Day 8: heartbeat poem

boiled vegetables and a few laughs later
you tucked yourself into bed
i listened to the nothingness
the whirring blades of the fan
the creaks and groans of an old building
adjusting to the humidity of the day,
the charged air of the storm

my chest rose and fell and i felt
lucky.

Day 7: water under the bridge

our beginnings and ends were train stations

your broken glasses, the grease of the foodcourt
seeping into our clothes, effacing the familiar,
an unfinished goodbye drowned out by loudspeakers and luggage carts
a harbinger of paths that could be traveled
but not followed

unfinished movies and meadows, apricots in spaghetti,
stacks of library books and calloused power chords later
botanical gardens and broken nails, gins and tonics later

eastbound, the sterile metal doors snapped open and shut
the summer wind hurtled past grand
tears on the pavement cooked and evaporated

and time marched forward.

if I'd capitulated to the west, I'd be under a harvest moon
pondering Ernest Hemingway's run on sentences
poorer, lonelier, fighting without screaming, but dreaming in semicolons
watching the earth tremble in the drink in your hand

Day 6: an attempt at presence

letting the oxygen rush over old feelings,
old friends, old lovers, old enemies,
revisited at peaks of discipline
and abandoned in valleys of preoccupation
and self-deceit

my toes graze the shallow sand,
shoulders submerged, water enveloping every pore,
the shore and the sun promising gritty rewards.

ballerina feet on smooth stones,
a sudden cliff, free falling into
old feelings come friends come lovers
plunging into an abyss
cold but fiery, dark but molten, eternal but ephemeral

what would it be to never wake from this paradox

Day 5: portrait

gray skies, decrepit buildings, brick factories
revamped into lofts. trees bursting into little white blooms.
spring on the familiar sidewalks of six-years-home
etched into the soles of so many shoes
i thought i'd never own, but womanhood molds us
into things contrary to our nature.

red hoodie, cane, bow-legged limp, plastic bag dangling
from a hand wizened beyond its years, teetering on the edge of
gentrification, your skin out of place, your southern love
out of place, your "hello, sister," expected and unexpected at once

my six-years-home, my feels-like-many-years-world taught me
not to show my love, taught me hypocrisy, and the dust of self-loathing
settles as I recognize that quick wish
for complacent uncaring that will never come

hello, brother
my heart is paralyzed for what I am, what I become
you know me not as one of the thousands of
walkersby on fast feet who could carry your bag
but as your own

Day 3: Elegie

here's to the death of a salesman
the end of innocence, the creaking closet doors
the short circuited sins and skeletons
that made me the muttering father
his infidelities
and his disappointed son

here's to the death of
the baby's red fist wrapped tightly around the unsuspecting
index finger of an adult hardened by the world
baffled by love, indiscriminate love
the kind we are trained to forget
the kind we unlearn

here's to the depth of
feeling those words, those rhythms, those songs once evinced
and the dull currents of muscle memory that have replaced them
my lips remember and my heart is stoned
in by what is rote

the world whittled willy loman down
into the toothpick we all become

the difference between being and becoming
the conduit
we call age

his haunting escape, we call redemption

here's to the death of my salesman

Day 2: amanecer

The gloomy days awaken her, a spore in child's pose
the bony fingers of the trees, fractal silhouettes
against a foreboding periwinkle, breathe life
into her one rib at a time. The air, the pollen,
the delicate white wings of magnolia fluttering to the sidewalks
collecting and browning and decaying,
dying as all beautiful things do, fill her nostrils
with the scents of the macabre, the hopeless romance
waiting to trap her in its snares, its carnivorous tendrils

and the puppeteer thinks he is what is making her dance.

Alone

Silence, are you my friend or foe?
Thought the world of you until you showed me we were
never meant to be alone, you and I, together,
like cotton and fire, boys and girls on motorbikes,
mixing butter and yogurt with rice: too dangerous
so explosive that we became taboo
old wives' tales that scare young children
that unripe adolscents scoff at until they too
have grown wrinkled and wag their fingers,
shake their canes at the nonsense we do.

We were meant to be connected, now too connected
and I feel your absence with every breath, every measured step.

You were my muse, you begged me to twirl fingers
in those long curly locks and I could not resist
And how I succumbed to your seduction every time

Now I am a pilgrim and the weight of your death
drags down my shoulders, drips down my spine
like blood and honey for the ants, for the flies

With every step, every measured breath, I carry your wilted corpse
I cannot let go of you, my dear
I cannot