Dear Reader, I'm Sorry, No, I Am Not Writing To You I Am Not Writing About Us This Is Not Our Story You

I would tilt the earth For snow drops and witch hazel For rare hints of color Bright against a white landscape

I would give up leaves For bare frosted branches I would banish the sun To see night in the afternoon

I would never swim again To skate across a frozen pond I would tear out July and August To have a calendar of Decembers

Give me a window that speaks That howls the names of blizzards I would tilt the earth To see cardinals shine in snow

We speak in tongues The wicked we Me and my anxieties

Losing peace And lost to sleep No sleep tonight for me

My words are jumbled Mumbled sounds Can you find them In the lost and found?

Insane is pain In painful times These chains aren't yours But mine

Let the wind take it Dissolve into the air The remnants of our Horrible affair

Let the storms have it And with force blown away So I won't think of You for one more day

Come to me asking for love And I will lay you down in the Forest clearing Sun through the branches Slivers of gold, tiny trickling rivers Like goddesses over your skin. Here it is, I will tell you Here in the damp grass, on top Of the mossy rocks, softness I can't offer that anymore Though I want to Gaia, please take it from here

Touch may not be necessary for me That warm, skin to skin connection Has never felt as vital as an emotional one

Until I find myself clawing at a stranger Until I am turning my head to the side Avoiding kisses, because that's too intimate And my body wasn't asking for intimacy

In all honesty, I don't even like being touched I avoid situations that involve closeness No need to hug anyone just for the hell of it

Until I wrap my arms around a lover Who's name I've mixed up with the last one's I never picture the ones I really crave Who's touches I am actually yearning for

Certainly I can live my life without touch I don't need it like I do good food or drink It does not sustain my soul like poetry does

Until I remember all the ways I've burned The way you struck your fingers like matches On my hands, on my lips, the entirety of me Inside our fire I have wanted and wanted

But that's really all distant memory now I think I'll slide touch up high on my bookshelf Somewhere between fantasy and memoir

Does anyone else Count syllables on fingers While writing haiku?

You were there Maybe you didn't know You weren't aware

But was it fair Of me to ask you if you knew That you were there

To come back unannounced Just in the air around you

Well I was there When a storm came crashing down And soaked your hair

I was unprepared So startled when I woke From that nightmare

To find your hand on my heart Starting to repair

When it's dark And it's too quiet It all feels like too much to bear

But then you're there Even when I worry That you don't care

You know I worry too much Maybe it wears you down

And when I don't declare My presence Still I think you know

You knew I wasn't going anywhere Because you still know me

Next time we're there Let's go back to the meadow Where we put flowers in our hair

The people walking past Won't see us Sitting in our chairs

I said your name You turned your head It was just a whisper in the air

You knew it wasn't just the weather You can't see the wind

That's how I know That all this time you've known That I was there

Grief is a large pelican Diving into the water where I was swimming peacefully Scooping me up in its beak

It carries me up from my home This is just nature's way I succumb to the darkness of Drowning in someone's mouth

I can't stand the smell Of Clorox disinfectant wipes They remind me of all The times I used them To scrub your blood Out of the sheets on my bed And how many nights I Fell asleep to their scent While worrying about you

I can't stand the smell Because I used those wipes To disinfect the stuffed cat I cuddle with now for comfort The stuffed cat that smelled For days of your final weeks The stuffed cat I adore That doesn't smell like your Death or Clorox anymore

Blackbirds Green t-shirts Cassette tapes Doodles

These ordinary items Were treasures

Road dots Sweatpants Red camera A ring

This was a tangible Happiness