Love Flower

 

My sweet love.

My heart in my throat.

I really want to see you.

I stare through the agapanthus outside the cafe window.

Crow on the telephone wire across the street looks at me.

Winks.

Flies off.

You have flown off.

Here.

Not here.

Yet.

Still in my heart.

Which rises now in my chest, beckoning to that crow

On that high wire,

Breast puffed out in the chuffing wind–

Here, take me,

Take this heart, carry it off

Plumed with daisies,

Take it and beat your wings across the blue,

Drop it at his feet.

 

I hear you in the damned music.

I stuff my hand in my mouth to

Baffle the cries that arise behind my lips.

 

Shall I get another tattoo, my love?

More lyrics to memorialize you?

I really want to be with you.

 

(God fucking damn these love songs in cafes)

 

Hallelujah.

My, my,

My, sweet love.

Here Again

These old memories.

They bang at my head.

A washing of blue jean sky,

Salt tenderized by the sea.

Light.

So.

Californian.

Like my soul,

Built on mussel sea shells

Found by the sea shore.

Sally sells them for a penny a piece.

(find a penny pick it up)

In a brown paper bag I left them.

Hiding, the shells–

Underneath the Volkswagen’s seat.

The bounce of light against the

Rear window in the back seat of the Bug.

Little girl.

Brown eyes wide.

Watching the clouds scroll by,

Catching glimpses of ocean blue between the dunes.

Side mirror reflections bring me back to now.

Decades later.

Decades.

(All day long you’ll have good luck)

Four to be exact.

Those days down by the sea

Watching the water foam over the shore,

Tiny sandpipers scurry.

Coppertone baby in white panties,

Already insecure in my body,

Scampering at the edges of the sand burning bright

Heat rolling up my legs from my feet.

I am.

Curly headed.

I am.

Sweet lipped.

I am.

Brown as a nut berry.

(See a  penny, let it lie)

Pink soled feet softened by the rasp of sand.

Now I am plagued by these,

Photographs of melancholia–

Nostalgia tinged with seaweed.

The cry of mermaids in the grotto.

Sun high.

Heat on high

Cooking hotdogs on aluminum foil on the hood of the Volk’s.

Sand, a grit in my teeth.

Running back to the water, the ocean nips at my feet.

I find another shell for my paper bag.

(All good luck will pass you by)

Listen for the soundtrack to these memories.

One that drifts on the radio dial of Northern California

70s folk rock.

The outlines of my heart.

The nook in the cafe.

A flash of vinyl, the undertone scratch of needle finding the groove.

The light.

The light.

The light.

The smell of salt.

The hint of driftwood bonfires at the edge of night.

Golden foiled light in the dying

Embers of my childhood.

Bespoke.

Bag of shells.

Halo of white sun as I close my eyes to

Everything.

Lost again in that bright light.

Washed out in the sun.

Freckling my face.

I am.

Softened now

By these.

Kisses of eternity.

Speak To Me

In the language of trees.

Specifically.

In the whisperings of God dropping through the boughs of the giant avocado tree.

Said tree that I stand next to at times, times of the day when I am alone at work, out on the balcony to the world staring down at the bowl of San Francisco from my perch.

A  perch just on the cusp of Glen Park.

Borderlands to Noe Valley.

A perch of privilege, a deck of wonders.

Who knew there was such a view?

Or that God would choose the avocado tree to teach me of my love for you.

For a moment I could not even remember if you liked avocados.

Then.

The memory of the first time I cooked you breakfast.

(You requested, something simple, like avocado toast, which you got, as well as prosciutto and asparagus fritatta with pecorino and grueyere and fruit, all organic and curated, and granola parfait, said toast dusted with sea salt collected by the soft milk white hands of virgins under the new moon–at least that is what I told you,  as it cost $58 a lb)

How I wanted to please you.

How I wanted to make you happy.

How I wanted to impress you.

And yes.

How I wanted to show you how much I loved you.

Although the words had not been uttered out loud.

They were there.

Lingering in the cast iron skillet I sautéed the asparagus in.

Late spring asparagus I had culled with much discernment at the market.

Everything needed to be just so for you.

You may see how mad I was to impress you.

See.

Here.

Here are my list of skills.

Cooking, obviously.

Did I tell you that I know how to make pie crust from scratch?

