Invisible ink

When they say someone is driven to distraction

can’t stop thinking about …

I imagine

a woman running in the rain

newspaper overhead, painted nails

pursed lips, the crook of a smile despite

her hose getting wet, soaking her clavicle, glistening like

some jewel in a torrent might

suddenly fruit

it reminds me of the first time I heard Suzanne Vega sing

not knowing she was singing for a woman

but something in the detail caught my eye

how she felt the same hot breath, steaming glass

lost bra strap, showing slip, untucked blouse

a stray hair, falling in her eyes, it took all of my

self possession not to reach across and brush it

back into place

although I’d rather press my face

into her neck and lose myself to the sound

of rain and tempests, growing inside me

wordlessly showing her the crocheted waves

with every brush stroke

a painting cannot be completed without

sufficient water and concentration

much like a woman cannot be pleasured without

the breath of sea and infinite patience

it is like learning an instrument

your fingers growing sore in repetition and as they

tire, music is formed, her mouth opening

throat reddened, thighs dampening, heat climbing

you find yourself approaching

a cusp of wonder without worthy language

to describe, its motion

when I am tired, sorrowful, when I feel wan daylight

setting behind me, proffering dusk and your absence keenly

I close my eyes and feel her in every song

that girl beneath the awning, trying to close her

umbrella, her shapely legs and slender ankles

breasts rising against damp silk, in one long sigh

there are passions within us

that have teeth and fire

where hunger is a permanence

just like the silver locket hanging

about your neck and how if you play with it

I find myself needing to be

that silver, that shape, that falling

between you, against your skin, as if we can possess

another which we never can and so we try

again and again

thinking up ways

as coffee grows cold

as people flit in and out

hardly noticing the girl

who sits alone

wrapped in thought of you

a blunt pencil by her side

writing

in invisible ink

the landscape of a

woman

lost in rain

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Things said in the rain

I remember when for once, for the only time in my life

I meant everything to one person

And that person was you.

Now it doesn’t rain very often

As if the world we live in, has acted out what we feel inside

Dry and forgotten

Though I

Can never forget

And when I want it to hurt

In a way that scouges and burns

Even beneath water

I let myself go back in time

And you wash over me

All the grief of

Things I can only say now

In the rain

Loud enough to drown out

My raw cries

Heavy and wet so no tears are seen

Rain makes my pain invisible

Erasing need to close doors and scream into towels

I can stand outside in front of the world

And things said in the rain

Will never be caught

They will slide from my tongue

Down my wet emptying surfaces

As they howl and beg for you

As they replay closure over and over

Ripping off nearly healed scab

Like a needle desperate to play

A song without words

Though there were so many

Things said and nothing stuck

It simply washed away

Taking with it

The part of me grown in your light

Never thinking she could be adored

Or matter, as once beneath you, she did.

Now I hardly recognize

That young woman

With her dream and her search

For rain

And for you

Winding up the car window

Our wet hands touching

On different sides of glass.

Two cars going in separate directions

What is contained in motion? In separation? In the fluid trajectory of two cars

driving in different directions

when once they drove together in one, singular and twice

with music playing like a warm stove in Winter

watchful eyes glinting at the movement of her soapy shoulders

inhaling a song they both liked

was it really so long ago? time can be a fickle fellow

you believe things have not changed before

the car wreck distorting metal into specters, and then mangled see

all the signs and wonders leading to your loss

glaring and obvious as they were not before

I would say four years, six, maybe more

since like powdered sugar you shook her

out of your system and changed the channel

you think she couldn’t pick up on the dull flat key of your promises

or the way you did not meet her pleading eye

and had someone else nearby

parked with engine still running

waiting her eventual hot buttered turn

you were bound to return to the past

as your memory dissolved through gauze

that is all that remained sharp

like a knife on my chest will cut

only so deep and then retreive

sticky piecemeal

baking it into cakes and giving alms

when we are neither penitent nor dead

but live on

in seperation

as time comes and goes like a trance

one moment I am holding a glass

of your words

believing myself loved

the next the house is being emptied

sold for next family to inhabit, my footsteps

there was a time I held onto

boxes of memories like a kite

I saw if you let go of the string

they rose higher and higher out of sight

more beautiful for freedom

now I can pack the entirity of me

in one small bag and still have room for heartache

this is the season of change

the radio host warns us of impending rain

another storm like last year and the one before

we threw sharp glances at each other until there was no more

blood left inside to keep warm

I feel no regret, only the beckon of movement

on to the future and maybe

I will not need a car where I am heading

watching the horizon bleed

its first bidding autumn evening

and I remember laying with you watching tv

in the dark, the feel of your fingers on my neck

remember reading Bridges of Madison County, thinking

surely people do not live like that

and the car

waiting at the stoplights

long after they could have driven on

blinking in humid downpour

blinking for her to get out and run toward

something already buried and underground

I hear the gear shift

watch in rear mirror

the outline of you

grow gradually thinner

against orange light

and the sound of someone

crying out

https://youtu.be/voZI8NXEO6M

Forget

Water

Tears

Blurred screens

Disconnected numbers

I lost my memory in a dish I left outside

the rain filled it up and soon thoughts

sodden and wrinkled

were illegible

It was you

you were the one dancing in the rain

you were the one who sheltered me from the storm

with your skinny arms and your little heart

It was I

who burrowed inside your cave and found

the fiery part and claimed it, kept it burning

long after the rain stopped

we lay in velvet darkness

your hand resting against my cheek

in the way only unraveled people sleep

I heard your dreams

you felt my body move

curl about you like

an extension of your desire

we contained the sum

of us

in a little boat

kept aloft by hope

when you said hope died

the flame behind your eyes

the one looking at me with such tenderness

blew out

behind in its place

soot and smoke gathered

like regretful children with dirty hands

smudging their best pictures

late summer rain drowned out

the sound of me calling

you would have heard but you had

long stopped listening

it poured, soon streets were awash

a symbol, a crucifixion, something terribly broken

something crushed underfoot, losing form

you bent to pick up the pieces of my heart

but could not read the words

for you had also lost your past and our history

I no more featured than the last time it rained

long long ago

when the trees were still thin and straight

not bent and crooked offering up their rotten roots

then you were a woman who loved someone else

I was a piece of paper

too wet to decipher

had you wanted to

and you did not

you did not