I exist in the reversed world of puddles.
I am the floating refraction of you
Staring up from an aerial view.
I am the unrippling slam of fists
Drumming against your mirrored lies.

On my side of things, I have trained my eyes
To envision summer lights,
The glowing aftertaste of ivy and fireflies.
The sly secrets grin in your face.

On my side of things,
You See.A sunset is the final explosion,
A dying cry for help.

The concrete surges before me.
I am grid locked,
trapped in this puzzle board
Each piece infinitely perfect,
In and of itself a masterful stretch
of forever.

Your absence is not fading,
It is highlighting.
You are the golden fringe
Containing and supporting
Entirety in my fibers.

Here the tantalizing trees are my models
And I stay inside the lines.

The blizzard twists a white hair
Tightly against this finger of a town.
This is where the ice gathers:
Freezing down,
Knuckle by knuckle
Until coarse bone is smoothed with ice.
Winter is this sense of ivory,
Tickled place of clocks letting blackening keys travel its face.
Each passng flake is a page on which ink drops lay.

The streets are the staff,
Your body the key.
The notes, your songs
You say belong to me.

You rest yourself, cool, in my branches
And name me your Oak princess
You land each day with sickening thuds,
Washing my skin with your ebony suds.

You pour your tongue along me like ash
while I bleach the red of your sorrowing past.
You remove your skin to release inner white,
And I died as my leaves flew away with your night.

We were scrabbling hands and bracing fingers,
falling lids.
The air was thick and we were melding
into waves, encaved
with salt.
I broke water, upturned corners
and twitching teeth.
I wanted to gracefully stroke
my arms across oceaned throats.
I wanted to remove your scalloped shells from my side....
... But you wouldn't let me.
And the second you asked me to jump,
to let the ocean overtake and drown me,
the second you said you adored me...
...You lost me.

I am ten point New Roman scribe

I am hushed whorls of smoke

ghosts of bittered wax

weeping, always weeping.

We are captives.

Held inside can shaped jellies

and dried meat husks.

We are whisked away,

only to be snatched brutally

by buttered golden fluffs of dough.

And you.
You are the worst of us all.

You are the bitter rhubarb scars,

clanging aftertastes of badly cooked crusts,

lying,

conning,

strawberries

wrapped in awkward layers and topped

with clouds

constantly luring me inward.

Curious eyes in fading dreams,

I love the way you look at me

tumbling, trampling, stumbled lips

provide the sweetest, tasteless kiss.

Enchant me with your salted voice,

Lend me breath, your balanced noise.
Drown me in your angled huffs

give heartache till I've had enough.

If I could flavor you I would call you ocean,
salted softly, in borrowed beauty
relfecting what I want to be.

If I could name you, you would be summer

cottonwood floods in cool straw laces.

If I could hold you, it would be like fireworks,
unrully,
beautious,
dangerful.

I must teach myself to let you go,

so up in the air you might explode

into all that you were meant to be

star flakes risen without me.

The amber leaves tickle me
the graying branches spin
a story made of lilac birds
and grasses made of wrens.

The willow gazes wisely,
and holds me safe and tight
Into a bark of cotton
I sink in fading light.

The stars vie around us
wanting so to see,
the aqua bubbles we create
close together as we sleep.

Rest in peace, Kissy Willow.
You are loved and missed, old friend.