Synonym

I’m not sure how
to explain
to you
how to get
to where
I am

I cannot find a synonym
for love

Come in.

I think my favorite thing so far
is how he already
treats me
with the acuity
of an old friend; embracing
flaws, teasing out quirks and telling me
his dirty jokes because he knows
I’ll laugh just as hard
and then we’ll stare
a little while, smirking in a somewhat
disbelieving silence,
still reeling from the moment just after
I knocked and he called,
“Come in.”

semantics

they were just two categories in search of criteria
bumping into one another repeatedly
on a windblown pebble beach
shoulders brushing, bodies leaning to and fro, a struggle
to hear each other
over the sound of inevitability
unconcerned, content, preoccupied with the sun in their eyes
they forgot to watch the tide
until it had curled itself around
their words and swept their meaning out
to sea, leaving only the look in her eye, the angle of his head
a lack of denial
as good as consent.

you love women

you love your women
like you love a good song;
you don’t know the words,
but you still sing along.

open seventh

You tend to use
a lot
of open seventh
chords, he observed.
 
I didn’t know what that meant.
 
Like this, he said, demonstrating with
his hands what I didn’t
understand.
 
Oh, I replied,
you mean the ones that sound
like they are perching
on a cusp, demanding
resolution?
 
yes, I do like those.
 

In an attempt to be brief

here is a moment I felt truly alive:

when the wind-hurtled leaves convulsed

in the dirt and I caught the tang of turmoil in the air

as rain-soaked eyes and misty trees

all merged into one song.

Ladybug

This ladybug
has been exploring my carpet
all morning and I don’t understand
why it doesn’t use its wings to fly to less
monotonous territory
instead of doggedly clambering
over every tuft,
intent only on its goal and seemingly
oblivious to the redundancy
of its actions- content to traverse its mini moonscape
in solitude, probably humming to itself
as it goes.

gaining

I am gaining
perspective as I climb, knowing the higher
my elevation, the wider
my view, the less significant
my troubles will
seem- a reminder that I am blessed
with the burden
of relative insignificance.

drift

I’d like to stay a while in the pre-verbal hours
of a promisingly prurient morning, when
slow smiles and eyelashes
were sufficient communication and the call of a mourning
dove provided punctuation
to a conversation
initiated
by the curve of shoulder, encouraged
by the shape of shadow lingering just below
your collar bone, and caught
in the sound our breath made
as we gradually
came awake.

In response to the Beauty aisle in Target.

as if

beauty is a quantifiable commodity
to be purchased with the swift swipe of a debit card
and the word applies only to female bodies, where
everything’s a problem, but wait-
there’s a solution

if you

hate yourself, erase yourself
scrape yourself raw
you can
paint yourself, fake
yourself remake yourself

a mask.