Three Longing Verses

A cycle for these hot summer days!

They Asked Me

after Brittany Howard

what I would do
if suddenly and for a week
all men dysappeared

and my heart replied
fly—speak—open
to you my love

who read my curiosity
for doors ajar and refused
my ducking path to safety

and my heart replied
let all signifiers of only love
slip through my long-memoried fingers

which tremble on the precipice
of an age
where all time belongs to us

and my heart replied
ask you blushing to give to
who even now learns to receive

whose insecurities leave blood trails
like flags & puncture her echo still
as she makes short work of yours

and my heart replied
tell you patiently to tell me
from the top

who moved you to here
who fashioned your fabric of self
who sent you on this way

and my heart replied
kiss away both our understandings
to the edge

of new understanding
and not dying make it
to you my love

***

Fly

I thought it would be fine
once I knew you’d landed.

But I tug at my fraying ends,
the ends of my nerves tug
at the ends of my wits.

I need you, like any mundane
needed thing, to assume again
the place I know to be yours.

My pulse beats irrhythmic
and my forecasts falter.

***

AND NOW YOU HAVE THE NERVE TO COME TO ME AND ASK IF I STILL LOVE YOU

Of course I do.
I love you so much I hate you.

A sultry night en la Puerta del Sol, Madrid.