When I go let me leave only words no other mark or monument If you must stack stones let them swim from a river or stumble from a field Know that this dissolution this resolution greeted me as a friend
Vernacular
You never knew the ones who loved me first and most places I remembered myself with ease those many splendid little markers that cried out: home! home! You knew me only as a stranger in a strange land liminal lover versed in your vernacular and not my own
The One
I am the one who got away you say When I hear that story I remember How much it took for me to drag myself free Limping toward the promise of something better without you
Two
Oh, Sugar I wish I didn't know what it's like to love two at a time To love the vowed and the dislocated longing across distances gripping the messages from that other world Belonging everywhere and nowhere at once I wish I didn't know the ache of wanting something different for your children than you need for yourself I wish I knew the way to be two
No Feeling
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Rainer Maria Rilke
One day I might be brave and let happiness befriend me. Then I will know everything can be trusted to happen just as it needs to. I will know that you can be overtaken by beauty and inexplicable peace and find ways to meet terror without being devoured by it. Just know that this is not a secret to keep but to share: we are all going home together. There is no loneliness too vast; each feeling can become a gateway to what is most true, beautiful and final.
He Asks
Have I missed my chance? He asks too late I have already packed up my projections the people I thought you were and put them in the bin
Poings Fermes
I slept firm-fisted as a baby and woke shook-free of you When was I last so bright? Ablaze in sodium light Armed to defend against any who might trouble my dreams
Impermanence
I like things spare Tell myself I'm embracing the true nature of experience: impermanence In this way I borrow my life without owning it Today I wish most to exhale into no-thing-ness But no matter how empty I still have enough to give away
Ring
A wedding ring wields a magical power: it can make a woman invisible even to herself
East
I'm not sure what to tell you I want you to choose this tiny life this complicated and inconvenient way forward I see my own hypocrisy and how sure I was not to have another if it came to that But I bled and you didn't so who am I to say which way is East?
This Verse 