You said I treated you like a dog,
stroking through your hair
and down over your ears,
and that’s what can turn kindness bad.
I would apologise,
but love is the soft parts of us.
*
There is a Japanese word to describe
the sense a person has upon meeting
another person that future love
between them is inevitable.
This is not the same as love at first sight.
For example,
your smell was never unfamiliar.
*
You asked How can a human being
be so much like a leaf?
I became infuriated by your questions,
but it’s true my veins are alarming
in the shower, blue and desperate
to find each other.
There is a German word
to describe the blue of veins,
which is also grey metal and green
and the colour of haunted houses.
*
*
Two days alone and I’m talking
to the chilli plant – watching the red
seep through the last green one
like a limb coming to life.
I never noticed how long the light bulbs
take to be bright. I also realise I don’t know
the way anywhere. The streets
always just appeared before.
*
The sky is darkening.
How to explain the sadness
I feel in winter, which is a sadness
inextricable from winter.
A sadness specific to the cold,
which sickens my skin.
Winter-sorrow,
when the bed is an iceberg at sea.
*
Of course your preferences present
themselves quietly in the layouts
of rooms. The few things you left
are shadowy objects at the
edges of a Renaissance painting,
waiting to catch the light
when I’m weak.
*
There is a Cheyenne word for the act
of preparing your mouth to speak.
The months spent readying mine
tasted like metal,
food was unpleasant to chew.
*
I look at a bunch of grapes in the bowl
and even their refusal to grow alone
is nature’s unnerving bell clanging out
when I’m trying to sleep
in the afternoon.
*
The feeling of remembered love
is so easy to put in the oven and heat up.
It’s your ears I long for
when my hands are empty.