I know I must have enraptured you at some point with tales of apple pie and vanilla custard ice cream in the house in Windsor, in Wisconsin, with apples that I picked myself from the Cortland tree.

Apples that to this day I can taste faint, sweet, crisp, with a wicked whisper of tartness that reminds me of you.

You flavor my ways and days and the memory of you wicks through me some times with terrifying speed.

I digress.

Apples.

Apple pie.

Apple tart kisses, my bonny boy, my blue-eyed one, my love, my love, my ardent heart.

I digress.

Where was I?

Oh.

Yes.

Skills.

Cooking, cleaning, pie crust making, massage, poetry, recitations, love-making.

We were oh so good at that last, weren’t we lover?

Digressing again.

I shivered, it felt like withdrawal, in the car tonight, on my long drive home, waiting in line on Lincoln Avenue for the light to finally turn green so that I could turn on to 19th and head to Crossover Drive, to float down the hills, rolling and soft, like a asphalt veld, to the sea.

To 48th and Balboa, my new digs.

You were the first person to see it.

Just the bones, you know.

Just the bare walls and the wood floors and the oh so, oh my God, is it really all mine, deck.

I almost kissed you there, in the shadow of the house, I wanted you to kiss me there, in the corner of my heart, in my new home and cement yourself even further into my heart, is that possible?

It is I think.

You managed somehow.

And though I did not kiss you, I stopped, startled, stunned that I wasn’t allowed to kiss you anymore, momentarily forgetful of this whole grown up thing we are doing, the no contact thing that we keep breaking, like my heart, trying to find our way through the morass and the mire to that high road of love, I wanted to.

I wanted to kiss you.

And I did.

Later.

But I am not at later yet.

For.

I digress.

The digression too becomes a part and parcel to the piece.

Does it not?

Where was I?

Oh yes.

I was shivering.

Shaking with need, a good addict response, what had triggered me?

Aside, not digression, I hate that word, trigger, so banal, so trite, so overused and misunderstood, excuses to act out on desires, I was triggered, I could not help myself, what was it that pulled my focus, that made me shiver.

The damn car wash.

Remember that one?

You know the one, when we were on holiday, what a horrid way to misuse that word, from our sexual appetites, trying yet again to figure out how to be and not be with each other.

We’re just “friends” now.

I knew then, but did not say it, there is no going backwards.

So when we were just supposed to be going for a ride, just supposed to be talking, how we ended up at the gas station with the discount gas if you should happen to buy a car wash.

No overheated teenager ever made out more furious with passion than did we.

I do not know how long the water pelted down but it was not long enough.

It was never long enough with you and I.

And then I’m turning, the light is green, it is time to go, and I let the yellow and orange and white lights of the gas station melt away in the rear view mirror, but the song is still there and I still feel you in the air inside my car, some sort of ghost in the machine.

Deux ex machina.

And I feel you seeping under that layer of skin between muscle and sinew and I cry, out loud, your name in the darkened shell of my car, the dashboard lights the only witness to my pain.

I half expected you to text me immediately.

You do always know when I am almost there on the ledge of love waiting to leap and always wanting you to catch me when I fall.

But you didn’t.

Text me, that is.

No matter how much I may want you to.

You’re not allowed.

I am not allowed.

We are not in that place.

Yet.

And.

I do not know the place exactly that we are in now.

So.

I talk to the avocado tree at work.

I pace the back balcony, the view of the city spilled out before me like a sumptuous private banquet that only I shall eat at.

The clouds, high, and tight in the sky, flick past, but are not big enough to blot out all that wide open blue.

That sky that does me in.

You had to have eyes the color of the sky, didn’t you?

Eyes so blue, so deep, flecked with green and gold and burnished with love.

Like the leaves of the avocado tree.

Leaves that when ruffled against the blue of the sky remind me of when I fell, headlong, heedless, and in absolute knowing, that I was irreconcilable in my love, into the blue of your blue eyes, straight through to the sea of your soul.

I launched out upon that sea and I have never looked back.

And though I am so far from shore.

I know, I really do believe.

That if I can just decipher the secrets that the avocado tree is whispering to me I will unlock the key and bring you back.

Back.

Back.

Down to the sea.

Where the driftwood bonfires burn brightly on the edge of the ocean and the mermaids sing each to each.

