Labyrinthine

Written 6/2

It took me three weeks just to
lift the wire shelves you'd used to hold
your clothes - the shirts and jeans,
workout shorts and lounge pants that overflowed
from your bureau.
I lifted them hesitantly, now empty,
as if I might find some hidden piece of you
lurking on the floor beneath them.
The criss-cross pattern of the bottom shelf
was etched into the carpet, and I followed
its labyrinthine maze with my eyes,
climbing it like a trellis,
reading it like a heiroglyph.
The indentation of the carpet carried
the weight of your clothes, of
pieces of you - the imprint of your existence
pushed into the floor, which slowly
gave beneath you, over time,
to mold itself to your shape.
Soon I will lift and move those empty shelves.
I'll stare at the imprint on the carpet
and soak in the last semblances of you
in my home - of your physical affects here.
But my heart will not spring back like this
carpet - it, too, bears the imprint of
the weight of your existence, but it had
caved in, given in completely to offer itself
a home to your feet when they were tired
to your head when it was weary
For your body when it ached.
Perhaps I can be assuaged
knowing that I, myself, am one of the
living effects of your life here.
The weight of your body on my body,
the changes in me that you manifested.
They are still here, like an imprint,
a handprint, a labyrinthine indentation
that not even time and distance can erase.

Under Your Umbrella

8/27

Quietly and unexpectedly,
you approached me like the silent calm
before a storm, unassuming, with
a brace on your left leg, a slight limp
to your walk disguising the
elaborate choreography of your body.
You caught me in my rainy season,
in the pause between deluges,
and handed me your umbrella to
ward off the oncoming clouds.
But the clouds you brought behind you
had already broken, as I broke over
your silent calm, and your silent calm
poured over me,
the umbrella laying needless at my door
as I took your hand and guided you inside.

For R--, Sleeping Beside Me:

8/25

You kissed me on the threshold of the
bedroom closet of my new apartment;
Taking a break from sorting through ties
and vests and old button-up shirts,
the vestiges of past identities and
the only things I packed that carried
any weight - along with my dog
and my heartache.
We met, open-mouthed, our bodies
about-to-touch, our tongues poised
to drink in each other's language,
in that just-before moment between
the giving and the receiving, the intertwining,
the yes-and-no of our futures,
that liminal space we occupy,
while our eyes dance circles around one another,
my hand taking in the nape of your neck,
and our bodies colliding in the
quiet space of our transitions
and our transcendences.