did i mention that i closed the french doors
again?  it has turned cold.  the full pink
of the moon will appear faint
when pressed against a dim evening
in a cloudy solitude. so i will hang lanterns.

the stoop of your shoulders tells me
that for you love is heavy and
will not send you soaring up into
the sky's octaves; its song will be for you
low and lulling like tea leaves
slowly steeping color into a pot of water.

some believe that love is something you learn,
love is a duty for families of former
generations, cadenced in silent kisses,
lips pursed and dry, sleeping behind
stranded doors in beds passive
with hearts like polished stones

but my heart is a broken garden
with fistfuls of tender blooms
loud with obvious desires.  and i believe
that love exists only in the rooms
in which we find it.  modesty is a blouse
a few sizes too small for my breasts
my thighs are highways inviting
hitchhikers, missionaries, and lost lovers

i measure my rise out of childhood
by the nurturing curves of my body
even though we will never meet eye to eye
unless you are five feet two inches tall.
i will always love you this way,
like the wind, trying to move you.

thank you for stars that grow soft
after you have gone and the looking is done.
beyond the window where i sit thinking
about your departure and the emptiness that
has filled your absence, the night is stealing
away colors and light and i have hung lanterns...

i wont ask you if you want me in the innermost
part of your charted heart with my humid sighs
as you wish you could wish affection away;
the smallest of tears in your composure
holding the bed intently down as if
it were going to fly toward grief.

this is how i fall into you as if into a plot,
a ghost crackling with spectral intensity.
i hold the stones of your dreams in my hands
and they whisper their hardened tears
in a quick confession, before i release them
with a sound like a scattering of leaves

or a million doves, settling.