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

New poems to come…

one for the cyst that

grew around &

took an ovary

a second for my beautiful

daughter

and then the third will be

for the stretched skin,

the legacy of a vast hole

I’ve finally begun to

fill properly

with love not food

with resilience not things

with gratitude and perhaps most importantly

with hope

trace these lines traversing

the softness of my belly

and you will

map a grown & re-grown woman

a garden with paths

a life of loss & gifts & passionate renewal

shall I put

the stone

down

I found it alongside

a river

of a mostly forgotten

dream

smooth

rounded

holding the heat

of a swallowed

moon

shall I put

the stone

down

if

it reminds me

of the girl I used to be

though I am still

warm and round

I will not carry that

same business with me

though I am still warm

and round

the script is changing

and perhaps I will devise

a new lexicon

one of growth

i do not wish nor want

for that hidden girl

to permeate the bubble of

now

as she was drowning

shall I put the stone down

and graft a tomorrow?

one of heavy-headed

daisies, black-eyed susans, honeysuckle, oleander and echinacea

one in which the scent

and color of this woman

is new, earthy, sweet and bright

not dark

nor murky

or carrying the silt of

self

analysis

and the resulting

rejection

(yes, that old business)

the river

the stone

the weight

the memory

the redacted

girl

who dreamed of a garden

but had no faith in her

ability to grow…

shall I put the stone

down

and open something new

gather leaves

and words

and petals

and color

and

scent and

rainwater and birdsong

shall I drop the stone and

imagine the roots of all this new growth

reaching and wrapping their cylindrical fingers

around it

burying it deep

in the loam

shall

I

put

the

stone

down

sometimes i want to curl up inside of him

want him to swallow me whole

no air, just him

sometimes i’m jealous of the sheet that wraps him in his sleep

the pillow on which he lies his sweet, heavy head

sometimes i wish i could spend my whole day

with him all over and around and inside me

never leave the dark, woven planet of our bed

sometimes my need for him is bigger than me

holds me in its hard-fingered grasp,

robs me of my breath

replaces instinct

asks a new language of this bliss-fill

this drowning emergence of love in a woman-shaped space

evening light goes

feet cold

and Tracy sings

and i lean in

and consider my core

and what is it but a song,

a story of muscle

            of bone

            and insistence

of gravity and other pulls such as desire,

             pain

             light

            melody

            and memory

what else is it but

            the leavetaking of a day

            the end of a beginning

            a breath held or

            a long ride in a fast car

wherein you find me

counting backwards

watching the sun down and

the birds defying all that holds me here:

            insistent

            driven

            and anticipatory

what is this, my core:

woven, distracted and shining

forever seeking the ridiculous and

sometimes considering the wow:

this light core

this fleet-footed engine

at the heart of this self-inflicted mystery

of a woman

a drum falls
in the leaves
red, golden spun
soft, rumble and roll
and I run my bare toes
through them
and my fingers across the skin
a dance begins between
this woman
her earth
and a shivering
articulated dialect of branch, color, breath
and wandering
through memory,
a warmer stretch
the supple course of muscle
his wing spanned
against her
and then their dance done:
having already swept the mostly dark
whole-moon sky

there is something, Grace,
basic and beautiful
and unknowable about this space
breathe…ed
known girl grown to the
check and balance of the
sun and the moon’s
elasticity
attenuation of bone, feather
and wing
i stay
we flow
so not against or for the
current
me, why, who, when and
where to
cherish this moment, again
and how