A Preview of the Upcoming Work

i climb the burning tree
i follow you from the roots to the limbs
that you wanted to hang from
that you wanted to kiss me into
that you wanted to leave me buried under
and i thought i could kindle a life with that desire
and all i can do is confuse desire for love
and all i can do is confuse love for hope
and all i can do is confuse hope for danger

i lit the match. i burned this tree.
you told me where you wanted to be buried
and i mistook how deep the searing fire could go.
and i mistook my memories for your afterlife.
and i mistook my heart with yours.
you were still living, blood beating, blazing skin.
you are still living, here, with me.
you are still alive to me.
you are still alive.

The Burning Tree (i met the dead when he was still alive)

he consumes me and i let the love grow

oh, my lover, with your smile and summer fire

and outstretched limbs wrapped in my sleeve

i am the screaming pleasures of our kissed desire

i am breathless amidst your spider-trap wire

held to a sky i never wish to leave,

oh, my lover, with your sweet summer fire.

i sing at your touch like Apollo’s laurel-wrapped lyre

with our breathless song i long to weave,

i am the screaming rush of your kissed desire

i whisper your name and let your reverie gaze inspire

my lips, drunk off your heart, all love-intoxicated notes i have yet to receive,

oh, my lover, with just a taste of your summer fire

and the dawn rays that i build my own morning attire

at the temple of our bed and our reprieve,

i am the screaming sunlight of my kissed desire.

our bouquet hands can outlast all the world’s serpent-fanged choir

because to touch your sun-painted skin is the most human thing i can achieve.

oh, my lover, with your celestial summer fire,
i am the screaming red rose of our kissed desire.

the blooms we watched

summer emerald; the empty hills
stretched out in silence like hours
like thoughts sipped from bottles of pills

tranquility comes; the hand-held
breath in my lungs goes,
whistles silent in the slow wind.

you unfold; it was something small about
the things that kept you full, wanting, here
the way that a bridge needs an emptiness to cover.

i smile; i watch the way your curly hair falls
past your ears, dripping black ink
scrawling your silhouette to my eyelids.

you glow; bright, undeniable, halo on the zenith
like a campfire i want to throw myself into
like split wood—you simply talk about flower blooms.

i linger; i don’t listen to what you hide
but i linger on the heat of your lips, tipped
away from me, blush-reddened, my siren home.

eyes closed; both of us, lizards on the warm rocks
basking in this, the slow shift of the earth on my tongue
shaped in the way i know your happiness.
i know you know happiness.
i know you know my own.

shape-filled clouds; i watch you
close your eyes to sun and shade
and the hand-held tranquility
and the curling ink
and the siren lullaby
and the summer emerald hills.
you close your eyes to the flower blooms
and i simply watch you.

the flowers we pressed

you looked so happy

when you pressed
yourself against the world
between my collarbone.

you looked so happy.

the daisies looked so soft

when we pressed them into that notebook.

the daisies looked so soft.

the tulips looked so bright

when we held them between the papers

the tulips looked so bright.

the dandelions looked so hopeful

when we chose not to wish on them.

the dandelions looked so hopeful.

the peonies looked so precious

when we plucked them.

the peonies looked so precious.

but the leaves…

slowly, so slowly
that we would never count,
never see the trail,

the leaves fell.

the peonies looked so sad

when we plucked them

the peonies looked so sad.

the buttercups looked so hopeless

when we chose not to kiss over them.

the buttercups looked so hopeless.

the sunflowers looked so empty

when we held them between the papers.

the sunflowers looked so empty.

you looked so worn

when you pressed
yourself against the world
of living’s expectations.

you looked so worn.

the petals i remember

i remember our first spring. the first night, that first peck,
those burning reds of our carnation kisses
etched in purple violets like bruises on my neck.

i plucked his petals and rose-sweet sighs
like plucking his blue orchid thoughts,
savoring the desire eager in his eyes.

he wrapped me in his tapestry-string roots,
across my tree-ring chest, my heart, my soul
grew our wildflower words like tattooed fruits.

the closest thing to Elysium was to be doused in him—
my every lyric, my every piano key finger,
cherishing every ember glow of his smiling light, his hymns.

his shed petals covered my world in nature’s iconography
and i, in all my bright memory, built my own museum hall
where i can sing his words again in eulogy.

Choking Moonlit Lilies

I dreamt of music

to the songs of birds and wind
and I dreamt sweetly.

I did not believe

that your morning glory throat
would grow so knot-tight.

I could not cut, gentle,

the vines choking your heart, so
I gave a promise.

I promised my love

and rainwater, that you would
never be alone.

