A different Fall. Redondo Beach, 2022.
(A poem set at my apartment in Houston in Fall of 2019, after May Swenson’s Four-Word Lines).
so warm in september
you’re there in front
of me counting the
stairs as we ascend
now, every day, thirty-
two, you told me
something i never would
have figured out by
myself, just like you
and i: soft brushes
in spaces we might
never have filled to
knowing with quiet moans
at our every parting
as brilliant morning floods
this bedroom with light
i wonder if you can
really see my eyes
when you close yours?
first conjure me from
the face out while
laying curled in your
long hair on our
flowered bed, a wall
of mirrors there making
you just half as present
as you are to
me, my love, every
place all of time—
now i never leave
without you, so i
am never alone since
i have known you
the walls of our
house hold me now
when you are gone