rather than not

When I saw the blue veins of your life

Like blue fish below your translucent skin

Like thin and ancient tributaries supporting

Some city—I could not know it for what it was.

If my flaw is any, it is many--

1. Holding candles against a darkness

I could let my eyes grow used to.

      2. choosing now to stand upon the made sacred

      ground of the I, of the need, when for years

      it has been a mudpit of wrestled giving.

               3. scarfing down the burnt moments of gladness

               to keep them glowing inside, instead of letting oxygen

               and time fan them into a more full body

                             4. for some reason not wanting to give in to you.

This sadness has many names,

Like god.

I am imagining you spiraling out,

Like some growing crystal--

I am imagining you missing me and choosing.

But this is also the ugly sounds frogs make at dusk,

The ones you heard when we walked

Towards the tower in the dark,

It is the loosened railings of my grandfather’s boat still molecularly moving

from your touch,

it is silent drives to unmarked destinations where

love is the only light we made.

it is cutting the power on the bridge and in silence 

letting what come

come.

it is all of my mistakes and my adolescent anger

and the misgivings of a man too smart to learn lessons for too long.

So much is irreconcilable.

I am drinking in an empty house with the memory

Of my hand on your chest about to imitate a star.

You and I should be.