Everything Spoken Gives Way

I watched the genesis fall
from your eyes. It flowered,
then curled, tugging heart failure
like an existing wound on the verge
of splitting.
You’re not here with me.

I turn my palm, lower it into the sea
as if to clear recollection.
But gray is the blue when grace
becomes flaw; a scatter of swallows along
the gullet, a wash not from the creases of
a hand, but an emptying in a hearts flow
like a rush of release.

To swim here is to execute.

We were standing beneath a patch of cloud,
believed that one breath could keep us;
a sole separation, a train shriek away.
But coming too late, clocks slept their hours
under a mild sun. We never reached destination.

What was it that placed these worlds inside us?

Perhaps an insomniatic moon pulled the white
from our eyes, and had forgotten our dreams
like elucidation hurried beneath the rib cage.
Can’t we find ourselves worthy of resuscitation?

All I know is this, when I uttered valediction into your
ear, (as I have at least once), a thousand black balloons
pressed into the air, tidelands pressed toward the shore,
and I pressed on.

I’m exhausted. I’m in love.

Oh, tell me now of our history again, but sing it complete.
Dismiss language that pains the flesh--unruly words that
tear the insides like a blade that comes again and again.
Speak to me of lavender and garden, of sandcastles
that grew tall in our San Francisco summers.

And although it is trivial,
whisper in my ear of what we passed on our backs.
Was it the sadness of rivers that emptied into the sea?

Perhaps, it was late night tête-à-tête with the unfamiliar,
the voice set mine to flame, where I gradually turned
to ash as I waited at the garden entrance for significance
I didn’t know.

But I think I know where you are going.
What keeps me fastened to these waters is the way
you run off-- a low lying in the fields, a creep along
the beach before desertion. It seems so effortless.