Tell me the place I could find

that key would open your door

reveal to me a way I might

shrug off silence and hear the timber of your

voice once more.

Without you, then what is left to write of?

And for whom?

For you who will not hear? The exile of my heart

the one who ate the flesh clean

revealing china bone and loosened red petals.

I never knew how pearlized bone could look

how easy to lose the contour of life, as lean spirit lingers only

yet in marrow, something of you remains indelible

an ink blot of those years spent staying away

I dig through black soil, your essence

the oils in your hair, the way your cheeks hitched

in smile, how grace lent herself your shape

an echo reflected in glass cage.

They cut me from you, removing tenuous link

and just like that; satellites slept, radio stayed silent

even languid ships lost at sea, received no signal

our unravel lasted a life time, lost thistle pollen

like a briar of ivy, grown thick over memory

containing too many snarls to push aside.

I learned the language of longing and loss

as fluent as you mastered running barefoot

I see you now, a shill of bone and sinew

stretched against light, evaporating

maybe everything of me, is everything of you

even as you push me away, denying our linkage

maybe it’s because we’re so alike

beneath difference and those smoldering, unsaid things

sitting terrible and tall at tables with uneaten food grown cold.

I wonder now, beneath tired kitchen clock

ticking down hours we no longer have

or the scurry of life around us, licking cracked lips

whether I was really born of yearning?

Rather than flesh, wood or earthly things

whether every emotion and every gesture

has been in search of you

you, my first love

surely I heard your heartbeat before my own

chiming in-between your ribs, where I floated

the heart you keep lost from me

growing deep roots in chest cavity

like thorny roses finding no space to bloom

how I ache

to feel your hand on mine

or know you are near

where the resonance of emptiness

a life without you

is for a moment

vanquished.