When the common good
between two people is loss,
laughter becomes a strange
form of mourning, sounds
a lot like crying off tune.
I learned about you
in fragments. Too busy watching
your hands hold me, to notice
the way you couldn’t
hold yourself. Fixated on the posture
of sentences, you said
I was your favorite
question mark?
You first came to me in a dream.
I could tell you were coming
by the smell of the dream.
Cinnamon and sky.
I woke up with a moon
oozing in my chest.
It’s differentday
and your voice usually comes
these mornings. Already half past
afterswoon and I haven’t thought
about you since two passingdays ago
when the lights flickered in the bedroom.
I’ve been trying
to write about your sense
of humor, spent three months thinking
about your breathing, sat through
several workshops revising
a chapter about your back.
I wanted to edit the part
where you walked away.
Instead, I sat silent
watched a room full of people,
who didnt know either of us,
discuss the description
of your shoulder blades.
Well-written,
I like the chapter
about your eyes
better.
I never got to ask,
why you always spoke to me
in parenthesis
(missing the science of your mouth)
my sweet ellipsis…