I bloomed in that hope

another day surviving,
but you slept silent.

I woke this morning

to your holy ghost and cried
for your midnight ivy.

an afterache dream

i had the dream
again.
we were at the mountain stream.
golden leaves crowned us, naked,
feet swallowed by ice. i do not move.
you turn and i feel the noose
my nerves make of me.
you dive in. i cannot move.
i try to say your name.
i choke it out instead.
your face hovers under the crystal
and i know what comes next.

i flash to: you, smiling, underwater,

where you whispered

“i can’t stay”

and i asked why;

where you whispered

“it’s okay”

and i asked how;

where you whispered

“i have to go”

and i asked why;

where you whispered

“let me go”

and i asked how.

and i see you wash away on the riverbed.
i don’t have answers.
i just have emptiness in my bones
that is crushing me like stones
under the river, smoothed away
like fragments of what a person was.
the river is breathing.
i hear the whispers in your voice.

i lose the shape of myself
to the creeping vines of this pounding heart
i don’t want to let go. i don’t want to let go. i don’t want to let go.
i need there to be something more for you.
i need this. how do i become something more
if i forget when i have been not enough?
i know you have to leave, like the
trees when autumn equinox kisses me goodnight.
i know. i have loved you too deeply to not know.
our hands have been mirrors since the day
i planted the willow tree for you. i know every
path of the sadness down your cheek. i kissed them all.
i still reach for you in the empty-bed dark.
how can i let go? how can it be okay? how could i? how would i?
in your place, the glass slivers stick in my palms and i bleed
but i don’t have the answers. it is not enough.

i wake up in the silent after-ache.
i keep my shape. the days move on.

A New Garden

[not yet available]

Thyme (& Hunger)

[not yet available]

Nature’s Delights, or the fireflies i swallowed when you first knew me

I am alive with the curve valleys and your shoulder blades,

with the underbrush of your heartbeat,
with the music of your fingers laced between mine,
oh god i am alive with the ice water river
and i burn with liquid lightning in my veins
and i am alive with the rush of running to the shore
from the overhang bank of the forest,
the trees taller than how my butterfly spirits flitted
when you said yes, when i promised to take you
to the pebble-piecemeal alcove.

The earthly delight of sinking my fingers into your waistband,

and just having my hand there at the small of your back and feeling the shiver of my cold whisper soaking
into the Atlas strength of your spine
oh god i drank you in, the scent
of your cologne and the way
the wind played with your hair and
the crash of the waves i couldn’t look at
when they were all background, paintbrushed,
to your portrait.

That night could have convinced me to pray,

the red of your cheekbones in the firelight and your arm around me,
the way the stars fell to your skin and i traced their path
the way you squeezed i swore i saw god
light up in the evanescent constellations above—
between the clouds, that night i understood a fragment of Sappho
i could have shaped that smoke
into any story, any sound, you craved,
the plume of my billowing tongue a promise to fill your heart
with the pin-prickle of light-lapped milky sky.

And I swallowed the burning love-light when you held me,

not as an inspiration to eat me from the inside
but a warm promise that i would stay
that you would hear my bones creak
like the burning charcoal of logs, of that night
i know my world will be ash when you die
and i would rather be scattered to the winds
by jealous Zephyr with immortalized hyacinths
than not get to know how many of my trees
i will fell to kindle our funeral.

But, oh, when you kissed me for the first time,

when you hugged me for the first time,
when you touched my hand for the first time,
when you saw my eyes for the first time,
when you said my name for the first time,
and when you do it all for the last
i will still be the embers of this firelight
in the center of our home fireplace
i will always think of all nature’s delights
and how clover-loved you make me feel.

i watch him sleep.

i whisper gratitudes into the curl of his hair against my lips.
i don’t know how to count the cliché sheep
but i do know how to count the rise and fall of his chest.

i do not call it insomnia when i listen to the soft rumble of his snoring.

i watch him sleep.

the fake-moon bulbs outside the apartment window cast shadows
along the wall, along the pillow, along his face
across my hand aching to caress the lines of his smile.

i don’t move when he breathes deep.

i watch him sleep.

i count the seconds that pass by the syncopation of our chests
and all the relived memories of our kisses i keep
and i know the trail of the moon across the sky

like the trail of my eyes over his forest fern freckles.

i watch him sleep.

i count every breath in the space beneath
every plane overhead, oblivious, every car speeding
through city streets. the nightly world still unfolds when

i don’t think of how long before his waking alarm will sing.

i watch him sleep.

