6

if I could, I would write solar systems in the lines of your palms;
you get lost so easily

so softly, like the murmurs
of closed doors in quiet hallways
and I want you to know what it’s like to
know
who and where and what you are
because feet tend to fumble while
edging past doors or broken locks--

we all have that need to repair broken things
no matter how much it might hurt us (and sometimes we forget that people are not broken, merely waylaid or lost--they just need a roadmap and a light, not a back to walk on or a memory to eat up);
I don’t want you caught in the fibers
of decaying wooden floors-- I want the universe to be a part of you,
the strings tying your organs to your bones or your breath to your chest
because I have been disconnected for so long
so forgotten, so forgetting (and it’s so hard to breathe when there’s no room for breath, each time I forget someone’s name or which streets to take back home, I swear a little bit of me is filled up with sadness, unavoidable and inexcusable)--

I used to sleep curled up next to the sun;
eventually I forgot what water tastes like
or how words feel and in the fifth week,
I lost the pencil tattoos memories traced in my skin
through the haze of dark nights, early mornings,
the bottoms of teacups
where the honest still rests and
sings slow, heavy notes onto the kitchen table.

But I want you to steep well,
swirl constellations in with your drinks
and sip them like milk and honey and fleshy biblical figs (but rather than wither, grow, spread, eat the world with your hungry eyes and thirsty fingers)--
I want you to peel open the surface of the earth
and pick the bones of it
remark on how thin and fragile it is,
how very like a person

-- to arrange tea leaves into constellations
and give them names.
and as I curl and wither
in my bed of drying, collapsing sun,
I want you to show me how the world turns
how stars are born,
all the rivers you drank,
the lights you birthed.

I want you to breathe out the names of each constellation you tamed
so that I might breathe them in;

exhale honey, figs,
a prayer as a star goes out.

Reviews

[daninstockholm]

Superb imagery!! Having just read your course on brevity, this poem is a great example of how to express what you want to say, to use expanded descriptive images and metaphors but still never use a single word to many,, Besides that, it's an excellent poem in it's own write (right)!

[stephen dillon]

really nice imagairy but not quite sure of the meaning behind it but for some reason i still found pleasure in reading it

[Jonathan Ballam]

This blew me away. Your images are fresh and alive. There's a soft and pulsing vigor that underlies the words in this poem. Another bold step you made is to leave it untitled, and thus make a simple note in the memory.

Reading this I can see you really understand people, and feel for their idiosyncracies.

[Brandon S. Whitten]

Good read and write would be an understatement:) It is phenomenal!