Do not make me wait to be old, a Prufrock figure, with trousers rolled, feet bare to the sea-foam, pushed about by incoming waves of salt sadness and sea bream.

Come back to me my love.

Come back.

At least please see me in my dreams.

Where once again I will fall for you with nary a regret.

Never a regret.

Over.

And over.

And.

Over.

Again.

Always.

Will.

I fall.

For.

You.

 

Jarred

“What will I do when the flowers he gave me die?” I sobbed.

“You’ll buy more flowers,” he told me gently from across the table, sympathy in his warm eyes.

I will buy more flowers, I told myself today.

As.

I threw away the flowers that he had given me the last time he saw me.

Not one bouquet.

But two.

We had a two-day good-bye swan song.

Sad love-making in the sheets, the fragrances of flowers sweet.

I thought.

Maybe I should save a flower.

Press it into the pages of the notebook I have been writing in.

I have been writing love letters to him.

I do not know if he will ever see them.

Although.

Yes.

I did tell him before our goodbyes that I was doing that.

Filling a notebook with all my thoughts of him.

I told him he could have it when he comes for me.

How apropos then.

To press a flower from the last bouquet into those pages.

But no.

I could no do it.

It felt common.

And our love was, and is, I am not done loving him yet, nor may I ever be.

Our love was.

Uncommon.

No soft faded flowers between the pages of a notebook for him.

I threw out the wilted flowers.

I put them in the compost bin.

I tossed the old water into the bushes in front of the house.

I felt nothing.

Perhaps a twinge of weak sorrow as I closed the green lid of the bin over the bright flagging flowers.

But nothing more.

So.

I was surprised.

Taken aback.

Abject and sorrowful when unexpected grief visited me as I put away the dishes in the dish rack.

Two Mason jars.

Touching them I realized those jars held the last flowers I was ever going to get from him.

My eyes then as now, flooded with tears.

How could there be so much sorrow in a Mason jar?

They are meant to hold fireflies and butterfly cocoons.

They are the promises of preserves in deep winter that remind of summer bounty.

They are the holders of sustenance on my kitchen counter–brown rice, oatmeal, sea salt, coffee beans.

And now.

Mason jars mean no more flowers from you.

The tears on my face now a river.

Thinking of all the flowers you gave me over the time we were together.

Especially.

The biggest bouquet ever.

The one you held out to me full of pink and cream and orange star-gazer lilies.

They, the stems of glory and suffused adoration, under lit your face and splattered the soft glow of love shine in your eyes.

Your eyes.

So open and tender and terrible with vulnerability.

The last time I had seen those eyes they had told me how they were in love with me.

That bouquet, then, ws the first you gave me after the first time you said “I love you.”

Which was not said quite like that.

You actually said, “I love you too, so much!” and threw your arms around me, reaching for me in that moment that I felt you would always, always, always be reaching for me.

The love a fountain of flowers and light.

I will never forget that bouquet, your eyes, your face.

Even if I cannot bring myself to use that Mason jar for a while.

I know it is there.

The receptacle that held the love.

Which now.

Just holds memories.

Mementos.

The ghost flowers of love.

 

When Did You

Fall in love with me?

I asked you.

Recently.

I mean.

I know when.

Or whereabouts.

I remember.

Yet.

I needed to hear you say it.

The pause as you thought, all the memories of our first “I love you’s,” tumbled in between the breath of your response and the beat of my heart.

“When you started writing me poetry.”

My heart stopped.

I knew.

And yet.

I was not expecting quite that response.

For days now.

Poems, pieces and bits and images, meander through my head.

I must write him another poem.

I must.

I want him to still love me.

I know you do.

(please don’t fall out of love with me)

What do you want to do?

I asked.

You paused.

“Keep on kissing you and making you happy.”

My love.

You make me so happy.

It’s been such a journey and it’s not over yet.

Has just barely begun.

That first I love you an inscription.

A quote.

The beginning of the preface.

Let alone the first chapter of a book.

Our story.

Well.

The narrative, all pink and purple blush, like a Victorian house at sunset with newspaper hearts strung across the front porch, Valentine paper dolls hands entwined, it marches on.

I did not burn down the house.

Thank God.

No.

I did not.

Not at all.

Even when I tried to break up with you.

And I did try.