until Morpheus slips through my side of the bed,
i sink into the warmth of his counted sheep.
i whisper compliments into his dreams.

i count every breath of his i take in.

i watch him sleep.

i curl closer, the hills of our blanket crushed
between the lay of our twisted legs,
between the hold of our arms.

he pulls me in closer like dawn’s slow creep.

i watch him sleep.

i do not see the snowdrops on the nightstand glow.
i do not watch the window’s morning dew weep.
i do not notice my breathing slow.

i do not keep a clock or lose count of the push and pull.

i watch him sleep.

i do not call it insomnia.
i write him secret poem notes instead.
i call it time to breath him, wordless, in.

i call it love.

insomnia to me is a secret note passed between our breaths

The Meadow

i know the taste of your morning dew and crested sunlight; i hear the rumble of peace in the serenity of your pillow; i feel how fires want to reach out for another taste when your back is pressed into me.

i think of nothing more in that magnolia moment.

when the golden window slits around us turns to white halo, i breathe in your motion— the way you, like Helios, rise; i drink in the stretch of your sublime, the shift of every landscape wonder; i hold the nebula in your hands and you blind me when you reach down with your kiss.

i think of Icarus’ wings and dream that flowers would have made a sweeter descent, and i fall a little more.

i am the bed of green that smothers the worries that soak down to your feet; i am the sway of boughs made for your canopy lullabies; i am the gentle brush of clouds across the treasured horizon in your eyes.

i can’t daydream of anything more heaven than the meadow you made of me.

i am the holy prayer held to the cupid of your lips and i would not dare ask of more; i am the strum of sacred violins in the crook of your neck and i would not dare ask of more; i am a world of stained-glass pieces woven patchwork and sincere and i would not dare ask of more.

i am half-heart and half-marble, a garden trellis erected in stone, and i know only my own eager to know every way to wrap around your every bone.

you saw the lilac fields across my skin, saw the survival instinct of my honeysuckles, saw the wildflowers and stayed through the wildness reclaimed in me—made fertility of my cast-off pines, rested whispers and secrets into the roots of my orchard, laid bouquets of lavender around my spread atrophy.

you cleaned the altar asphodels and gave them final rest, painted my carved grooves in blush, read my runes the way i could never teach you my agonied tongue.

you did not save my Eurydice, just changed my abandoned décor; on every step of our journey, you did not turn back to look at my ghosts, no matter how silent my footstep or scared my handhold; even when you heard how i am more than just one heart on the table, more than just one desire to live, you did not let go.

you are not just the hero of my living novel; you are not just the turn of the world, that defining etch of time with the slow settle in your cheeks held to the tremble in my musician palm; you are more than the hope of fullness and another day, more than anything expressed in something as immortal as a poem.

you are not my Hades, and i am not your Persephone—we are too mortal in our love, too much humble moments instead of ichor in our veins, but i swear i will give you amaranth in the taste of our ambrosia, i will make myths with the mountains of my heart; my ballad throat might not be eternal but the words i deliver will echo the chorus of all time before us—will echo the chorus of all time after us—will follow the traced path of every ray of light unto all the ends of the universe, of every oblivion getting closer until my love notes make a dirge for the cosmos.

your everything has been the whole of mortality, of passion, of giving the stars something else to lose their shine to; your naked breath against my neck expresses infinity into comprehension, makes words meaningless in the face of your devotion, turns my every part into religion; i hope the last word when you die will be an apology for stealing all the magic of this life when you walk into the veiling dark—because i know the last to fall from my gravestone mouth when i die will be your name.

even after it’s all done, i would not rest until i take you to those hallowed fields where we will find our meadowsweet; in that Elysium, we will find our constellated kisses; in Elysium, all the people we have been, all the people we have known, all the world’s breadth we have loved will be there; in that Elysium, when we tire of everything but each other, i’d remember that Elysium never would have been worth it without you.

in the end, if we are doomed to be reborn, i would do everything all over again. in the end, i would relive all the waiting until patience is defined by my biography. in the end, i would find you again—i would remind you of our riverboat life—i would take you to our meadow.

A Preview of the Upcoming Work

Table of Contents

Part I: Before the Break of Our Falling

Part 2: After the World Continues

Part 3: i will inspire the immeasurable

The Burning Tree (i met the dead when he was still alive)

he consumes me and i let the love grow

the blooms we watched

the flowers we pressed

the petals i remember

Choking Moonlit Lilies

an afterache dream

A New Garden

Thyme (& Hunger)

Nature’s Delights, or the fireflies i swallowed when you first knew me

insomnia to me is a secret note passed between our breaths

The Meadow

… and more!