A thought as you read a book

As you flip through the pages
of my life

— in an upturned book
left open just for you —

I hope this thought
will comfort you

just as you sustain me:

My love was a boat
adrift in a salty ocean

nearly capsized
searching for port.

One day you volunteered
to be my anchor.

These pages turn
smoothly between your fingers.

Hope in fog

Hope — or the appearance
of cloudy dreams lifting me
above
gray skies
underfoot — can be heard on the horizon
itself,
disrupted by frenetic thunder
no longer.

Fog — tribute to a once cloudy
future you’ve helped bring into
focus
with wire-framed
glasses — no longer obscures a rain-soaked path
insisting
we make this journey together
much longer.

That itch

When I finally stopped ignoring
the itch and embraced the warmth
indigenous to that indiscernible link
we share like a rope tethered
to two unlit woodpiles
waiting for ignition,

the spark provoked the catalyst
to combustion that could cross an ocean,
igniting the very water
that thwarts less resolved attempts
at scratching at heat
that runs deep.

Beach lungs

They broke up on the balcony, waves
beaten back by the beach
somewhere between words and stuttered
“buts” that led nowhere but.

All I wanted was a cigarette but
who could enjoy a slow death while love
ran out of breath below, air escaping
exhausted lungs, tired of fighting.

We’ll try to imagine their journey that ends
here between drying, pre-loved beach-towels,
thinking there must be uglier
places to start over.