cdxxxix. i can beat anything

because i can remember when you had still flesh on your bones and hopes in your heart and great ideas in your head. and i remember when you stopped. and i kept going.

cdxiv. yesterday’s kiss

our bodies played hide and seek. your tongue probed my mouth, searching for yesterday’s kiss. you knew how to ask for sex in six different languages. i wished you were as proficient in love.

cd. i’m not going back no mo’

i must take care not to peer back through that gray slant of time to when we lay arm against arm, bodies flushed and moisture still seeping.

cccxciii. ha

my laughter once rang like fine church bells, but your shadow has pressed me flat. i’ve forgotten my name, my mother’s name, the town of my birth, the face of my first lover, the color of my father’s hair. i’ve forgotten it all.

cccxc. revisiting the after party

we fell into each other after, grasping and frantic, eager to stretch that fire into forever.

ccclxxxiii. gail

your footsteps sparked through labrynthed streets, then faded, traveling places i could no longer follow.

cccxlii. crunch time

the minute hand swung past 13 like a gun to my head. i couldn’t quite pull myself together. and i was, in those days, sober.

cccxxxix. cut to…

daydreaming memories of an empty pre-season beach, an ocean that tunes the high string in my chest. a bucket, a shovel, the sand crabs, and a million three-year-old questions.

cccxxxiv. oh, saturdays

those nights, those same mothers opened their windows to let in the warm breeze and woke the next morning to the moaning of pigeons roosting in dresser drawers, escaping sunday’s chilly dawn.

cccxi. my hands, your face

i remember dragging my hands down your flushed cheek and then down to your chin, smoothing your sharp features with my hands. i felt every ridge, every pore, and contour that your face had to offer, molding your image into my brain.