to the italian coffee vendors on the birth of their son

Today at the farmer's market
Rolled-out-of-bed as I was
Sunglass-clad despite the grey mist
I witnessed a sight better than church
Or more like it
The Greek man who sold cheese
Came to hug you
Like a brother's was his embrace
The lesbian mothers
Offered you their son's outgrown clothes
Exchanging motherly glows
My aunt brought heart-shaped cookies for the girls
Who huddled under the booth
Their makeshift cave
Passing Italian whispers between nibbles
Everyone missed you last week
And everyone knew why you were gone
I wish I could capture their joy in a bottle
And drink it on the day my soul runs dry

scratch

The skin on my face is burning
Like small red fires
Encamped in pleasant places
My lips
Still stinging
From your beard-pressed kisses
Some kind of lovely pain
You scratch into my being

prayer of disorientation

I've been bruised in Your holy places
Been wandering in Egypt
That desert
Where my prayers never return from captivity

Or am I so blind, deaf and lame
That I cannot hear Your
Still
Small
Voice

So come to me in the burning bush

legacy

I come from a line of dead women
Who did not reproduce
Except in name
And my lot
Will be the same

migration

Last week I swallowed a flock of butterflies
And at the sound of your voice
They shift and turn around in my body
North
And south
They fly
Drinking all the air in my lungs
They won't grow tired
Until they have left me breathless

my world will not revolve around you

That will be the way our friendship goes
When you shift the cosmos
All of those perfectly ordered stars
Each moon in mirrored brilliance
To orbit
All
Around
You

train station revelations

Then one day
Finding myself beside a row of empty chairs
In a nearly empty station

I thought

There is a worse thing
Than being alone and feeling alone

I was thinking
Of feeling alone but being with you