drop me a line

A line of fish hangs from his hand
And reaches to yours.
You caught them;
He gutted them.
We will all eat them.
We will look later at the picture someone took
Of you both standing there connected
By flesh and bone.
We will look at the picture and remember
Similar sticky hot days:
When we watched the night sun color the mountains purple,
When the watermelon's drip stuck to our knees
And clung to the spaces between our fingers,
When with our feet bare against the grass,
We swayed as we gazed up at the coming-out stars--
A line of hope from heaven to our hearts.

tears

My attempt to remain blink-free fails.
And with the slightest and quickest touch of eyelash to eyelash,
A tear falls.

I want to lock all these tears up in my room.
I don’t want them to spill.
But my room has no lock.
It has no key.
My door doesn’t even shut all the way.

I blink again,
This time prolonging the closure
Along with drawing in a hard and ragged breath.

OK, I surrender, tears.
Come on out.
As you want.
As you will.
As you are.

They do.
They perform their salty gravity show,
With their falling
They leave behind invisibly miniscule traces of my heart.