Ceremony of lovers
I do not want to think of the snow,
White and soft ending of things
Instead imagine me as a swimming moon
Lying dormant like a cherry tree
And you, a yellow tulip unfurling toward the rain
We’d sense the mist growing during eclipses
Building an opaque cradle
Rocking between space
and ground
And when I rose again,
I’d mold aesthetic out of memory
revealing how words elapsed themselves,
swinging back as an echo,
I do not want to think of the snow
My prayer
She said
Leaps of the heart
Reflect mirrors
In those who love you
And I wanted to believe it
I wanted to liken grief to something else
A metaphor
A dream
I wanted to collapse grief into a sentence
With one sweeping gesture and say,
There it is
That’s how I know
My prayer is dead
She said
I pleaded to God that you would call
And I needed to believe it
That there was a liminal space I had yet located
Where She, I, and God would share secrets
Hiding under the guise of area codes
602
615
480
Each pressed number swaying into a song
Until a ring and a voice at the end
Saying I forgive you