practice

sometimes i miss myself
talking past the horizon
i think if i can look far enough
something will become clearer

i wonder if in this habit
i've become unable to
see what lies
closer than anything else

32 years
and still
i'm learning to be a better roomate
with myself

we fight sometimes
but mostly
we turn up the noise
shut our doors

and wait. no
maybe that's not it at
all these days i don't quite
recall youth

smiling softly,
patient like nursing
a chronic wound
nagging yet healing

yes. that might have been me
young shoots across
fertile land
fleeting and going

on and on. this morning
i woke with little left
but the dew on my finger tips
reminding me

of her. i am
waiting and healing
and remembering what
warmth of other

warmth of self feels
like. never ending
softness splayed across
wisps of freedom.

release

letting go is not letting go it is returning to turn and turn to return and skies filled with marbles that rain rain reign the heart of head of heart of heading to the place where i held you tight but loose too tight to let you go too loose to keep you there the sprinkling lights reflecting off the imagined mirror ball on the new hampshire red road turning turning turning around around a round headed kid like me wanted to keep holding on to your now wrinkled yet somehow young hand that once stroked my hair in the moonlit darkness the night after a typhoon-swept tree had fallen on the house in the mountains where we took care of the woman of a womb that bore you so late not too late but still late like you bore me in the warmth of that late summer air when we both looked forward as i confessed i'd gone and fallen in love and what a time to fall in love and you said love is good love is great you should fall in love and what you didn't say was because you will need the love soon because even though i will love you forever i won't always be around to remind you that i do.

incense fragrant
a loss fragrant in sense
incensed at loss

release is everyday now with and without you when you left i thought no mistook no wondered no assumed no forgot yes forgot that releasing your body was not releasing you yes forgot that you were still existing still in my pores still wafting on the breeze in my ears on the memories i still tell and recall in stillness of light yes still body racing mind i must yes to seeing you everywhere yes to light raining down yes to releasing more and more to listening with confusion yes to confusion yes to a car ride back from a mall in a tiny car you know you no more false pride not saying yes but yes to saying i want your child your queer child you just need to find a random asian man i want yes an asian grandchild your child yes you would raise yes and smiling at knowing not quite yet but maybe future yes embarrassed at boldness no regrets when you said those words i knew you finally saw me yes me yes meet me half of the way to the altar of sight you had let me go and then you saw and now i let you go and maybe see you back lit seeing to see the sunsets and storms and soft finger tips at edges end blue baby glory of the once.

yes