When we laughed,
it was a golden moment,
a warm leftover from a sunburst
eons ago,
before we knew
we knew nothing.
It’s cold now.

Finally a gap
that couldn’t be breached
with his arms or mine-
too far apart, too far;
the touch of his hand
on my back
will never be felt,
my cheek against his
was just imagination…

it will be a civil unrest
in my chest
and I will self-medicate
to smudge rigid lines of reality,
to find a place of quiet beauty
for us,
where small dreams lie peacefully
and bloom gloriously
without malice or fear.

A remembered shade
of brownish-yellowish-greenish-grey
from the sidewalk
that fought mighty tree roots
and lost,
bearing its wounds proudly
only to be pounded
into submission
in my friend’s cul-de-sac.

We were nine
and we stepped over cracks
solemnly.

A feathered system
spread darkly
like conditional surrender,
a feast of summer winds
intruding upon winter.

“You don’t leave easily,” he said.
But leaving is irrelevant to me;
it’s staying despite foibles that matters.

Evenings wrapped
in such a way
to endear the listener to sing along,
albeit like a whip-poor-will
and not the sage sleeping varmint.

He saw
that I had extra limbs
and it made no difference.
What’s another smothering embrace
when it’s raining?
Hours were spent
tangled
in discourse about patterns–
bruising speech left to bloom.

Red is only a theory in dreams,
though I think flying tastes like rust
and landing is optional.