L by the church

As I look back, I know she was a gift. Gifts are not meant to be made into a wife and burdened with children. They are meant to live in your mind as a crystalline essence. They write songs about them so you can have them and experience them in this way.

There are lives I have lived with her and still live with her. There are a few of them but she is the clearest. I build our life the most. I look at her the most. I remember our time together the most. I wish her the best the most. I dream her the most. I taste still those times and see her eyes. The scar on her head. I see the view out her window. I remember dancing in the streets in Mackinaw. We lived a life where we were engaged in Michigan. We lived a life where we were married in Bulgaria. We lived a life as a traveling couple through Asia. In temples wandering. On Islands driving. We lived a life where we divorced in the USA while she was pregnant with another man’s child. As I grow older, I see her in the kitchen. We eat cold yogurt cucumber soup together. When I speak about Spain, I see a train ride and a king and queen in our company. I saw her in New York here and there. We have an affair there. I see her with her friends there at the coffee shop sometimes.

Sometimes I looked for her. Sometimes I found her. There are days with sandy feet and white spiked shells full of dreaming. There are dusk scented New Zealand sighs. Sunsets on new continents. Sunrises when I see her thinking of things I can't know. Sometimes I’ve seen us on a waterfall with a butterfly between us. Maybe that was our child. It was easier to raise and easier to let go. It is flying there around the waterfall still. It’s happy that we gave it life. It has 7 tiers to bath in. It is free from its fathers’ point of view anyway. For many years I wanted to show you all the ways I loved you. Build you a maze like Amelie. Watch you cry. Hold you as a human holds another human that it loves. Kiss all your tears that you had ever made. Watch you win or show you how not to. I still do those things any time I like. Maybe they are better this way. Maybe they can mean more to you if I never do them. Maybe we can be what we should be, better than equals, without time telling us why. I can still see you, on the first day washing dishes at Seabiscuit on Main Street and you turn and I see your eyes for the first time and I am hit with lightning. Struck. And I turn and ask Carl: “Who is that?”

I think about all the things that had to happen for us to have our first day. Everything that had to happen for my eyes to meet yours the first time. What did we do in our lives, with what paths, in what minutes to see your face then? I wonder if I did enough to deserve the blessing of all those things that happened for me to have that first look at you. Did I do enough with my short time with you. Can I write this down so it lives as long as our time before us? You asked me for unconditional, what is fathomable?

At the church while you light a candle, and if front with orange juice & coffee

On our beach, all of them. Every precious grain of sand

I remember the drive in, from the boarder. Dark country night. The dust of the streets. The light down halls, shadows. Early rising, no sleep. Drunk friends. Walking in a movie with temples. The silence of the surroundings. The different shades of green, gold and grey. Nights. The feeling that maybe we aren't safe. Old beds in a scattered remanence of time, like an elemental grid showing itself to itself. You are gold and silver, tongue and cheek. Lets try to pull me out of, to push me into. You with your camera, from another life, not long ago.

I hear you laughing the laugh of defiance, so sweet and innocent

A look into a contradiction, women the powerful wrapped in a shell of grace and beauty

Not for understanding until a good loss is tallied, surely the leading pulse of the species

The intellect to grant clemency and oust prudence before even a kiss is given

Living in the future of her children before she has looked at your foolish face

How little we give her, how much we demand

That is why she is stronger, sharper

Her delicacy is finer, like a blade to stone