And some ends

I’m not sad, 

I tell everyone.

And it’s mostly true.

I’m whatever I’ve 

always been, but

now my mask lies 

broken at my feet 

in sweet-smelling chunks 

of fiction.

I’m too tired to fix it,

though everyone

can see now 

how little I’ve kept.

Just some odds.

And some ends. 

But who can smile 

like before?

Before what, it

doesn’t matter.  

Before him, or her, or them,

and all their

counterfeit futures;

before the carnage

of understanding that

most crimes are simply

endured. Before

the after.

No, I’m not sad, 

I tell everyone.

I’m spare;

a collection of only 

the most dangerous hopes, 

waiting.

The Curator

In the hollow
of who I was,
carved from what
was lost
or incidental,
I curate my collection
of misfit dreams.

Delicately,
hopefully,
I weigh each one
against the jetsam,
knowing that this
has cost me
everything.

Unbroken

I would be yours,
and you could be mine,
unbroken across
a thousand promises
to the eager horizons
of tomorrow, and tomorrow.
But let's not call it
forever, and
let's not say it's
the same thing. 

The Woods of What's Left

I can no longer tell

what love is and isn’t,

and anyhow

I’d only do something silly

if I could,

like trying to hold it,

until I rip

once more along that

old fault line of hope

and fear.

I think I’d rather let

the question dissolve

in the warmth between

our hands, and just keep

walking through these
patchwork woods
of what’s left of you, and

what’s left of me.  

Where it Grows

How deeply
will my roots grow
in this new soil?
Will it finally
be time to
call something
home?
Is the only difference
between
a weed
and a wildflower
where it grows?

A Trick of the Light

Parsecs away
from your pull,
love's event horizon
now looms;
the edge
of the black hole
we instead
fall out of.

It waits,
ready to annihilate
our fairy tale;
a flash,
a trick of the light,
and our treasured moments
will be revealed
as ordinary.

Already,
you are a word
too often repeated,
warped and
stretched thin
across these failing
memories, leaving
only who you are,
but nothing of who you were
to me.

Comes Too Soon

It is a cruel,
sideways lurch
that comes too soon,
this parting of ways;
but I have turned my back
on the ocean,
which doesn't ask politely
if we are ready
before crashing
landward. 

I Far Prefer its Troubled Flicker

One damp twig,

then another,

onto a fire that is more

snap and smoke

than heat.

It is too small, and too sad,

and keeps my hands

just warm enough

to hurt.

Yet, it is also

the only thing that

keeps me

from being swallowed

by this vast, corrosive night.  

And I far prefer its troubled flicker

to the garish summer bonfires

of easier times.

Among This Scatter

Every time

I close my eyes

something

slips,

and they reopen

upon a lesser copy

of the world

they knew,

with duller reds

and more explanations

for magic.

Tell me,

where have you gone

among this scatter?

We could keep

something,

together,

for awhile at least.

And the world

will need

more broken and

restless

fools

to fight this

maddening entropy;

to build
only to lose over,

and over,

and over again,

each time uttering

a solemn plea
of ‘just this once…’

And the World Moves

I’m on break from grad school,

riding with my fiancé from

Denver airport
to Steamboat Springs

to visit an old roommate.

“There are antelope in Colorado?”

I ask.

“Pronghorn” replies the driver.  

Outside the window

a new universe is unfurling,

hinting at my sheltered life.

God, those mountains…

(what do I need to call

the ones back home now?)

How they dominate, pulling

both clouds and something

in the pit of my stomach

to their earthy bulk.

Near Rabbit Ear Pass

we get out to take some photos;
in the cold, misty air,

I feel irreversibly changed.

Which is the road,

and which are the stops,

I begin to wonder.

Gazing at the grey gravity,

at the herds of pronghorn

sifting for tall grass

through diminishing snows,

I answer unexpectedly,

and the world moves under my feet.