Graphic by Casey Horner
Something glitters very far back in my mind; running water, river of stars, a soft and vibrant memory. I am in a state of remembering. - The beginning of August holds everything I need, Every word that is precious to me, Every word that will be a poem. - At the blood red end of August, At the faint, orange light of autumn, My eyes catch the first, unsure twitch of your fingers towards mine. - The night is a warm tangle of breath and calming colors, blue and white, staring into the stars. - Every day was stuck at dusk in that space between orange and gold. The stars were out before night began. - There are two cats curled together on a blanket bathed in sun, More one body than two. - This dimpled stone path, made for the rain and the mist, Traces the planet down its center. - Unknowingly on the precipice of silver lightning, I jump into the living waters, Forgivingly deep. - For the first time, Right before The leaves turned orange, Cold water glittered across my skin. - Smooth fingers of water pull the curls out of my hair In a charcoal-cold gorge. - Sun sets, Hands rise to your hair through the blessed dark. - The room was dark and warm and new. The air was blue. - Are there words for this, The sacred, sinful sense of touch? - The shadows would make a show on your skin, One thin beam of light split to nothing but slivers with no prism, Softest spotlights. - It is late now, Let me touch your face in the morning. - Memorization without sight, Tracing your skin in the dark, The most ephemeral dream. - The space beyond a dream, you looking at me. Your face the peace prevailing through the night. - Bare parallels, Puzzle pieces, Perfect chord. - Blurred charcoal outline, still asleep. Dusty against the rose light. - I used to think that the cold of the night would kill me, but laying here, now, listening to the near-silent, silver sound of breathing, I do not believe that anymore. - Very early in the morning, your eyes are still tender from sleep. Your face is very warm and very close to mine, like dawn spilling through a window. - In the morning, your breath was the softness In the fineness Of human stillness. - Faded gold faintly glows under the darkness leftover from the night before. - You smeared a mouthful of strawberry ice cream all over my face, Sugar stuck in the space between a smile and a kiss. - We lay face-up to the right of the church where the stone path starts, Where the hills are in the sky and the clouds are on the Earth. - Outside Ithaca, Fields catch the golden thread of sunsets. - In a forest between two lakes, there is a field at sunset, at blood gold dusk. - A field tied on three sides by a forest, and on the side that faces the dirt road, a wooden fence. - There is total silence in this field. I have never heard the horizon so quiet. - The snow kept in all noise except our breath and footsteps, still almost as silent as it. - Quiet until the outer edge of twilight, Then I would be in your arms. - Sharp sliver of moonlight striking the right hemisphere of my face, You are spellbound by it. - Moving, Liquid, Rushing rivers through the dark room, Flooding the ocean to its floor, High tide at the rise of midnight. - We washed the summer from each other, soap and water. - Places on a map have a heartbreak: Tioga Utica Auburn Fulton Green Clinton Center Meadow Elmira Danby South Aurora Cayuga Seneca Hudson West King Stone Quarry Columbia Prospect State Quarry East Albany Geneva Plain Buffalo Taughannock Boulevard Water Sweet nostalgia, Cracking like a star. - Lights on the Ithacan hills, Distant and beautiful. - A fraction of a memory glitters: The window is cracked two inches and cold December air trickles through the dark room like a thin stream. - I woke, but I knew it was not yet morning. My face was warm from a dream, so warm I did not need a second blanket. One of my arms was laid across your thin body, and my face was pressed into your back. Our shoulders barely showed from beneath the hems of my blue blankets. - When our faces got so close our noses touched, You would always say that my face looked like the face of a child’s So close to yours. - Deep in a snow-blanketed February, A distant music box plays the Blue Danube Faintly from within the hills. - Maybe you only sleep softly now In the way I remember you. - The waterfall has become more of an ocean inside of my mind. - I will never see your face so close, next to mine, again. The golden blade of August is gone. - Where will the light lay? - Your name will echo in the recesses of my heart and soul, The sound that will carve out caves. - The memories do something different—they glow, they glimmer in the very back of my mind. They glow like river rocks below ripples in the water, like sun on the lake that you can only see from the top of the hill, distant and blue. They sound like a distant piano playing music that glitters across my mind. They are glowing like a promise, like a single lantern in a field. They are as soft as the first snowfall of November, leaving powdered footprints beneath the streetlights. These memories remain beautiful among the streets of Ithaca. - Between the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes is the size of an ocean, the space of my chest. - I like to think the field is still out there, alone, not covered in snow. - In the night, your skin was ghostlike, Fever-white. - The face of the last person I love, A face like a star. - Once more, we can be beautiful among the streets of Ithaca. - Still, I wear the silver stars of August in my heart.