The Waves Cannot Cry

Fond memories of Sarasota–

The menu my mother twisted into a boat, oranges like suns

Ripe off of heart-shaped leaves and the cold

Shrill of a violin. Some things you just have to say,

I will put it bluntly if you’ll let me: there are five different ways to say

Acid, I am down in the garden and love is everywhere I go.

I know waiting can melt into suffering,

I know it is too easy, and that soon I will be left with no wood to knock on.

Listen (to his pointer vibrating, his strawberry hair shaking as the wood sings),

Is it so wrong that I want you to think of me

When you think about light at the end of the tunnel?

All I can remember is your shorts on that line,

blue turned brittle under Tennessee sun,

And our cold hands, like swans under moonlight. I remember thinking

It will never be this way again, and how, at dawn,

I still opened the linen curtain and let the light in.

The blizzards too–

Crossed fingers behind icy ears, hydrangeas and ivy soiled into

Siberian flowers, a stone age of lambs and blood. (I think that if we get

Another July together, we will have to go running before the sun falls.)

I want you to know that my last memory is

A daybreak– the sun exploding past the pines and

a sinking ship, screaming your name from the mountains, I know I just have to

say it, and in the end I can’t. I just keep missing you, and that cherry pie, even while it’s

Bubbling hot, red, is no consolation.

As flowers can not un-wilt,

I cut the sleeves off of all of my sweaters.

My arms are cold, my indifference undeniable, painted raw on my freckled collarbones, and

I know this is the way it has to be, even as I watch the petals fall, I know this hunger

never ends well. I want you to know it isn’t as bad as it looks;

truth be told, I wore the mascara for myself, I just wanted it to be you.

And so when you say you love me, and the light hits your eyes just

So, and I cross my fingers under my thigh and

Say it back,

I want to clarify I can not be blamed for these torrents. I want to clarify that

This is always the fate of a woman in gold. Loneliness is just solitude with a rope attached,

So I want to clarify that nothing could have stopped me, and that these things burn.

Forget it, hit the deck. Run it all over, I don't care.

I am at least half dead and it’s still better to be out here,

In the weeds, like rabbits hunted, than in there:

The air, like sugar, weathered temptation.

What could be worth this?

But that's all for another day; my pointer and middle are long separated now and

I wish for a new crack in this dark.

You should know I will not be man-made.

You should know everything I said about desire, that smell I tried to place but couldn’t,

I meant. You said that citrus is not a risk, you should know that at this point, it all is.