I am seasonally affected by memories visited by the specters  of late November. I can only let it pass, safe again until the cherries bloom in spring.

Maybe we can blame it on our youth or our mutual circumstance of suffering but in the end it was just choices not the compulsive tides of fate an omnipotent gravity pulling us together. 

We chose secret rendezvous and forbidden touches. I thought it was loving. But we fooled each other, making a mess of too many hearts in the process. Greener grass gone pale when cut down.

Still, eight years on and whatever apologies are owed I cannot make myself regret it. You changed my life's course and I'd alter only our estrangement.

It’s a week now you’ve been nightly in my dreams

And what of you? Can you sleep or am I keeping you up?

There are nights when your touch is as slurred as your speech and I cannot stomach it.

A decaying wooden bench with a view of the sea nestled between rental homes unsheltered from the cacophony of construction.

An osprey dives into the waves, comes up empty clawed, lands instead among the driftwood.

The neighborhood fills with weekend celebrants ready with their mortars asserting their right to do harm.

And I, no less an interloper on this salmon land endure July.

It's well they left back then I've grown no easier to love

Marriage on a Thursday Night

Seduction waylaid by conversation of the cosmos and evolution.

What is there to write about contentment? About the peace of his hand in mine? That is easily expressed in a kiss in a sigh in a life lived together.

It is everything else that needs a place to go.

Is it a sad life? Only sometimes, by comparison. I am the epitome of the gifted kid turned burnt out adult. Never quite able to find the reality in all the potential. Failed degrees and failed arts, serving food to people with second homes.

But what I lack in achievement I make up for in love. It is too quiet for some, maybe. Hours of hand sewing of reading of walking the beach (of writing, still, and always).

I have a soft routine, filling the days with house tasks my weekly volunteer shift at the library the laundry, the groceries making dinner with my husband and watching our shows pushing him toward bed by 10 so we can cuddle.

So Ordinary, isn’t it? And sad, to some, I’m sure. I have changed nothing of the world, but I have changed much about myself. And that has to be enough, doesn’t it? I can only hope there will be time for the rest.

At the beach, I was circled by a wake of vultures. Maybe they could sense all the dead things I carry with me: the person I hoped to be, the dreams I could not achieve, the people I have lost but cannot let go.

Since seeing him, I am covered in as many regrets as bug bites. I thought that if I ignored the initial itch, they would fade away just the same. But no, that pain lingers ever on.

I came away with a sore throat from all I did not say (what I knew he did not want to hear) Maybe I would not rewrite the past but I’d give anything to start a new page.

But should we never speak again at least it does me good to see you well.

We met again in the season of foxgloves and you would not meet my eye but still it was good to see you even if from the other side of a cold shoulder.

I had tattooed him in my skin before ever we met but I knew him in his laughter. In that moment the fates carried the sound to my ears whispering “this is your always.” I’ve loved others before with a touch of cosmos the ever dancing gravity of lifetimes of orbit but he is singular, a fleeting gift. Our meeting was a rift in the verse a portal to a life beyond imagining. My recognition of him was not the familiarity of past lifetimes known but of a future falling into place. Vows forged in laughter consummation blessed in tears we’ll have a lifetime shared together until the tides of time take us.

I type your number into my phone though your name has long since been removed from my contacts.

I think at these times that my thoughts must be loud enough for you to hear them across the miles.

I try to tell you all in these telepathic ways that I cherish you still so many years since.

Our time together took root in me. I clip the memories each November but you return always in the spring.

I stare at the numbers which once set my heart aflame they are but skeletons now, the remaining scaffolding of a connection past.

In the end, each time, I carefully erase them one by one knowing you would not welcome my call. I return to life with this ever tended wound.

In the end, you taught me what I wanted. When I went looking, I found conversation like ours and a hope like yours. But I looked too  for what you had not given. I met a man who was open who I could give the same. I learned after you not to let the truth be buried so when I loved him I did not hide it and in his time he loved me too. In the moments I was afraid the lesson of you pushed me forward in the least I would give my heart knowing it could be broken even if held back. He has accepted all every time given laughter and a future in return. I am grateful for your lessons and will adore you ever for their brief passions.