our lives
strike a balance between friendship
and love and loyalty—
we are positioned for direct and often indirect impacts,
even if most of the times we miss—
at least we can say
that we tried
our lives
strike a balance between friendship
and love and loyalty—
we are positioned for direct and often indirect impacts,
even if most of the times we miss—
at least we can say
that we tried
love is all at once very complicated,
and very simple
there is a piece of my heart
that always and forever
leads me right back to
you
sometimes the details of life make it hard to breathe,
make it so that my heart feels squeezed and i tell myself to keep it together–
often i feel foolish because it isn’t over heroic acts or poetic words
it isn’t intense emotions over politics or rhetoric or what’s right or what’s wrong with the world–
it’s about a robin eating berries in the snow (why didn’t he migrate?)
and a detail in the railing that made me look twice,
it’s when a man holds his wife’s hand gently and absentmindedly caresses her arm,
it’s the 1968 photo where faces beam with hope and happiness,
and how his goodbye was a little hurried, like ripping off a band-aid and shaking off the sting
Indifference can make you feel small, it can render you invisible, as you question the tender essence of yourself and the preservation of what used to be your young and wild spirit.
you were then, the age i am now–
i think about this in the dark and
scoop your image from my memory–
your young children will be grown,
your hair, fully silver–
of course when i meet you in my dream later that night,
we are as we were–
and i am desired once again
afternoon winter skies
atlas jars
small aquamarine on a silver chain
a plastic bottlecap in the woods
and the memory of your tender blue eyes
she was different then,
and he was different when
they were friends