Spoiler
Lumi + Jag = This.
I think I know now why you love red. I am,
right now, watching the slow bleed of it across
the ivory of chrysanthemums that we planted last
fall. They smell of summers at your mother's home--us
sewing beads beneath a sapphire dreamcatcher--
and bend under the breeze as though under your hand.
I want to push them down; grind clumped petals to
the dirt so they can finally rest, so they can stop
lying, stop breathing in the stale autumn air. But this--
this will also do. Red on white, and drying at the edges:
these are the flowers you love. You will remember this,
I hope, as I remember the long, slow burn of your
lips that night you came back late smelling
of rain, mint and rosemary.
I told you that night that the sharpest edge
of worry comes between midnight and morning,
lying alone and counting shadowed leaves
on the ceiling. (But you kissed me, touched my chest
and said: trust is as fragile as a wallflower's stem.)
You were wrong, sweetness, because as I sliced the
rivets of your spine, I told you that trust is the lacerated gospel
you take to the Earth when you die.
(And when your breath stopped--caught
in just one reedy gasp--you looked to me:
____Just let me hear you say it)
I love you most, dear, when you forget to smile. When,
like now, your hair splays among dark grass like
sundown in the fall. I love you most with
your lips parted, red and elusive as
the flicker of candles on a table set for two.
But your hands are still and cold like the phone against
my cheek when I whispered:
____It's our anniversary, darling, and I'm waiting
(and it was raining against the windows, in a pitter-
patter of shadows and lights and echoes).
I am digging your grave right now beneath the boughs
of the willows by the river, where branches meet
water and summer skies hang low. The roots grasp
at the air, and against the shovel my fingers slip, so
clumsy, so rough. Already, they miss you, though
it was only an hour ago they last brushed against
your face, and protested letting you go (and I think
there is blood on my lips still, from when I kissed your brow.)
Do you remember how scared I was, how my
hands shook like our drapes over the air vents?
You pulled me closer, whispered with your lips
to my ear, I love you, and I said I know, and could n--
____(words tangled in my throat, caught helpless in
____the still waters of your eyes)
--and for a second there I could have hated you.
Because what stung most was not the print of
strange hands around your wrists, or the heavy
scent of flowers at my nose, or even the way
your eyes closed when you lay beneath me, but
rather the soft turn of your mouth in the morning,
and the gentleness of your lips over mine,
and the way you tried to love enough for
two.
__________(and also, and above all,
how your every glance could spell
I forgive you.)
since your poem is so well-written anyway!)