Three Poems, Valentine's Day Edition

And I wanted to learn to say thank you,
like the refrains of grace
I never said as a child.
And I wanted to remember the way
you look in light;
to hold your hands in my hands,
to know the touch of you, to remember
the touch of you;
feeling the limits of my own body
and the stale air of your breath.
And now,
me, wanting to remember
you pressed against the pages
all saying against your body,
this is air.
I spent the Summer
with salt on my lips,
so that when it rained
I could taste the ocean.
And driving in my car,
I was so insistent on holding
your hand. While I touched your cheek,
we did not talk about
the light or coming snow,
the way water dripped
so carefully from our bodies,
something like sweat
and when we kissed
the word quenched was unrelenting
on my tongue.
Now,
I know desert drought
like the ache
of my own thirst,
or
the way it hurts
when you are here
the way it hurts
when you are not.
You were
a fractal of light
against the linen closet.
I will close that door
and open a new one,
hoping to find
less skeletons
in the stick of my spine
and to forgive
the light of new morning;
all, something like
love.
Eleanor grew up in Tucson, AZ. She loves the desert and her friends. Her current apartment is less than 200 square feet that she makes less lonely with poems and pictures of her parents. You can occasionally find her ranting about war and other bullshit she doesn’t like. Her bottles of choice are Orangina and the tears of boys.