Florida showers leave the sun to hang hopeful in the sky.
Even under the safety of the umbrella it left
its reflection to bloom aureolin under your fingers
at the first drops of rain —
like when the artists had spread their paint across the watercolors
hanging inside the café,
bright splashes of hope to contrast the blues. Across the table
you uncross your legs, open
like the orchids flourishing on the windowsill,
lounging in the humidity
while it collects in your hair and trickles down your neck
like the most bewitching of poetry.
O Lover,
how can you run
past the rhymes that slip through the creases
in your palms only to
etch them into my memory?
Yesterday
time sank fangs into my ankle, left tattoos
like heartbreak. You touched my face
and I stepped back,
out of reach.
She was a woman built in technicolor:
a vibrant Monet's parasol beauty in a miniskirt with
indecencies etched into her eyelids and the promise of
galaxies mapped out on her lips.
Tell them we died
in late evening while the band still lingered
over their cocktails
and rhythms slid like molasses
over moon-tanned shoulders and under stilettos.
Cinnamon wafted from her hair as she tapped a heel.
I imagined what my mother would say
and I suppose we gathered glances
like some do sea shells
and held them just as tightly.
Knob kneed and pale,
I glow
before the waves with toes painted green
like the world through a piece of sea glass, my vision hazed and
calm. Your thumb presses my fingers
like the tactile press of a keyboard's
steps towards the fully formed sentences
I can't quite seem to finish. The storm on the horizon
is electrifying. It drowns out my breath with each rumble
echoing over the waves and we know we should leave,
move to safety,
but the water is the most intense
shade of you.
There is a couch
In a room.
In a house.
On a street.
In a city.
In a state.
In a country.
That in this moment,
as I straddle you,
is my whole world.
There was no shot glass for my vodka when
I made it to the crossroads only to find it crowded.
Weathered anxieties stitched between my eyebrows
and it felt only right to hang them out to dry with today’s laundry;
the sun bleaching them as strongly as it reddens your skin.
My love,
you have no clue how hard it was not to touch you.
So I lean against the only bare wall in the room
with my fingers twitching to hold something,
but all the packs of cigarettes were empty
and there was no castle of beer cans in the hall.
If I raised my head I can see your
thin figure standing over the stove top
begging
water to boil as the T.V. screen screamed like our parents did:
You will burn in Hell for your sins!
I took her hand
and poured gold in her veins.
There was nothing more I could do.
I placed her head in my hands
and laced my fingers through the patchwork of her silence.
Clocks can't hold you, Love,
but they’ll eavesdrop
and try to slip a limit on moments.
I am no Pan, but follow me into the woods
just this once. I will protect you.