Your shoulders slope and are not straight like mine

I always loved them, how you resembled a clay made

creature of perfect symmetry, holding the musculature

of your smooth tawny skin in unmatched poise

I have hollow shoulders, the bones hardly knit, they are

still searching for their brilliant feathers

holding on to you, the tempest of disappointment rushing about

a dust devil in making, licking its cavernous mouth

I want to use my words, it’s all I ever had

but the stunning of silence has caught me by the tongue

I have nothing to say … for this grief

brands and cauterizes every attempt

rendering me fallow

unable to articulate

a gorge of crushing inside

spitting its seeds that will never bring life

instead

it is the smell of you, the thickness of your skin and muscles

running like hot water in a freezing room

how the world blurs as my eyes press into you

trying to absorb, to chew out pain, as if we can ever

do that

your deep voice, one I have heard for so many years, has

crept into me like a familiar vine

how you smell of home and joy and the tremble of loving

someone so precious, to lose would be

to relinquish my very fabric

wrapped in layers of time

your murmured being, vanquishing terror

when the storm releases over us

and low trees brush their pollen

igniting star dust to coat

our wordless tumble

into climbs beyond

pain, where reaching, only

we remain almost whole

as earth and all its cruelties

are forgotten in

heavy rain’s accidental

lullaby