We chat, inconsequential—your upcoming work shift, my day
It’s not often our schedules align in this small space

I sit at the counter fighting with boxes meant for Friday’s recycling
And it’s mere happenstance that I look up
Right as you bend over to check your bubbling pot on the stovetop

Your shirt is old and meant for comfort—a little loose, and short
It rides up slightly, exposing a loveliness I never knew existed
The soft curves of your back, your waist

And I think

Ah.
I get it, now.

Came across them neatly tucked away in a dresser drawer.
They still carry joy as I read his familiar chicken scrawl on the page 
speaking of counting the days till we’re together again when I drove
the three-hour drive north on winding roads to his Hyde Park
culinary school on the river.

He worked weekends at a local coffee shop to help pay his loans so
couldn’t come home to me.        He had a dual passion.
For us and his classes of International foods, making sweet and sour pork, egg foo yong, beef enchiladas, Purchasing of restaurant equipment and dinnerware, Supervisory Development, Institutional food service for schools, offices, and hospitals.
Contract law class, Ice carving, Butchering, Baking, Service and Stocking goods.

He wrote about loneliness and giving up and buying me a ring
taking any job so we could be together. Long distance was hard.
He said it must be even harder for me , but we will work this out together.
He thanked me for visiting his dad in the hospital, keeping
his Mom company and driving her home. She didn’t drive back then.

He joined a band with classmates playing his trombone and said I
could watch them practice if I want, spoke of a double date
he planned to take us to see Frankie Valli and a gourmet meal.
No cell phones or voicemail back then so he told me he would call
on Thursday at 9pm so, I could be home.

He’s gone now but I still feel his love on the page
and why we lasted
So long…..

The movie plays in my head
loops and streams
again and again

Truthfully though…

I don’t recall the plot
not even the title
nor who starred or co-starred

What I recall?
Your body molding
to the contour of mine

The lights of
The LED TV
our only brightness

not a word spoken
not a word needed
simplicity-seeded silence

~ ~ ~

Funny the things I recall
or not

I don’t recall
to takes my meds
the gooey byproduct of me

wheezing and wrenching
through coughing
from my throat

I can’t recall the ice cream
flavor my daughter asks me
to order while dashing

to the Graeter’s restroom
(s’mores   not cookies and cream)

Seems I can’t recall
passwords and numbers
when I need them most

But our molded forms
the couch where we sat
light disguised as darkness

the knowledge
that we watched
that movie together

Imperfect   or perfect perhaps
I recall

I recall

I recall

1.

No imagist likes a riddle, a parable, or an esoteric
passage of Aleister Crowley or David Bowie.

They prefer plain, precise speech and punctuation.

An imagist could be bound in a nutshell,
and as long as the message remained clear,
they would celebrate.

2.

Key Points:

The Oxford comma is an unnecessary device,
except when necessary,

Adverbs are the Clearly the Adversary.

and

e.e. cummings (is 
the) fucking (antichrist… : : 🙂

3.

Petulant Response:

be numb and pregnant my tongue 
overwhelmed by aspic 

any stone downstream can sing a Gershwin tune
how about you!

this is how I feel so sad when you see 
me I am leaving

    
    
I caught a pacific blue marlin once.

The language of longing is not lack

but misperception/misunderstanding.

Sehnzucht.

Saudade.

Hiraeth.

Toska.

Dor.

Tragically beautiful ideas.

Complex meanings

that do not, cannot,

translate entirety.

And that, in itself,

is beautiful as well.

In Arabic, we say:

                                Ya’aburnee

and it literally means

you bury me—

the thought of them–

dying before you–

an impossible thing

to bear.

The language of longing is not lack

but, rather, recognition

of absolute,

uncontainable

Fullness.

Thaw

I opened the garage door
and found the floor washed in blood.
A heavy, sickly-sweet rot clung
like wet wool to my throat.

The freezer door — left open by my own hand —
had let the whole summer thaw:
fence-mending, cattle-chasing, baling hay
now pooled in a red accusation across the concrete.

That blood was the liquid history
of thirteen head on our small farm.
My father blasted powder crews by day,
then came home
to low impatient moos and shirts dark with work.

Saturday mornings at the stockyard.
I drifted toward merchant tables—coins, cards—
while he studied the ring.
The auctioneer’s fast Appalachian tongue
cutting through manure and wet hay.

They dragged the freezer outside,
hosed it down, mopped the floor.
The worst shame I ever felt
was my parents on their knees
in the blood I let loose.

I learned a new word today.
Latibulation.
I learned it as I latibulated in the corner.

Woman watches spider throw gossamer thread, silk hope spins in her mind.