People think sorrow grows softly pliable, becoming
faint like a photograph fading on acid-washed paper.
My bittersweet moments of loss are cutting-edged
snowflake stars, so frozen they burn from within.

I see traces of you, long after you've gone.
In the morning snow, your striding step
tracks sharply away from my door, then
evaporates like my cat-eyed dreams.

Disenchanted, trailing you, I
evacuate an impression left on
the careworn foundation of my hearth.

I can still taste your dark honey
and needing to preserve inviolate
all the frozen vibrations of love,
that numb me twenty times a day;
I crave the only cure, you, you, you!

I quiver, become a ghost-town;
with tombstones canted on boot hill...
The bits of your saliva, significant
on my unwashed skin and bedding.

I bend and try to smell you, inhale
deeply all the cells you abandoned,
as I wait in the dark, to be filled.