragm
toward the smell of wild chrysanthemum
burning yellow in delirious sunlight,
feverish hum of yellow behind tired eyes.

The Cold and the Hunger, two characters familiar.
And he thinks this is surely the end of the world.
His lungs take in a gulp of air, and for a moment,
a piece of the world is his. But then
exhale.

What belongs to him is a whisper,
a fearless, final “goodbye”
floating among the bare trees,
not a leaf to hear.

September

Sometimes it’s September
and I see you looking back at me
from that other world at the edge of a breath,
between blinks that grow
like shadows of the evening.

I plant myself by your bed,
my feet growing roots so deep in memory
that even now I can touch your cold toes,
hear your quieting breath
like the last notes of a great requiem.

You taught a particular beauty
that our two languages could not hold.
And though you no longer speak through your mouth,
but mine and my brother’s,
we wear your smile

that one that fled with the northern lights
as the sun rose the next day
and continues to rise despite
the nighttime in your eyes.

The Attic Window

Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Peter puts his hand in mine
as we stare at the world through the window.
We can hear the wind--
what breaths of faraway men fill each gust,
their relaxed exhalations pouring into the breeze,
the sighs of a woman hooked on an arm,
the playful, weightless breath of their children--
mine on the window pane.

Peter pulls me away from the glass,
and we stand farther from the world
in case it sees us.
We are silent with tired fear.
My breath melts from the window,
dissipates little by little
like the memory of sunlight on my face.

And as we stand at the top of the staircase,
our eyes lick the attic window,
coaxing the stars in soft, honeyed prayers
to come out through dark evening clouds
as they coast by, heavy with night
and smoke-soaked from the distant
burning of people.