Tongue Speak
On the tip of my tongue I hold you.
You slip into rosewater words
shadows cast behind recall
the quiet dust of death’s white lilies.
I fall into this undergrowth yearning
for doubts to skip away like pebbles
over the silvery sea.
A moon whispers
you have come home
but I can’t find you anywhere.
In the envelope of my silence
you’re once again ambushed
by my muddy brown grief.
You clasp a different package against your heart
as though the wrapping can keep you safe.
Now it’s summer mornings that smear my sorrow
with the quiet hum of lilacs and grasses
held in small relief.
You disappear into the stomach of a lion
the distance between us
is only a swallow
a slip of rings and promises neither of us
can keep.
I am a held breathe waiting for you
to push us past deliberation
of the cost of 98 cent tomatoes
or the weight of this useless love.
The air is redolent of a remembered touch
where oxygen levels never rise past zero.
Don’t come to me looking
for the white worms of my forgiveness.
Tonight dance a clatters of bones with me,
fall into my open arms.
Soon we will diminish
across this tundra landscape
of forgotten desire.