In My Rain-Soaked Hat

Time to collect my reckless ambitions and throw them in a pot to simmer and stew. Chop up my stares into glances. My lonely afternoons. How the light traces the corniced borders of my room, cut into squares by single-pane windows, headlights chasing themselves along the wall. Outside this box is a real cage, certified bridge jumpers, mad mutterers, and whoever stole my bike. I can pick some orange flowers, crêpe-y and translucent as an old Halloween decoration left to rot away in the wet, I can carry them with me as I walk to sleep. Though I won’t remember until after I miss them that I once had anything. I am so behind on gossip. The cup of tea is clammy in my grip, the water grown cold. Intermittent snatches of a popular song reach my red-rimmed ears, and mermaid-like I’m borne to crest and sink in time.

Gratitude

Hand-cut flowers
of dry autumnal blazes
are perched on their branches
like leaves. The sun shimmers through them.
They sit on a chair in her now-vacant room.

It was raining on Sunday,
the clouds spilled
into the monochrome bay,
and I sat at my window watching
birds play – tumbling as though
into your gentle arms;
the way she did when you placed
a hand-cut bouquet on the chair
in her room with a view of the bay.

As your uncle played a melody, unconsciously
you hummed in tune, never off-key;
and she listened softly to the loving
bodies that sent the slightest tremors
through the air;
and a tear spilled down her loving cheek,
sharing in peaceful gratitude.

It Lingers

You got attached. Like an orchid
Looped around a tepid swamp long, except –
We might both be, flesh-like
And alluring, hosts to our own
Parasitic proclivities.

You wanted more. A taste of pineapple
Now lingers, stuck to the mouths
That shared vast slipping vengeances.

You said hello yesterday;
But not to me, not to me.