there was a compelling bitterness

on your tongue,

strange and black

soft, slow and wetly maddening,

a sharpness in the dark

every once in a while

when your heart has left the building,

to wander the simple grid streets

on blustery nights,

full of alien chagrin.

i felt your heart once

beating with a soldier's vexations,

i felt your heart once

filled with wonders and lusts

and shaped with such boisterousness,

i felt it melt once

to smear over relativism and truth

in pursuit of denial,

i felt it play along

with youth,

then alone with a scowl

in a pullover shroud.

what is a loss,

what could be a dream,

the length of your back to 

mine

i measured and remember well,

if only to tell anyone at all

how beautiful your silence was

as you lay in shallow sleep,

so still

did you keep

the curl of your lashes,

yet so quick they flew

when love still hovered.

upon waking to leave -

and i cannot help recalling -

waking to a loneliness

you thought of as stale serenity,

the stretching fingers of sunlight

tapped cautiously 

on my dreariness

thick on such cold mornings,

unexhaustive in faithful reminder

that happiness

true-blue and forever

was internal and ever-present,

and cheerfully too

eight blocks away

a brimming source of all things

inspiring of love

of the most challenging

liberation.

breath in,

breath deep,

be free;

freedom right around that narrow twist

right there, just right about there,

after i stop feeling

in unaccountable licks,

the foreign taste i marveled in

the skin of your teeth.