today i am

misted

braced

working on my language of letting go

and thinking of him

today i am scorned

beware

of this woman

no longer sacrificial

though still soft and round

and full of dream-laden power

today i am

feeling my own darkness

becoming less and less

an open book

considering embracing this new status of woman

as a dirty little secret

fierce from here forward

tonight i am

waiting for someone that this way

will not come…

because

i’m his good, hot, down and low

today i am

glowing

and with him

today i am

contained

spellbound

and, yes, still thinking of him

missing him

hard

and deep inside me

slow, his sweet breath

his unintelligible speak

when he was there

missing his heart

which i still believe to be true

despite his unthinking memes

or maybe they are thinking

maybe they are ironic

or an an invitation, a challenge

i don’t know

but i do know that i must now speak

the language of letting go

as he will no longer share his words,

nor his beautiful body

with this soft-blooming woman I’ve become

full of fire and contradictions

and now sitting in the sun

dreaming her way beneath the surface

of the light-splintered water laid out before her

her true wild heart

beating to his cadence

of

ghosts and poetry and myth and sex-magic

but now i must speak the language of letting go:

dream

d r i f t

reach

new no

l o o k i n g

back

I.

want it to be tomorrow so i can be with him

smell him

taste him

touch him

want to dream in his bed

look up at him as he moves into me

as he looks into me

we are beautiful

white bloom in night sky

entwined

blind to all that is around us

when i’ve my mouth on him he speaks quietly

an incantation

i rarely comprehend what he says

i want to know what he says

i think he once said he was going to give it to me so hard for doing this to him

i do it to him because of what he does to me

i am enchanted

want only to be with him

hidden away from the world

deep in his wood,

his arms,

his slow beating heart

II.

it is a sorcery

what he has done to me

any moment

he will come to me

his petricorian breath

his sweetbitter taste

his smooth aphotic skin

need him

crave him

and often think I’d do anything for him

there is a darkness that is within him,

beneath his earthen sweetness,

his faetherbrush touch

he looks into me, listens to me

feels me

and, god, how he moves me

inside me and

calls up the darkness

within me

beneath my peaches and currants and breath and memory and eyes and

i was strong within myself

feeling my core

but now i am wavy

drawn to him

dreaming my mouth on him

interpreting his incantations

but my darkness, it is growing stronger

and his ghosts

they like me

and do not interfere

with our slow deep

our dance of hard rain

because something happens there

in his dark, sunken room

of heat and lions and myth and lady ghosts

it is a seedwork,

a steeping

and it will rain

and i cannot keep going

but i will keep going

because there will never be enough

my hunger fed

only opens a deeper, older

hunger

and the earth outside

drowns

and greens

and deepens

and darkens

and

changes

remains recognizable

this woman

should be sleeping in his arms

sun filtering through the night and day curtains hung above his bed

smelling his sweet-earth breath

curling her soft rounded body to his

lean and hard

seeking his warmth for hers

tasting his kiss

a warm current,

a relentless pull that makes her drunk

and wavy and wanting

and woven into his dark woman-swallowing desire

***

this spell-caught woman should be with him

in his hands that held her

with such banked intensity

as his body moved over and into hers

slow, deep, over

and again

***

she aches now

feels the absence of him everywhere

she aches

simply and fully aches

for him

empty pages need to be filled

as her mind must wander,

must record the timed passages of attention,

must wonder at where she has been –

winded, night-filled and

with that glitter and sand

sifting from her hair

empty pages need to be filled as

the eyelash of memory dusts against her waking thoughts

a hand at the back of her neck

green muted lights like heartbeats

birds, a dance is what he held her to

and the surf

and music

a hand at the depression of her of her waist

he never has left her without question

without want

without his sweetness building to something bitter in her mouth

her memory

and muse

her openness, then, makes of her a vessel –

willing, wounded and hungry

full of misguided hope she washes the glittersand down the kitchen sink and

starts, this again, to build lemon cake

it is her favorite

she will layer coconut, some sea salt and all her longing for the details of him

not her fiction

for the arrogant magic forever nagging her to find just the right words

to fill pages with something concrete

with discernible beginning and end

like the three cakes lined up

soldiering her warm wooden countertop

in the candlelight by which she prefers to bake

and read

and write

and dress

and bathe and

sleep to dream of him