Three sonnets on desire and friendship
I.
I keep on writing kind of anxious poems
Because I’m in an anxious, fucked-up place.
But there’s this book from Cody’s shrink, at home
Where every day, he writes a sign of grace.
So here’s a record of the happiness
That sometimes falls and covers me like ash.
Would you have guessed your body’s on that list?
Your breasts behind your elbows between laps?
The list goes on: It’s Josh’s head on mine,
It’s hauling stuff, mom hollering my name.
But archeologists of joy in time
Will excavate that list, and find your way,
Your words and habits scattered sharp as shards
Throughout the precious rubble of my heart.
II.
Like travelers late to some half-home hotel
We stepped snow-soft across the family floors
I felt along the darkness of the walls
You tried the quiet weight of every door.
Here’s to the weight of you trying my hips,
Your body’s slow drift graceful as the snow
Your body’s certain weight a passport stamp
That let me leave the borders of my own.
Sure, I’d have liked you to stay out the storm
And make me leave my paper one more day.
Good prose uncovers body, thrust, and form
Precisely by first not knowing its way.
Would you have kissed as sweet, knowing me more?
Would snow fall softly if it knew the world?
III.
We met for coffee last week at this place
Right on the floor of Mariana’s trench
We argued about international aid
I tried to tell you that it made no sense
To go build wells for people you don’t know.
I said, “There’s thirst you’re not accounting for.”
And then Joe came. You kissed right through
Your scuba-masks! And I swam for the door.
The pressure of a year since we had talked!
We made that argument a diving bell.
But when you called today we sighed and laughed,
As if we sat on jars at our old well.
As if from each for each we hauled up water
Despite our lack of knowledge of each other.