There are books in the windowsill, a
hundred stories exhaling in the sigh
of a sun-soaked May, and mine is a
life in boxes, and the curtains
you insisted kiss the floor of my place
still do, but the rest of us is
gone, even the ashes scattered,
and still I find aches in the spaces
you touched.
I remember the prayer
and my sternum catches, halts
my run, eyes wet, I felt you
bruising my arms and wrapped
them around you in prayer, my
first in a long while, and
a week later, you broke me, a man,
amen.
Manicured nails, shimmering blue,
the morning we stifled laughter
over your ticklish feet, how I
picked that polish off, green and pink
flakes on the boardwalk, just
fighting to survive the way
your love starves and squeezes.
We get it wrong, the sun washes
deeper than the rain, every
step further is an exhale, relief,
and to love you was an interruption
and to love myself is a return, so
when the train rolls by my window,
I think of how you’d hate it,
and peace blossoms in our shallow grave.
michael king 