By chance I saw you,
standing across from Union Square.
I knew it was you from the nape of your neck,
the one I memorized as it retreated from view
all loose hairs and flush red.
I wonder
if it remembers the imprint of my lips,
heat-seeking,
mistaking your warm for warmth.
I wonder if you remember still,
Me,
tracing constellations in the freckles on your cheeks,
as if your face was somehow a road map to the stars.
How silly was I to think
I could make a holy place of a boy who forgets,
to have and to own are not the same?
love poem
April 12, Summer 2013
We used to be silly
thinking our love could outlast the summer,
milling
about thrift stores
making homes of tea shops and
cozying up in our bedroom corner
hoping these threadbare blankets would keep us warm
against the cold that set in
unseasonably early.
We were silly
hurling words as if they would dissipate
in open space
and not slowly chafe
at our sensitive parts,
thinking an open palm meant only give when
an open palm also spells want
and we were wont
to fall apart
young and lost and always searching
but never seeing
ourselves.
Autumn
Waiting for you, who sent my heart into frenzied bloom,
Boy
with clumsy hands—you had no green thumb—
Uproot this parched flesh,
make it full again.
The Matter of Us
What is the matter of us
but a smattering
of sweet nothings,
exchanged as love notes
tucked between pillows
to open again at morning’s hellos
sent spilling
into our windows
like a fine white wine.
What are we made of
if not infinities,
the hourglass bind of dust and bone,
the impossible time between dusk and dawn.
themagpiestash 