A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.
April 16, 2018

14/30: IN RAINY APRIL

After Robert Bly

For Adela 

In rainy April, the Aloe Vera outside my window is unstoppable.
You lay your head across my chest like a path of magnolia leaves.
We turn into each other’s body and rearrange the soft grey light.
I have no choice but to adore the green eyes sleeping next to me.
I want you to know I chose loving you over losing you.

The light in my chest casts a shadow across your name and I know.
My path leads me back to you like groundwater returning to the sky.
The two of us tell time by counting the freckles between us.
You are the breathgiving woman who makes my heart sing all my favorite songs.
And for as long as you want, I will sing a song of joy.

In rainy April, I kiss you like a season I never want to forget.
The light coming down between the trees leads me back to you.
A laugh travels down your lip and I plant it like a seed.
I run my finger down your spine like a sentence I want to read.
Our bodies choose to bloom against each other.
I hold you like the clouds hold rainwater, and I do not let go.

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April 16, 2018

13/30: THERE IS A VULTURE WHO SLEEPS IN THE SAME TREES AS MY MEMORIES

I didn’t see the body on the ground, only the vulture’s mouth.
Isn’t it miraculous, that the smell of blood is a dinner bell for
some birds in the sky?

Anywhere can become a grave
even the morning asphalt
still wet with dew with, still swallowing pollen
like dirt over the casket.

I awoke to find a wake
I awoke to ask myself,
Does the vulture ever
celebrate the life
that did not last?
None of this is by mistake,
by happen stance, by chance.

A thousand things die inside me every-day
A cell survives and thrives, only to say goodbye.
A memory is dead, then comes back to life.
Hair leaves. Skin regenerates. A thought grows
into a sentence and the sentence goes back
into the soil. Like oil in the dirt, I resurrect each
of my feelings like fossil fuel. With so much life
and death, I become breathless in my own body.

There is a vulture who sleeps in the same
trees as my memories,
There is a vulture who lives
in the sky of my mind
I do not know its name
Only its appetite
I think of my thoughts
as inconvenient prey
decaying on the side of the road
with flesh still on the bone
How do I grieve
what I want to leave
without becoming
an elegy?
There is a vulture waiting to descend
Ready to pick up the pieces
I leave behind on the endless
highways of my mind
But this time,
I drive past the past
I celebrate the still-living
I forgive what I cannot fix
I pray for another sky
I bury the scraps
I say a prayer, and
I do not die.

 

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