selections

Anchorage, AK
There’re 30 minutes in between my realizing I still smell like you & falling asleep. The memory of you lingers like clove cloying my mouth, with the difference being that I can always take more of you. When you turned to me, in Anchorage, in the bed of the pop-up camper, you told me that I’d have you forever. Then how am I to read these mornings, bitter like coffee dregs, when the covers on your side of my bed are upended? I always take my steps to the kitchen cautiously. You are always waiting with pancakes, except today, when you are not. I have grown so used to the roiling of your sleep that I wander dreamless without it.


Glowdog
And after these weeks, when we can freely move again, I am taking you with me to a lake, where we spend all day making faces in the green water and rocky castles on the shore. We will be so full and so sunny. Long afternoons like light passing through a dog’s fur, soft and rough around the edges; the way I find you under the stars after I’m sober. After a nice beer, the kind I’ll bring. And we can sit out there—in the dark—and watch. As long as I can bear not kissing you, now that I am so full of delight.


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