Something in him faded and became ghost 

But that’s not on you or I 

The responsibility is with his smokes, whiskey, and quietly collapsing volcanic faultlines 

​

Or the many gross, pustulated styes in his drunken 

Viciously damning, greedy, dark green 

Eyes (that you only ever wanted to be seen by) 

​

You feel piano tiles playing themselves up 

The hollowed cathedral in your throat 

Corkboard against the chore of always knowing more 

Than he taught you could hold in your head 

​

Rust from years of playing too hard without enough light 

And calluses on flattened fingers 

Not loved or cherished as a child, divine 

​

This much-needed love and resolve 

Isn’t something you can man-u-fact-ure 

Just right 

​

You’re risking hoisting your thoughts to your overdrawn fear 

Enjambing your emotions into a secret funeral procession, derailed composition Made of rose thorns, old chicken broth and the dirt in your mother’s sucken, stomped upon grave 

​

Tying your speaking–screaming 

Throat to the jack staff or surrendering white flag post with engine fuel-soaked rope 

​

It’s too… 

–Tight– 

You can’t breathe anymore– 

Mouth agape, jaw out of place from the last vicious and vodka-spiked punchline 

​

I have so much love for you that it could 

Fall 

Out of my love gut and spill all over the floor 

​

Flow with the chorus into the ocean 

Exhale into the breath of flow and 

Breathe in the song of my deepest devotion

​

I love you, my dear 

The music and love notes echo and swell in the flowered wells of my ears I

would hold you in soft caress to heaven or celebrate in the dark of outcasted sin 

​

But your fear 

Your own rotted, vocally strained lear 

Lessons in rat scurry sounds scratching the bow under our feet 

Rooted to the earth of a shaking and tremor-tainted misnomer to your own beliefs

​

Grapple to and grab the treble and truth, it will hold you steady 

​

“Will you be back?” I ask 

From time and time again, long before this heart beat and fatedly, fatally heartbroke soul

I can believe and simultaneously fear what’s unknown 

​

My darling magpie, 

Your sailor song sail and my mermaid sequin, hope star shining tail 

Intertwine across infinite galaxies, up coasts and down over yonder 

Under boat 

​

“Will he be back?” I whisper to the shore 

​

I cannot bleed for this love anymore 

So darling, rewrite the score in glitter gel pen 

Harmonize with our ever-evolving chorus once again 

​

“Will he be back?” I whisper 

​

Two Sundays ago, I told you I’d write a list of the reasons that I love you 

That feels more impossible than before 

The love that I have for you is undefinable 

No words could hold such spinally intertwined, invigorated truth integrated with my soul 

​

But I will try to weave my stories 

My love-laced lavender longings through 

Stave and staff traced in the salt, seafoam and glistening sand 

On our shining sea lines for sunglanced truth 

Looking forward to seeing you again