*References to and/or quotations from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Hogarth Press 1927), the last sonnet in Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker (W. W. Norton & Company 1986), and “Posing for Cars” from Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast (Dead Oceans 2021).*

I. Blarney, Ireland; March 2023
        up & down the slippery stone,
        twice backwards, carrying my wish
        for you like firewood for a witch

        moss & the slow, heavy fall of water
        over sentient stone (crafting my own dolmen)—-
        the trees are so calm here, i woulder if they still carry life

        i wondered if i still carried life
        when you left me.
                                                                    i didn’t believe in magic.

II. New Bedford, Massachusetts; September 2022
        from the shore, distant
        boat lights in the still darkness
        mimic our blunt’s flame

She looked at me & said, I love him so much. He didn’t know I knew about the break, the tension between them. He said, Let’s be quiet for the nice old lady as we go inside. I sat at the small, round wooden table with a large white cloth draped over it, looking out the window from which I could see nothing but night. (Several months later while reading To the Lighthouse, I think about the first chapter “The Window”, what Mrs. Ramsay could see, how I saw nothing.) I mumbled to myself, eating a slice of the nice old lady‘s apple walnut bread. He touches me on the shoulder & I turn around to see him clad in his boxers. It’s time to go to sleep. Do you need any help getting to your bed? It was a father-like ushering. In the morning, she asks, Did you hear anything last night? She said it was the best sex they’d ever had. I imagine the three of us almost making love together.

        will they heal? i won-
        black coffee & the sunrise
        -der, walking the shore

III. Lexington, Kentucky; June 2023
        last night,
        your roommate fucked a stranger

        (isn’t sex & the holding after the only bearable thing in this life?)
        sheets draped on the floor in morning

        the song of their moans
        carried me away

        four in the morning, i felt
        your leg wrap around my waist

        i think of all the people i’ve slept with instead of you
        what are these transactions between our bodies?

        you: serving breakfast, burning incense,
        showering, dancing, crying:

        “& how much could you ever conceieve / How much I need you,
        how truly barren I can be?” … & the guitar solo

        i just want you to keep holding me,
        grabbing me in the night when all gets startling

        i think about the couple making out against the frosted window
        the morning before you left for the valley

        i prefer sex when there isn’t love
        i hate how much i love you

Coda. Under a Sycamore Tree; May 2023
        I don’t know how much I believe in the expanse of energy, how sturdy this trunk is, if             we’re actaully being protected by the leaves, but I feel the weight of the earth under us         & the radiance of the sun (& God, isn’t that something? forgive me for not praying                 enough), & I want to cry at what this feels like: being able to hold you again—-I wanted         this forever & now I just want this fornow        I used to desire forever.                  Infinity.         Why does anything need to die? (“Floodgates let down to mourning for the dead /                     chances, for the end of being young, / for everyone I loved who really died”) but then I’m         reminded of            finiteness—-this heavy beauty—-         I anticipate that you’ll                                                leave                                                                me                                         again,
        now & that’s the beauty of this moment—-nothing more, nothing less, the transience,             the uncertainty, holding on

                                                                                     to what we have now