Spring is eternal here,
lonely but not empty—
like the geese’s bellied cry 
echoing across the lake,
skimming its surface like a teaspoon.

She rains; she settles mists over slick streets,
lingering despite a cold, distant sun.
And I ask the earth
when she might allow the bloom.

They say she never has, and I wonder what
might lie dormant in me—
a word that could satisfy what I mean
a torment felt in blue
my love resounding in a minor chord,
played softly against a string…

I turn myself inside out—
fragile, a pink hatchling stumbling
out of its shell…
but to know the heart of a thing—
well, she says that's for the summers,

though we would’ve welcomed death
having been seen & having learned to die, or
having been nothing at all—