Poem-Laureate

Beneath an apple tree,
I used to wake up and watch you sleep a little longer
but now I catch you shaving, where you’ve caught your razor but don’t mind enough
to wipe away the mess you’ve made.

I am left pining for those voices in my head that would get me out of bed
and sing hello, good morning you’re alive,
you are alive.

I asked
where the oil beneath our fingertips emerged from, where it
coughed a name that was no name, it was a saint
who said:

we must fog between the lines of something that was decent
and the soft cushions on a couch, attached with ribbons
and a little tag, a note card attached
to a garbage bag left on my doorstep, filled with pallid clothing.

Sometimes you need distance to change
the pattern in which
words tumble from your lips onto the page.
Sometimes there is nothing to say,
and the tongue is burnt with wonder.

A prepubescent girl that saw through all our fears and said, you are right to go.
We named her Laureate.

The detail is in the eyelids, the outline is on the floor.

I am shivering bare, finally,
ready to be pushed upon and lifted to the road
that moves in a very specific direction,
on a great clear window-shaped pane
with a some sort of skylight.

And I’ve found that everything you said, once
lingers after your soft
silhouette to the bathroom, following your scent.

I wish you could care enough to open
that last letter I left
beneath the box springs where the perfect sky is still.

I can’t imagine what you must be like now,
absent from our maneuvers,
like holding hands to swallow what we could not say aloud.

And still, as poetry tiptoes in the wake of you,
it is as if I am years away,
beneath a tree, that was not a tree,
weeping over Laureate.