a poem

Every word to a lover is like the last

Remembered, perhaps embellished

But never improved

Called clear from the coast of an ocean

Lips open, lungs stale with breath

Cold, spittle and screams

Out over the ocean

Destroy me

Please destroy me

To be with you

There are ants on the beach that walk into the water

Just as soon as others turn towards land

Maybe I've watched them too long

Wondering what it is they eat in the meantime

I thought to speak to the dolphins

To see if they might have seen you

Trying, but being too dumb to make them understand

Come to me

Come to me before...

And you'd think...

I never knew what you think

That is the greatest part of the love

With every world the last...

So different than the tides

Like a clock I float on

That you untied

Still, I feel as if I squandered every night

That we could have seen more mornings

Before I was sure you would go away

As if one was on a ship, the other on shore having said goodbye

And goodbye, and goodbye trailed off because of an unexplained delay in embarkation

And one stared at the other, mute, frozen. In a nowhere else cloud of floating

but a together unable to touch

Pushing off at any moment

Maybe before the horns, maybe after.

You said my name

I said words, like "I Love you"

I see you in clouds

in the shade of the wall at night

light coming up from the streetlights

hornets on the sidewalk looking to get out

We compared our hands, one pressed flat against the other

Naked in bed

And joked about baby names

With you

How could such a thing have happened?

Not over night

It took time, days, day after days, to have happened

No sweet lies were as sweet as the one's you told me

That became our language

You thought I was innocent

But I was born with a sharp knife

You mass armies

I get in close and sue for peace

It was then you went away

And I grew old