Be Brave in your Body.
I suppose my heart
May be just like that
Timpani
So coarse but limber
Enough
To stretch its membrane
Out of reach then past —
Before jerking back to just
Wobble out a pure note
Its soft swell harbored in
Hard frameworks
It’s difficult to know how
The hollow bowl
Resounds
Inside me my heart it
Rings
A strange sound
For a drum
I sit beside it which is stranger
Still
Made and unmade just
As the fabric of her mind that knows and does
Not know her mind and can’t
Make or unmake at all; it is
Only fabric: Toile clusters of late
18th-century pastoral flirting
It forgets and remembers
As an iron rose become suddenly
Thick and pink
Performing the blush is exactly
The thing that turns the shadows away
From their gathering, she thanks
Them one by one for leaving, laughs
At the parting
As she so often does
At the drubbing of love.
In a bathtub
To a sad piano song
Crying
That I never held you closer
And more lovingly
So I could bring you back to life
The way I read about in articles.
I didn’t know how to love back then
The way your death
Taught me to love,
After.
I think now
I could have saved you
Repaired your little heart
But now I have a hole in my own
Left ventricle,
Holding space
Where you should be.
I guess it makes sense
That all this mourning
Of love
And sensation of departure
Is a cry out for you
To return to my arms.
After fourteen years
I have never forgotten your face,
How you trusted me
With your short life,
How I loved you.
I run toward love
Like I am running to you
You are love
To me
You held it in your un-moving body
And I have been
Searching for you
In the strangest places since,
Aislinn.
Every loss
Is the loss of you.
I burst out
Of a barrage
— well, cautiously
Sink down over you
So you can hold
The real me
And so I could hear
My most secret names
Cresting
On your lips
I find your heart entire
Nestle in
To even the best
Possibilities
— well, cautiously
Maybe I’ve loved arms
For all these years
Because I hold you in my arms
After a period without any arms at all.
Waking with nonentity
Beside
A leaf-adorned plant
Draped in all that green
Luxury.
So jealous
Of its photosynthesis.
All the veined fronds cuddle
Swigging light together
Toasting their companionship.
Organ over organ, stretching
Out for provision
From the sun.
But think of the pot
The soil
A relentless want
Of water
To heal
Its incessant wilt.
It too, is exposed
It too, alive
With the fear
That its sustenance
Will vanish.
Or that everything will:
Leaves, plant, and sun together
Leaving only a woman
Displaced
In uninhabited space.
Everyone knows
Loneliness
Must always be the tonic
For a longing of verdure.