“Grief is love with nowhere to go.”
—Jamie Anderson

A cigarette
flanked between your fingers.
You tilt your hat—
just so.

A perfect finger
traces the red
of a fishnet leg,
and you
fancy up a pitcher
with halves
of bright summer orange.

My mind moves
under heaps
of threadbare blankets,
unraveled by the stratum of years
and the nameless victims
loved,
lost
to the ticks and tocks
of hurried clocks—
never once in sync,
never tuned
to any pleasant ringing.

Now,
sitting in my lover’s kitchen,
powdered sugar
on the lips
of mislaid love,
you spin
in and out of doorways
as I move
across your lines,
falling
into arms
and into bedsheets
where I,
indubitably,
belong.