Ryan Cole

Do you still love me, she asks
fragile moment, simple words
Fear and longing mingled like our breaths
hanging precariously in the air
...

Dawn
In my youth only seen as the end of the night
As a challenge to be faced in the hours
between last call and someone’s bed
...

Russian women, she says,

Learn young how to move their hands
...

Another Tuesday morning

up before the sun
...

I hate the beauty of the world
The moon, the stars, and all the spaces between
Hell is not a place, it’s an absence
And all the beauty just reminds me
...

I can laugh
It comes easy to me
And I smile readily enough
They say I have a nice smile
...

The parts you saved
were not the things you valued most
It was just the stuff that was close at hand
And the things you lost
...

Lets get lost
Lets run away
though there are no circuses left to join
We'll create our own
...

She moves across the heavens
passing Venus and Mars with her fingers crossed
Unbound by any laws known to Newton or Einstein
Eclipsing sun and moon
...

I try not to say her name
As if it held some power
To cast a spell
I don’t say it aloud
...

I think of all the different places we shared

So far from where I am now
...

Thinking about the thing with feathers that Emily spoke of so long ago

as she sat, alone, in her curtained room
...

Looking away from Eden's Gates
with a long road before me
and an empty place growing
where once there was... what?
...

...

You are not the tears I shed

and I am not the words you speak
...

I say your name

I say your name and all things fall away
...

I no longer live in Ocean Park

Though I am never far from that place
...

I see my father's hands

Long fingered, elegant beauty
...

You are mine

You are mine and I am yours
...

We talk about these things

This ordinary madness
...