The Rescue Letter

I fill your cracks and crevices and places of silences between breaths
it’s my body to yours, into yours, intertwined, mixed to a heaven

I want to fill you like a billet-doux to a perfumed paper envelope
I’ll seal you with a kiss (and go),
to dampen your edges until you close and cave inside
and carve a place, a date, a new name into the skin you wear (for me)
I’ll send you deep in a foreign place along trees that weep as you go and wild flowers with too many colors and a street address of a dream

and then you’ll open here and you’ll surpass the color fields and lamenting leaves until they rise and bloom too ripe

and their bodies will be your crown of gold,
my king.

and that is where you’ll find
all the city lights I couldn’t give you.

we loved with a love like a forest fire,
it was beautiful in all the ways it could

and tonight I will stay awake until midnight—because that is when I learn the most.

And that is what I look for most to write into constitutions,
the words that fall between your bed and the wall at night,
and get washed into your pillow case,
that never make their way into their intended audience.
The love you feel against two things that don’t belong together,
the unorthodox words that are the only ones that can adequately explain your inspirations.
The words that grow on trees and leap into the air and make wind that pulls pollen into your eyes and you rub them without knowing, you hold the world in your hands.

when it is not, no longer, the dead that must be saved (resurrected).
when it is rather those of them that claim to be alive.

it has always been better to let go,
(look up and feel the sky).

Air Plain

of May you remembered
too many strangers in cars
you haven’t mentioned in years
(entirely).
sing in brick and
build me a home,
falling faces
in the distance to you.
come all the ways
you (take me)
but make it never was.
there’s fire in these hills
and salt in the sky
—my wounds—
and all your sweater-knit goodbyes,
and find-me lips.
to find the loss
with careful consideration
(another frayed end
and the cauterization)
that brings me here
up in the woods
and wind plays the leaves
on the break of the waves
in glass cups,
lonely hands.

no matter how tasteless my letters to you become, i’ve tried to put you on paper and i’ll keep at it (my love)

because when you go, empty pages will haunt me greater than an empty bed.
when you go, i’ll remember the months you made and all the paper i wasted (on you).

i wish to roll awake
and find you,
to put my toothbrush
beside yours,
to make you coffee,
and kiss you goodbye,
each morning, on your way.

but even if we have no walls,
no bathroom sink,
no coffee grounds,
i’ll kiss you as you leave from me
(you called me, your home)