I saved a voice message from you I replay it, afraid to forget our history and so I can hear you say you love me when I forget to love myself the recording is accurate, nearly exhaustion through cracked syllables and the thin hopeless whine spins like a record, quietly …

Fetishize the tangled side distilled from a distance but too feral to love Dilated to dark days playing on anyway run it to gravel and push Let there be some levity lost in the lush a pull or crush Of softness or solace rubbed to the bone Wrapped to protect please stay away there’s nothing left — —

Things come clear and nothing is soft time loses its poetry rhythm lost harsh lines and edges of character and intention comes through grey areas faded colors rinsed and repeated until thats how how it goes how It is now easier to see trees in flat fields when options seem sparse You take what’s been given

Did the reader close the book walk away leaving unfinished business for some unknown time or is this a terrible choose your own adventure with the happy endings ripped from the spine Perhaps just a pause dog eared to be picked up continued again will memory serve will the arc make sense or is it changed never new again

My skin is too thin to stomach it you know, anything Wind, rain, snow hands, mouths, blows Tears micro and macro superficial deep Never terminal not yet anyway

I couldn’t separate you from the city worn in and beautiful cramped and labored but there’s the charm in airport terminals and cab rides to your door I should be so lucky to wake up in the shadow of the empire state to fall in your step past trash heaps and concrete reflected in subway car windows curled into you It fits like a glove I can’t afford to wear the alcohol on our breath spins me unsteady

Push my fingers along the water to feel the breaking of its skin wherein and land meets It’s hard to mourn the living harder to hold the dead Over and over pulling over and over There is no clear answer no great lesson beyond the ripples we send by our own hands Eventually, the ties break the sound echoes and little we can do once the water turns tepid