Miso Not So Bad

Shaved brussels
Not yet past their prime
Fresh peas, though the ideal
Unneeded, now, to build this meal

Please pray with me
My dying wish — the miso’s not gone bad
In the refrigerator way

Kitchen shears that snip-snipped happily at chives that waited just for me
All
Summer
Long
Somehow found their way to the floor
Could be an honest omen, or
A sign of what’s to come

Not my garden’s tomatoes, fool
They’re for another day!

Please forgive the white, white rice
Devoid of what I crave

Sesame to remind me and tofu hacked haphazardly
Tamari, I wish

Here, this delicious dish

August Thursday

I am the tangled mess
The girl of your youth, whose eyes you dared not look deep into
And never said goodbye to

That I saw you, lovely, tangled, too
Need not have scared you

My broad understanding
Your broad shoulders
We were called
To beckon back the lightning that twisted our existence

But for your fear of me that August Thursday
But for my depth that ran too deep
And your unspoken goodbye
We’d have set our world straight

But instead
Goodbye
Tangled, tangled mess

Fruit Nut

Sweet plum
Summer’s crown jewel
Ripened
Smiling, still

Though ghosted
Chipped away at
Hollowed out
Cut in two

Bitten off, but not spit out
For I remain
Saucy
Thus, your favorite fruit

525600 Minutes Too Many

“Be done leaving,” I’ve begged Time

Stop the silence

525600 minutes, almost now

Only just this morning
Done biding for unspoken goodbyes
I threw the clock out the door

Glass heart that it has
It’ll not show it’s square-jawed face
’round my gold again

It Kills Me

I cannot remember the words

The top-ten song that found us there, together again that night

A vintage crimson string, tethering us to our wild years

All we knew in common, refined in the storm of them

I sang to you in the sheets we shared

That now escaped melody, I swear to you, sugar, it kills me

If you heard me, say you remember the words

Curtains

Unravelings rambled undetected amongst the two us

Made their way to a place in our hearts that our brains didn’t know to protest

You, now gone, as a breeze
I, here, in the still
Grasping devotion I do set free

Blameless, we
For the loving words we uttered
For the promises we made

Unaware of translucent thorns wafting betwixt our souls

No Sunshine

Driving yesterday, Friday
Suddenly, my periphery


I saw you
You saw me — singing, maybe


Our worlds, long since finished colliding


We, continued
I singing, still

“Why are you alone?”
The music sneaked up on me to ask


Caught me off guard


My voice was in another world
Singing of a lover’s soul


So I sang soul music to explain
Loud, because of my soul’s pain

Lofty


I remember temperatures
Made me rise to you
Every opportunity
I leaned in to melt
Never swept the sun away
I bid it come closer
That I would rain down
Begged it then to burn me
Condense and then confine me
Maybe we were clouded
But I couldn’t care
I wanted to be near you
In your lofty air