his voice doesn’t rise,
but something in his eyes changes,
just like that
in the way they suffocate her,
his words, precise,
his jaw muscles flexing and lips tightening to form
each
deliberate
syllable
his personality stretching and expanding to fill the vacuum left by her fear,
her retraction
her perceived nothingness
I still think about the way he listens to my secrets,
cradling the words and folding them into himself,
even as I continue to unearth the worst of me,
digging so deep,
I chip away the cracked to find the patinae,
so aged,
I taste rust in the back of throat
many days,
my bones feel as if they’re already drawing me
into the earth,
but he reminds me it’s just a returning
to the safety of our roots
he doesn’t even have to say it;
I just know
it’s like the steady warmth of the sun on my face,
always there, even in the winter,
when life’s circumstances stifle the flames
he doesn’t even have to say it;
I just know
his face transforms as he stares at me,
a burning recklessness filling his eyes as he leads me into a wind tunnel kiss,
my whole self leaning into the sweeping lost
I become the warmth, the wet,
the tickle, the sting
we can’t let go –
it becomes the writing of a song,
a balancing act of unearthing,
the ferociously visceral sensing of the other as we sway,
back and forth in search of a revelatory harmony
and I realize the only time I feel alive is when he looks at me like that,
riveting me to the moment
I hear the constant prattling of the voice, but I cannot hear my own thoughts.
When you speak, I watch your lips move, grasp their graceful forming of the words.
I watch your eyes speak louder than your voice, notice your face animate with conviction.
I read as I listen.
The voice incessantly clacks its triage like keys on an old typewriter, always placing feeling before logic.
Your feelings before mine.
I have done that for so long, I can hear your thoughts, even when your lips do not move.
In the mirror, I try like hell to read my own lips, but the keys are eerily silent.
There’s a poem in this place,
in the not-quite-silence of the early morning,
in the constant companionship of the ticking of the clock,
and in the furry paw falls across the laminate floor.
It is here where a woman writes a lyric she no longer whispers to say.
There’s a poem in this place,
in its second-hand, blue collar grace,
in its well-worn wooden things and well kept lawn,
and in the backyard garden boxes engineered by her youngest daughter.
It is here where she has planted roots.
There’s a poem in this city,
in these tree-lined, bicycle-ridden streets,
in the laughter that makes its way through the open windows, lighter than the air,
and in the warmth in the smile from the elderly woman across the street.
It is here where her heart became full.
There’s a poem in his eyes, always,
in the way she says his name,
in the history they hold between their hands,
and in the future for which they know only one certainty: together.
It is here where she knows home.
holding my hand during the sad parts,
a quick kiss while we shuffle around one another making dinner,
the graze of your finger on the back of my neck as you pass by,
your knees tucked tightly behind mine
and your arms enveloping me;
a little bit of expected,
in a time when the world is feeling
more unpredictable than ever
he was waxing poetic
and waning in prose
every ravishing word
stripping more of her clothes
they’d loved one another for so long,
and sometimes life began to feel a little rote,
but when they came together,
they forgot the lists and routines,
they forgot who they were and what brought them together
but she didn’t forget he was the most trustworthy, honest, and compassionate human she’d ever known,
the reason she could be who she was in every moment
and he didn’t forget she was the empathic fire at his backside,
a simple woman with a complicated heart,
the beating of his own heart
what happened between them was always unexpected;
in these moments a new future opened wide –
a world where anything could happen and nothing was impossible
life has drastically evolved in our 26 years together,
and we, too, are not the same,
but, still, your smile softens the sharp edges of this hard world,
flapping its wings so high in the air it falls upon me like a meteorite,
its iridescent fabric trailing red thunder and liquid gold,
planting in my heart the kind of hopeful purple only communion can produce
I love you
