cobalt

Its only pieces I ever recover of you, not
the whole form at any one instant,

pushing me away as I clumsily try to kiss you.

Well, thats the wrong thing to do, I guess. I should
be an asexual self pollinating twitch.

If you thought that throwing those letters away would
take the personality out of the pain,

then
I know the texture of your skin. Especially this
time of year; in the summer you oil up, I can take
my finger and trace the oil in a circle on your neck, as though I am
checking for dust,
checking for cigarettes and poetry.

I am tearing open your chest as you wave down a taxi. The
paper flutters,
and you are lost in someones deep red rusty eye.

I have never met him/ cannot see him
at all, and you only in pieces.

Kicking off a soggy maple leaf from my sneaker,
its stuck, its stuck, hanging on my shoelace,
it crumbles as I crush it.

Most massage techniques are inch by inch,
breaking the body
into component parts. So many
rotations of the thumb on this centimeter beneath
the shoulderblade, and so on.
Assembling shudders in the nervous system.

A locust rattles off like a machine gun at the top of this maple tree.

Wind blows useless thru clumps of summer maple leaves,
As I fail to image the actual woman with words.