breathheld

"Wear your overcoat," you teased and so I did, the salty one stitched with seabreeze and constellations and an inner pocket for lip balm. Driving up I glimpsed you dancing on the sand then clambering onto impossible crags where it seemed the lighthouse beacon would never reach, but it did and I smiled despite the clutching in my stomach. I hadn't imagined it being awkward like a first date where the cologne wafts past and the instant of kissability falls into my lap where the napkin and tablecloth edge linger, and yet here it was, the crossing of the Pacific and me, well both of us shy as kittens and playfulness glinting in the corn

Tell me, lover, how the flooded sky peals the soul's vengeance, the churning of autumn and echoing footfalls on the stairwell with dusk tasting like our kisses in their eager, sanguine (bittersweet) youth. Fearful of depths, I fled your embrace to fall swooning, each glance a brush of laden finishing, a heart-heresy. Yesterday I sealed the last box, wiping my brow and wearing those sage, harried conversations as only a crushed kite with torn webbing can muster in the face of distance. Now, when I smile at you, there are only waves ebbing across sandbars and our twilights.

Tart mountain jasmine, just cooling, Rolls from greyed porcelain onto my tongue, Cleaved midair by the force Of a forgotten friend's greeting. "I coulda swore that was you From out there in the street!" Something small thuds against crumbling bricks On past afternoons Like kicking a dusty Pandora's box Long resigned to the attic of rememory. He nurses two Buds after a spell, And I see how hard his needled wife And three boys and girls work for one of his smiles. Oh his job is "good enough," he dribbles. The lukewarm tartness envelops me, Dragging back a forlorn tapestry Of his nostalgic, languishing dreams; A barricaded Korea