Sweat

A pool of perspiration
gathers, glistens
on the skin of your bare chest
until it overflows like tears
and slides down the dark paths
inscribed under the surface
in order to remember
what must not be forgotten.

It is nearly the time of Solstice
and the sun that marks the passage
of another season and your favor.
Your patience is gone
with the heat of this long journey
around a lifetime of loving
what is impossible to love.

Little blisters bubble
in the cells of your ring finger.
They talk to each other
like giggling school girls
passing rumors of lost love
through the passages
of the day.
A small and tender heart emerges,
beaten from this skin
as if by magic,
but you know the pain
of the choker chain
that reminds you
of your vows to that suffering.

There’s no use pretending
the spirit will ever get something it can’t have
when you’ve marked yourself
in the blood you can’t wash away--
even after the scab has hardened
and the scar is the only remaining mark.

Back at your damp flesh
your mind is brought up short
by that harsh master
and his short leash.

A cloud passes overhead
and you feel the chill
of the opportunity not taken—
of fear of this unknown.
Regret is the ghost that haunts you
like a melanoma waiting to surface.

June

Have you noticed June
has come to us too soon
in a year where fireflies freeze
and are lightning for daisies
in a field I will never walk?

I catch you peeking through my window tonight
like a common boy who wants to see lace
touch soft skin and watch a lonely woman
remove private garments like layers of defense
until she is a vulnerable girl
ready to cry—sob in your arms.

You have no idea how to comfort me—
I am too much light for you to catch
in your hands.
I am stars and all water
leaking through your panicked fingers--
lost to the wide salty ocean and darkening sky.

Oh love,
if you only knew enough
to bring a simple child’s bucket
to the places where I always escape
you would capture your heart
full of abandoned, glittering treasure.

Instead, I must forgive you again for your fear
and your inability to turn away. . . .avert your eyes
from the naked beauty of truth
and the happiness that has come
to cover the outline
of my body.

I gather armfuls of white petals
and place them gently on your threshold
before dawn daring you to do the right thing
and kiss me. . . .abandon your post
at the door of everything proper
and enter into the circle of gold and spirit—
forget where the end of hello begins
and remember farewell is vocabulary
in a dialect we never knew.