Quiet Rivers

I want to be open.
I want to be honest.
I want your arms to lean back on;
my cushion of sand on a salty morning,
the vacation I never took.
I want to spread my arms and legs
as far as they never had
and have you read my soul
just like any other book
one weekend away from work.
Discover the bastard in me,
the dark side you’ll always forgive;
what good you awakened always drowning out
the bad.
Take the lie of my life,
like it was the lay of your motherland,
and love the mountains blocking your view
of the far-off sand.

The other day
I tried to come up with a song:
the words would not come, the music
did not rise. I’ve been awake since then;
sprawled out on the couch dreaming of castles built
with money I’d dreamed up earlier, wishing you
were here pasting Picassos on my wall
lending old wallpaper another breath to hang on.

I’m awake right now,
right here in the honest dark -
there’s no fireflies in Lake Worth, did you know that?
- trying to cram the easiest words into a jar,
hoping they’ll be kinder on my tongue
come morning.
Help me sleep, wherever you are right now.
I want your arms to lean back on.
I want to be honest.
I want to be open.

Who coined love and minted it
over the gold of friendship?
What fool first painted sunsets
and made them backdrops
for so many leavings?
Why did they have
to come up with a word that spells goodbye
so awfully well?

I like love when it’s just a weight
on your belly; a glance, a regard, longer than most,
a hunger, deeper than words,
a nameless longing to hold,
and be held.
I like love when it’s just a smile
that fills up the hallway,
and possesses your fifteen minutes
without taking.

And isn’t friendship like that too?

Who coined love
and made it selfish as gold?
Who priced it over Mastercard?
What’s loving you more means
when it’s not worshipping the ground you walk on?
What’s loving you less entails
when it’s you walking through the remains
of my entreaties?

I like love when it doesn’t make me cry;
the possibility of you, the possibility of me,
etching shadows, and curves,
and sunshine on bedsheets without regret.
I like love when it’s just a hunger
meeting your own like a long lost blessing;
a fulfillment of a set of memories
gently colliding with another,
like finding the future in a yesterday
that wasn’t meant to be
back then.

And isn’t friendship like that too?