anticontrast

I loved you,
and what you carefully placed in your mouth

as you spoke, the bitterness
your tongue slowly turned over.

I loved your smile, which never parted ways
with your lips, never far from softness.

I loved the small seed you grew,
shortened by the length of your words

A lantern, or sometimes a filament
lighting the dust.

Yet your eyes never closed
as you drew shallow breaths.

I loved your fingers, which parted
my hands, and rested behind my ears,

and covered my eyes from awakening
to whom you met long ago
and still love.

A sheet of rain gathers
The crest of moisture swells
Into a longing green pool
And I wander through in a light jacket.

The impression of last night lingers
Or maybe it is the closeness to the sea
That is always migrating thoughts
From night to morning,
Taking their hands in song
And sweeping them away into silence.

This is how love fades away
In my heart.

What has changed or begins
To change, someday bleeds
And forgets.

Then loss is remembered
For days, and months.

Hunger
hoists a white sail
solitary in its waves

breaking against shelves of fossils.

Hunger is a candle,
but with that whisper
that puts it out

silencing alarms outside my window.

It’s a feeling
that tangles in itself, and recedes
and regains, and mumbles
and shouts.

Hunger is a fire lost in snow.
It waits in my sleep.

Your voice flickers
on a small resonate tone
and I carry it with me
beyond the short message
you’ve left on my phone.

I wander, unfailingly
on its soft flight
and get carried away in a very vivid dream
rummaging beneath the surface
like cold hands in a blanket.

You are my constant reminder,
your face swirling
in the small cup in my hands.
A thick wool coat I’ve yet to wear
with your thin fingers draped on it.

Even if I haven’t seen you in snow, in rain,
Or even uncovered,
I still swim in the memory

And if I let it fail
I’ll let it fail delicately
and fall quietly from my hands.

If you should suddenly
forget me, and leave me
to the width of the street
I will not feel alone.

I will gather my thoughts of you
like snow on my sleeves
and imagine your closeness
and your embrace.

I will arrange myself in this circle
to welcome every whisper
and attach them
to the strands of delicate hair
on your shoulders.

And I will close my eyes
and think of nothing
that permeates the traffic
or empty streets
and forget everything but you.

I understand the silence of this place
when I hear my own breathing
and see the streetlights through the curtains
fall asleep to songs of traffic.

I imagine you lean your head softly
to the blues, to Pilita
and think

a woman swaying to the blues
the hem of her skirt following closely
in rhythm behind her

is where my happiness ends
and her song begins.

The day and its quiet message
is lost in our talking, and spreads
on your window pane as gray scenery
for this argument,
this moment on a bar of strings,
which I recognize because I am undone
and carried away in its stillness.

It’s my need to forget about you.
My secret is lost in your window pane,
trailing upon the smiles like a ghost,
and circling to complete its emptiness;
this unanswered prayer
collapsing inward.

For a moment I hear the silence
coaxing the words, and the vacuum
it perpetuates in seamless white lies.
For a moment I predict next year’s falling snow
brushing against my coat
and being alone,
the gift of an uncharted life
blooming into sadness –
the memory of walking on sheets of white
past streets and corners, your face
buried in someone’s shoulder.

So now I am undone.
Now I want to be outside and free of mentioning,
I want to struggle to find the ground
like the birds, or that breath that stops
the weeping cold.

But I will return to you, my love.
I will smile and call this
another nameless day.

Before dawn she is awake.
The traffic begins. A bedside picture
stands at an edge of the emerging light.
Besides the black dress she wears
scattered clothes create awkward shadows
that move with the curtains in the air.

She closes the last clasp and breathes the air
from her open window, and starts to awaken
all the time that rests in her long shadow.
She releases the blinds and sees a picture
of a clear July and clothes others wear—
bright and loose, overwhelming, light.

She stands and turns off the failing light
of her room, realizing how much air
is lost in the dress she chose to wear.
It is uncomfortable to be fully awake
and aware of that burnished picture
that seems to watch, overshadowed.

Morning slowly passes on its shadows
and the window filters in more sunlight
to flood the dress. She begins to picture
what is beautiful from the clouded air
of memories, which often kept her awake
and watching the photo’s subtle wear.

The portrait recedes, and she decides to wear
another dress. In her closet’s shadow
a line of old dresses are awakened—
some bathed in a faint, aging twilight
and some choking in stale, perfumed air.
Above on a shelf are letters and a picture

of the shore. Unlike the pictures
of her childhood the expression she wears
beside him recollects the dampened air
of drowning, long floating shadows
of someone’s hands, and wavering sunlight
of a dream in which she longs to awaken.

She resurfaces through the window, a picture
of calm. The summer dress she chose to wear
is worn and loose, and sways in the air.

This side of your face is hidden in his–
once it was only a cloud long enough for an afternoon.

But now, a burnt evening and a clearness
above my eyes.

Now may I never see your hands in mine,
but the encroachment of a wave
parting my body from your water.

The remaining lights accompany her life
and fade, holding her breaths until, suddenly,
she begins to faint. Her future has changed
in seconds. With dry and tired breaths

she rests in a storm, gray and unyielding.
Spare partners hail taxi cabs away.
She stands by the store fronts, looking ahead.
She glances above the settled windows

and remembers her height, the distance
her thoughts are quietly echoed
and a sun that is presently clothed.
Noticing how the windows violently shake

and the dampness of her coat
she begins to move slowly on the fragile
span of the boardwalk, in the exercise
of remembering the sensations of her frame

rising and falling. Later, the gray pavement
rolls by. The calls for someone are flooded by rain
and bright headlights that blind her eyes.
She stops. An old promise comes to mind

while, across the street, the familiar city
is unchanged in an old man’s whistling,
his song a sign of understanding.
But by now she is miles away, alone,

and at a loss for words. The night’s
lanes are slowly softened by silence.
Her figure vanishes in the mist.
The roads are rain-glazed and wet.