On Memory & Dreams

You used to be bubbly in my nose:
a giggle contorted into a laugh,
my cheeks pink
from it.

I haven't yet decided why we write about nostalgia.

Either we haven't accepted the present.
Or we have not let go of

candy-coated ice cream crunching beyond the brain freeze.

I remember: in college you told me not to smile.

Your photograph forever sepia because you are always yesterday.

I consistently forget tomorrow.


This feels like hope but it drowns in the city surrounding:
I don't know you.

You, city: gray-faced and hostile stare into my bedroom window.
You pull the trigger and another is dead on our front porch.

And I say our but there is only me.
My bed is a twin. There is one toothbrush by the sink.

The new blood stains my shoes and is washed away in your rain.


This, God, is someone else. This is a passerby in my fingerprint.
I am better for it. You remind me to cry. Our eyelids are white.

I can see the veins in Your forehead.
You draw me a map.

Prayed tonight for a peppermint sunrise,
but the snow melts off the trees outside.

Lungs weave a lilting sigh: it's butterflies,
trapped in silent nights.

If icicles can hold their breath just a little longer,
we will wait to catch them in our mouths.

like flakes, we get a little stronger,
muffle a cry so no one finds us out.

I think He's all around us. I think He hears you breathe.
I think He's wrapped inside us. Even when we clench our teeth.

A fragment. Not folly. Subject predicts the fol-low-ing of:
His presence; we volley--treading water,
just to drench our skin with Him.