Where the Collarbones Try to Meet

I wonder what the first part
of your life looked like
what it might have been if
we knew each other right from the start
I regret the missed childhood
that might’ve happened
—I was born a little too early.

I want this to be the most beautiful thing I might ever write
Every word must like and love:
to sort of say
sorry we didnt meet sooner

We’ll meet in college
I’ll sit tombstone still behind you in class,
more scared of our professor than I am of how attractive you are
because—
sitting behind you—
I listen and learn your voice before I ever see your face for the first time—
The words from the professor’s mouth I’ve never heard before
But you respond with words even
stranger and foreign—
I tried my best to hide how simple I was
with little words and small ideas—
something I’d have to get better at
to impress you both.

And years later you invited
me over to your apartment after watching gifted students of your own sing
It was fall and humid and after we sat down
you took off your dark leather jacket and I,
paralyzed, hypnotized
saw the hidden part of
your warn neck glow—
the part where your collarbones try to meet like honey, dripping lovely.

I never looked for long, only enough
to see those crescent ridges rise in
tension with your inhale before
returning in respire—rhythms of
an earthquake tremoring beneath your chest—
I should have just said
how beautiful, bilingual
gold and brown.

I left our little moment late that night under
drifting stars—diamonds—surging with nuance after I tell you
im sure we can talk until the sun rises
after you tell me im scared of ghosts
after I tell you dont ask me yet—youll have to wonder what my answer is until i see you again
after you tell me you could have slept on the couch if you wanted to
I drove an hour to drink more of the wine you handed me

Now I only ever see pictures of you
dreams of again whispering around the low lamps by your couch, sometimes
waking and rubbing my own collarbones
Impressions to remind me of my own
star struck dumb luck.
Does it even matter why I still remember
all those little images?

Tonight I look over all the little notes I wrote for you, about you
wandering and wondering over the pages
plenty enough stained with maroon splotches and splashes of fortunate old wine
I’ll fill a glass for you and hope the next I can share with you—
how old can wine get?
how old will wining get?

Tonight I study a page free of blemishes
and time
I swing over to the lines
I wonder what the first part of Honolulu looked like—

For Leo Postpartum

Just before you, I was never inspired
by astrology

but now being libra I hold the certain freshness of cold wet mornings in autumn
That way the cool air bruises your thin skin
and bones, the way your breath smokes
from out your mouth the way fog
mists from up the dewfrost resting on the blades of silvercrisp grass—ghosts waking
and stretching up towards the silver sun.

My face feels like it’s been crying overnight
my ears and cheeks are rosed red
and my nose is runny but it’s not like
the night when you laid your back
across the couch with my mother’s gray blanket that I used to wipe away your tears the moment they sprung and spilled out onto the precious brown skin of your cheeks

telling me violent stories, the worst
hands to ever hold you, saying words
you kept chained tight in the dark of shadows
—he wanted to feel stronger than
me
Leo on my couch, broken once ever
by one worth nothing

by the pillows you left
a scrunchy,
soft small white,
really
a bulb of
Gardenia
petals
I lift it and
stare.

I brought it to my own cheek and remembered that olfaction
and the hippocampus can work together
bringing you back with the scent lingering. The shampoo, gentle vigor glowing sweetness that swelled around me
the countless times I brought your face
next to mine.

Leo in the stars with long hair—
a backwards love broken
in sunsetting starfall,
I hope you still have that lovely long dark hair, deep rivers, dark
streams and strands of my own
obscure, subconscious
wants. But now I see a little why of what

you meant when you saw blood on your shower tile and had to check twice. For three days you saw your only dream bleed out and die from inside you—your sister delaying prepartum discovery, beforethegender
name,facecryingandcooingwatcolormitens
all hopes that will sing silently in the deepest corners of your heart without decay

i wanted to see my baby
my baby mybabymbabymybab—

Long-haired Leo, these are the unpronounceable cancers that spring
within you the moment you learn the secrets of another. My chest clusters and my eyes burn when I remember the cherry voice you sang when cradling to your niece,
—how’s your niece? your second chance at another motherhood.

—mi bella, por que lloras
bella mia.

My face, crying all this time
but tissues in autumn are useless
when the cool wind licks and pulls my cold skin tight across my bones,
respiration reaching down into
memory
clutching close your last scrunchy like a
white rock sun in September.

Love Under the Quick Weight of Life

After you went to bed early, wilting
but I saw an orange sun sink into a
violet blue lake and I took
a photo to show you
if you want it—it was just the hopeful
air hovering

above the water
and it was only a realization to me that
I’d rather share those moments with—
aren’t they yours?
—you or not know this
part of the world at all

and up from under the surging lake water
up from these scattering currents of my core
I spoke and said to myself:
this sun sinking into the water is nothing
like lying nude in bed with you, hand
drifting about the small soft skin on your back

goose down over our warm brown bodies,
plumb parallel in bending pleasure, tender tired
thighs twined together beside half empty glasses of water,
listening to some white whirling squeaky slow
fan blades and squirrels
run across the roof when you wanted