#untitled poem

Hmmm – wrote this in 2016

So doing all this preptober for nano and the difficulty of what I am about to write, I like this one.

So I am going to read it to see what it sounds like.

#untitled

2016, 2021

I wish no one had ever touched me except you

wish that I could take back the places that hurt, heart shreds

a tattered garden we both inhabited

wish that only the stellar blue pools of your eyes were all I’d known

or the calm slow handed holding

sometimes when I look I see you fly away

remote black wings thrashing against the cage

bars of notes fly out, remote, screeching, drunken, screams

we both run our hands over old stone walls

these are separate kingdoms

I peer into you, folding back a thousand veils

wondering how your sweater smells

I can’t see the bitter gall, nor bile

I see only the wetted ferns

moss on rocks after rain, a steaming coming off the lichens

you move around in me like a river rushes

breaks course, screams over the rocks

a watercourse of the heart’s complaints

I see us now as trees

even though they won’t let me speak anymore

even though they shut my voice

against the fascist boot of centuries

I’ll lie down in the water of your eyes

still blue pools of quiet

I’ll say we were fourteen once,

and none of the rest of this ever happened

I’ll say we never knew pain

I’ll watch your footsteps in the snow

knowing that our hearts held hands

~