There’s no snow this year.
It’s the memories, instead, that are white
they’re dusted in frost.

You’re through the glass, now
a little more out of focus each time
but I still see you
in the kitchen,
heat in your cheeks from the oven
and there’s coffee in your smile.
The lights on the tree behind us twist,
blurs of color along the windows
and the floorboards and I always thought
they looked a bit like bombs
exploding

We’re still there, together, in another time
before anything began to look
so ugly
and I’m Here, in another time,
with a mug in my hands that’s warm
the way your skin used to be.

There’s a man at the counter
slipping whiskey in his cup.
Dark circles around cold eyes
and I hope he finds it, the warmth
he’s looking for.
If the world were a slightly different place
I might hug him,
I might ask him what the Christmas lights
used to look like when he was young.
I might tell him that when I looked at him today,
I saw you

I falter
in your gaze.
Thoughts skip themselves,
cedar, coffee, cinnamon,
I’m caught—
as though in quicksand.
As one might sink into
a beam of sun
after a journey through the cold

There’s a pause—
you see it, don’t you?
How I linger, in that heat.

You have my attention.
My pulse,
every goddamn breath

I think you know it.
And I think I hate you for it

There is a discrepancy at times
between what you experience and feel,
and what you verbalize to the world.
Or to yourself

And therein the space between
lie the landscapes where the real you
is buried, waiting
desperately for air

If ever there would come a day
when all my world
were draped in grey,

and ever there a moment be
in which the moon
should fail my sea,

If deep beneath my waters sink
every thought
that promised pink,

and every bone
at once protests
the simple task to raise from rest,

there would still be
enough left in me
to give, to you

It’s a shame our hearts
aren’t so easily reasoned with,

that all the logic in the world
can’t burst them;
can barely budge them.

They beat on, anyway,
for whomever they please.
Against every begging wish
to concede

Sometimes, I think how terrible it is
that even if I spent every waking moment reading,
there’d never be enough time
to read all the books I’d like to, before I die.

And there are other times I think,
more books than I’ll ever be able to read
means only that I’ll never be without one

And, like people, we can only hope
that our paths are crossed
by the ones that will really move us,
that we will be better for having held close,
and having known