SPRING
This is Just to Say
I just put away
your folded clothes,
warm from the dryer,
on the shelves in our closet.
Stacks of t-shirts,
boxers,
jeans,
and shorts.
I have to say,
I like touching
the fabrics
that hold your skin.
6:23AM
The radio comes on.
I roll over,
seeking your body in the covers. My tired eyes
struggle to make out your sleeping face in the dark—
cheek, jaw, lips slightly parted. I press
my mouth to your warm skin to reaffirm what’s real—
you, me, and the morning.
SUMMER
Afternoon on the Porch
Sitting outside,
I smell your skin—
warm and salty.
Like the earth.
Like sunlight.
The days are growing longer,
plants are greening,
and the ground has thawed.
It feels like rain all the time,
but it hasn’t yet.
We watch a robin in the front yard
—its red belly darker
than the wine in our glasses—
stick its beak into the soft dirt
and come up with a seed.
People say it’s Summer,
and I find myself believing.
Rest Stop
The foothills are bigger than where I am now,
where the grass grows taller than land—
the plains.
The horizon’s mirage-y edge
fills my heart with heat,
my limbs with distance.
I will not stay.
FALL
Erin Lee
It reminds me of a memory
the Irish landscape
—meadow, cliff, fog, and shoreline—
the curved edge of an island
The cold waters kiss my coasts,
break me down and round me out
My name a circle of land—
whole
There’s Always Something…
In the night, I woke to
moonlight coming
through the window-shade and
whispering voices downstairs—
only they were echoes from my dream.
Like fog slithering between
hay bales, an unused hanger,
a black silhouette in
a lit doorway—
there are visibles that don’t fill space,
but rather hollow out stomachs
and empty lungs of air.
Like when a person dies—
alive one day, then not.
Yet there’s still
her toothbrush,
her lip-prints
on a nightstand water glass.
Like how there’s always dust
on a windowsill,
a flicker in a candle’s flame,
or a star
just out of reach—
there’s always something
I can’t quite put my finger on.
WINTER
Epithalamium
What will you remember from that day in December
when the snow didn’t come?
Will you remember how it felt—
the lace of my dress between your fingers?
Your cold hands on my neck?
Will you remember the winter sun coming through the unblinded windows?
And how it made our skins look like porcelain?
Or will you just remember that morning?
My eyes golden in the church’s stained glass—
and how they sparkled when I said “I do”?
Prints
She left a glass on the counter,
lipsticked and empty.
The light from the kitchen window
shines through it,
lighting it up like a star.
But all he can see are her lip prints--
a kiss goodbye.
*Photo Credits:
1st and 4th photos: Tyson Beckford
2nd and 3rd photos: Asa Ware
