What will I do
With these affirmations of endearment
I wrote for you
If you won’t accept them?
Maybe I’ll stitch them up
Like a handmade quilt
Or use them
As a double umbrella
With room for another
Heart to hold
What will I do
With these affirmations of endearment
I wrote for you
If you won’t accept them?
Maybe I’ll stitch them up
Like a handmade quilt
Or use them
As a double umbrella
With room for another
Heart to hold
Covered in thick metallic plates
A shield against feeling
Anything —
Not even the persistent howl
For agency
For desires you decided had to die —
Knowing that cry within myself
I sensed it
Or maybe I saw it in an amulet
When I brought you to natural, warm waters
Sheltered between lilacs and willows
We submerged our bodies in the crystal reverie
And I called that voice forward
Breathing life into dormant dreams
Now,
Will you put down your arms
And listen to him sing?
All the times I drift away
Carried by the waters of my mind
To the ballad of our kinship
The felt-sense of your comfort
Guiding me away from —
The reality
That I cannot stretch far enough
To graze your face with my palms —
So I return here
I return and return
To my affection turning and tuning
Expanding beyond the boundaries
Of your absence
Sunken and starving, you arrived
Giving more than you are
I brought you to my altar
And lit candles
As you folded
Into
Yourself
Waking to nourish
On the fruits of my land
Gathered for your blessing
For your color restoring
I whispered my devotion
You are the eternal light that sustains me
In the darkest void from which I am born
Supporting my faith in steadiness
Cradled in your glowing palm
A pulse that sooths and smooths
The edges of my skin lose meaning
As I’m nurtured in your care
Your murmur at dawn
Is pastel poetry inked
Against cumulus clouds
Cast on an ancient lake
Awakening me with
Redwoods, clovers, and ferns
Night’s cosmos disappearing
Into the charm and radiance of your eyes
Will you sit with me
On a golden hill
In the liminal space
Between knowing and desire —
My desire
For us
Is the breeze against our cheeks
Fluttering oak leaves in fractals
As it sweeps into the valley —
I see within your eyes
A warm and blooming heart
Or is that mine?
Ancient rocks
Burn a sacred fusion
Anoint our intuition
With noble breath in dance
Offer us a blossom
For our feast of sweet connection
A tendril nest
Of confluence sublime
Outside the temple I built
For us
You wanted my embrace
And I wanted you
So we stood beneath
A cosmic canopy
Facing a place between
Chaos and conversation
We brought our hearts
On pink fluffy clouds
To hold and to breathe
A glowing orb between us
In those moments that lasted
You sighed
With a hum that blossomed
In rainbow resonance
Growing hope in the garden
Of safety
Signaling my body to relax
In the glimmer and shimmer
Of our auras entwined
As if we’d met there
Lifetimes before
Interrupting the melancholy of absence
I dreamed we were sitting
In the backseat of a Mayan taxi
Cobblestone drifting below
Red, orange, and pink patterns
Fluttering strands
Between us and the sun
I couldn’t help myself
Blissed by presence
I stroked your foot with mine
Cuddled my face into your neck
You said, “I am a pool of water”
And I knew exactly what you meant