The last year of my childhood

4.19.13

- I spend alone.  It's so hot
until suddenly it cools.
I find myself on my knees
in the potato patch,
which has largely failed.
Maybe three eyeball-sized tubers per plant.
My hands in the dirt, each swell
of queasy longing:

What I need, how I need it, I need it

like air. 

A poem on the first hot day

4.9.13

There’s a place for what hurts.
What stops the breath.

The body that wants to create
is stayed.

We are not in one bed
peering at each other
six inches apart in the morning.

But outside the sun has opened
wild crocuses randomly in the grass.

I drove you home late in the rain.
I’ll do it again.

I’ll hold your head, your hand, anything
you don’t want to carry alone.

I’ll point you out to yourself.
The way you show me
I am loved when I can’t believe it.
This is why; this is how—

I choose you.