You just wouldn’t let me.

Or I wouldn’t let me.

Or God wouldn’t let me.

“You never really broke up with him.”

My therapist.

A wise woman with knowing eyes, told me recently.

I never really did.

I could not disentangle the threads of you in the woof of me.

I never wanted to.

I never want to.

I want to be touching noses with you like kittens do for always.

I want to be in the crook of your arm forever.

It is home.

And when you are away.

I am homesick.

I get homesick for you so fast.

I miss you now.

Even though we were just talking.

I was thinking about you as I drove home, down towards the gloaming sunset and grey blue haze hovering over the twilight ocean.

Thinking about you and the poem I wanted to write you.

The love beating in my heart an infinity bracelet of desire and longing that has no end.

Thinking about you so hard.

That.

You.

Call.

You felt it.

You knew.

You know me.

I am known by you.

This means everything.

I have known and know great love.

You are my greatest love.

My moon.

I will watch for you again through the back window of my studio tonight as I lay down to sleep.

Waiting.

For.

When you fall from the sky and shine your love light on my face.

I will lay dreaming.

Dreams about.

Serenading.

The mermaids to the beach.

Each to each.

Waiting.

Waiting again.

For you.

Your embrace, the dunes, the sea, the warm husk of your breath on my neck.

And the oft-repeated, as you wish, whispered into the shell of my ear.

My love I never could cut asunder.

My only wish to be now and always.

Your.

Babygirl.

 

 

 

 

You Are Seasonal

Not just one season.

Not just the brightness of summer.

The thunderstorms.

The heat.

The lushness.

Yes.

You are all these things.

And.

You are also in the whisperings of fall.

The coolness of your cheekbones

How the falling light glances off

Their planes and there.

A light flares inside me.

A bonfire of longing.

I smell you in this season too.

I sense you in the softening sweetness

Of things ripe and full.

I ripen thinking about that.

Your euphoric smell.

The plushness of your mouth.

An apple cider song.

I suspect I shall see you in all seasons.

All hours.

All days.

How I wish to see what winter light looks like

Upon you.

A snowflake soft explosion such as one cannot imagine.

Bonny boy.

And.

Oh.

Burgeoning spring.

I see you there too.

But it is right now.

In.

This moment.

This cooling of air,

That calls to me.

I wish to hold your hand and kick through

Fallen leaves with you.

To tussle to the ground.

To see your smile, your eyes alight.

I imagine your face framed in golds,

Burnished reds.

Burnt oranges.

Flaming yellows.

Richest browns.

No beauty that surpasses

The handsomeness of your face.

Only a frame to outline its glory.

Another picture I shall hang.

In the gallery.

Of.

My.

Heart.

Blossom Song

The way you look at me.

The way your eyes follow my face.

Leaving me melting on the floor.

A pool of desire, lapping warm at my ankles.

My face sweltering with love, a heat shined

Brighter than the moon in darkest skies.

You.

Are.

Exquisite.

Like plum trees

Blooming out of season.

The petals fresh surprised in autumnal air.

Magic that kisses me senseless.

I am without shame.

My need for you subsumes all doubt

With wild veracity.

And now, as I look out across the expanse of space ahead of me.

I sense you there.

On the horizon.

So near.

Like a taste that just alludes memory.

I sense your sweetness in the cinnamon tea I drink.

Reflected in the freckles on my face,

Planted there like promises of kisses on my cheeks.

Ghost leftovers of love smattering my skin.

There is music.

There too, your hands.

Navigating their way through my hair.

Oh.

Slippery time.

I wait for you to pass.

In colors midnight blue

And longing.

Wearing Elvis Presley shoes.

And.

Swagger.

March along.

Move along.

Take that road home to you.

My baby.

I’m waiting.

Just waiting.

Over there.

Beneath that canopy of

Soft purple pink

Blooming sweet fruit promises.

Ensorcelled.

I am so ready for you.

Sweep me up.

Again.

Baby.

Please, baby, please.

In the crooning cradle.

Of.

Your.

Temptuous.

Love.

Song.

 

Smash Me

Baby.

Demolish my heart.

Blow me up.

Smithereens.

Kisses like the pause between lighting.

And.

Thunder.

I like your smash.

Baby.

I do.

Oh.

God.

I do.

You drive me crazy, baby.

