I.
The first time I saw you
you spoke with fire
like dragons do
singed the eyebrows
off half the audience
listening to your stories
of a former lover-woman
whose father never knew
how well you knew
his daughter
a woman I never met
but in that moment envied

II.
You telephoned half-a-year
later, once I’d forgotten
the smoke of your stories
in my lungs

Strangers, we met like sisters
with a common secret
Your laughter lingered in the air
for a good three days
after we hung up the phone

III.
We talked for eight hours straight
the night you slept over
We didn’t climb under the covers
til well after the sun had scolded us

The air held a kiss that neither
of us claimed, though either
could have easily taken

I fell asleep and forgot you

I woke facing the wall
and wondering why
I rolled over to a shock
of red curls bubbling
all over the pillows
seething with secrets
the way a cauldron does

Wild woman, you were made
of a magic I didn’t believe in

I squeezed in tighter

IV.
It took us months to kiss

Though our foreheads
and fingertips and arms
and bellies met easily and often
in open air, my lips
had to prepare my heart
for expansion

See, you gather the whole
universe in your arms
The stars don’t know
what to do with you
But I do

Make room
for the whole universe
in your heart
Then open your lips,
touch tongues
and usher the whole universe in

8/21/00.11/30/00

* * *

Kelly left. I’m trying to cope. It’s challenging.

Kelly: Sister Lover Healer Angel Golden Dragon Friend

A month or two ago, my conundrum-lover asked me how I felt about the fact that Kelly was leaving, going on a poetry tour indefinitely. I said I really wasn’t thinking about it yet. Kelly leaving was in that nebulous haze of the future. Ridiculous to bother missing what hasn’t yet said good-bye. So Sunday, when she showed up on my doorstep for the last time in a long time, I found myself completely unprepared. The shock of her absence versus the infinite warmth of her embrace. Which was more real?

I held her in my arms and it felt like home.

It felt like, please can’t we just live here for a while?

I stored some of her smiles for the winter, the taste of her belly, let her laughter inhabit my apartment with an open invitation to stay.

She drove away into the night

Sister Lover Healer Angel Golden Dragon Friend

I’ll see her again soon.

* * *

She bit her tongue
and tasted freedom.
After years of comfortable
domesticity, after 11
different lovers,
892 poems, one cat,
a wood-burning stove,
a warm place to go
each Thanksgiving,
and a four-letter word
she didn’t believe in
called home
the wind caught her hair
and held on.
She packed and sold
and gave away
everything she owned
traded the house
for the car, the bed
for the back seat,
stability for poetry.
She tucked spare kisses
in her back pocket
in case phone numbers
failed. She heard
it could get lonely
on the road
but she bit down
on hard goodbyes
believing firmly
family always finds her.
The brown leaves
blowing called her
sister and sometimes
that’s enough.
When street strangers
asked for cash she told them
I ain’t got much but poems
rice milk and half-a-loaf
of bread but if you’re interested,
come stay awhile and share.
They’d ask her
How’d you end up
on the road, friend?
You lost or travelling?
Travelling. Tales
to tell and truth
to teach. Friends
unborn to meet.
When doubts, fears,
a flat wallet,
and a considerable lack
of car insurance
start to chide her
find her on the shoulder
forehead rubbing raw
the steering wheel—
You cannot live on light
alone the voices say.
She grits her teeth
and grins, Why not?
The flowers do.

11/28/00.11/29/00

* * *

Watch out. She’s coming to a town near you.