You knock me out.

I go insane for you.

I hold my breath.

I see stars.

I lose all control.

You break me asunder.

I am all tied up in you.

Heart to heart.

Skin on skin.

Sinking into all that is you.

Becoming all that is us.

Blown apart and mashed back together.

The heat in my face.

The glow in your eyes.

The light playing over your skin.

The way I feel you in my body, an ache.

A knowing.

A fire stoked.

The nexus of you.

Pulsing in me.

Smashed right to my core.

Centralized.

Crystalized.

Captured.

You in my being.

You at my center.

You.

And

Flushed.

Now I sit.

Flashed out in memory of just moments ago.

Already aching to see you again.

I’m not dying.

Baby.

I’m just in love.

So.

Smash me.

I’m always gonna want your smash.

I can’t wait to see you again.

My mouth already anticipating.

The feel of you.

The touch of you.

The slick, soft, sexy.

I’m so damn in it.

I’m so all about you.

Smash.

Me.

Baby.

I’m absolutely.

Begging.

You.

Pretty.

Pretty.

Please.

 

The Language of Love

Truths that we experience without speaking.

A synthesis of our kisses.

The emotions expressed in the color of your face.

In the push of your lip.

In the crinkle of laugh lines around your eyes.

You say so much to me.

My heart swells.

The over arching expression of wholeness when I am held by you.

A bubble of time and space that is infinite.

Expansive.

Delirious.

Sometimes I catch you looking at me and I lose my breath.

Sometimes I look at you.

And the wilderness of joy that breaks out inside me.

Well.

It is wondrous.

The opulence of you.

The shine.

Your comeliness makes me swoon.

And your charm.

It is lavish and magnificent.

Our language is poetry and magic.

Music lyrics.

And.

Laughter.

Great big guffaws of it.

You make me sing with laughter.

It spills from me like sunshine.

And sometimes.

When you are far I still feel that you are speaking to me.

I feel it in my body, an ache, incessant, in my bones.

That you touch me without even being in the same room as me.

Your love overspills the boundaries of time and distance.

It kisses me on my forehead.

My cheeks.

My tender face.

Glowing for you in the dusky light just after sunset.

Glimmering at you in my own language of love.

That you may decipher in codes ancient.

A language that needs no words.

Only the smile of you to unlock the meaning.

And I know.

All the way through my body.

How you cherish me.

And you must know.

Yes, you must.

Love.

How.

I.

Cherish.

You.

 

 

 

The Lady Who Waits

It has been too long.

Too long by far.

I remember the last time I saw you.

Standing on the corner of Mission and 10th.

Insouciant.

Perfect in the golden afternoon sunlight.

Inside I swooned with wonder.

And.

Pain.

It was going to be a long, long time, until I kissed your face again.

The hours ticked by so slow.

The thickness of honey and crystalized molasses.

But.

Not so sweet.

Rather.

Tender.

This longing growing and growing.

Over blowing my heart.

Aching and full with the promise of seeing you again.

I did not count the days.

I counted the hours.

The minutes.

The seconds.

Until now.

The hours have at last melted into the sands of time.

And soon.

OH.

So soon.

You will be here.

I have opened my home to you.

I have left all the doors unlocked.

I shall lay slumbering.

Perhaps dreaming.

Always I dream of you.

The song of you on my lips when I swan into bed.

The kiss of you on my face as I rise.

Waiting for you.

The touch of you.

The feel of you.

I want all the weight of you upon me.

I want every bit of skin to sink into me.

I await.

How I shall fall asleep?

Knowing that when next I wake you will be here with me.

Such is the conundrum in my heart.

Such sweet consternation this.

The night is on fire.

I am on fire.

You have lit me and torched I wait.

Subsumed.

I wait.

To assimilate you back into my life.

I cannot wait.

And.

Yet.

I do.

Just here.

On the edge of my chair.

On the edge of the night.

Waiting on the ledge of the waning moon.

For you.

Waiting for that cup of sweetness that is you.

So keen on you.

I am.

Devoted.

So.

Sleep.

I plead for.

Sweet slumber.

Grant me some small respite.

Until I have sunk into the lull.

Of time.

In between the kisses you plant upon me.

Wherein I can.

Once again.

Breathe in

All.

The gallant.

Lushness.

Of.

You.