June

The days are sunny as sunflowers,
Warm as our bedsheets during late mornings,
The sun sliced through curtain blinds, 
Your silhouette split by light slides, 
Skies slick as polished mirrors, 
Afternoons bright as a beer buzz
On a beach of glittering sand, like a field of diamonds,
And salt water - silver - sharp as metal.

The days are sunny as sunflowers,
And the squint in your eye is tighter than usual,
Slits so fine I see horizon lines across the ocean
When you smile.

The days are honey, syrupy thick,
Eggs runny,
Just the way you said you like them
That day we wrote poems over brunch,
The ground, blazing raw,
Where bare feet are pricked by the heat of a 
Sizzling skillet,
Like the day we burned the bacon before work. 

Stretched as roads, drunk on a daylight
That won't let go of the hours,
These days are long and funny,
The way we latch to you so easily, the sun and I, 
Your skin so quick to blister,
Makes me wonder how you adapt to me so well,
The cool of your shades shelter these veins that carry an island
With the ease of an Indian Summer,
And you remain like the days,
Flawlessly radiant and sunny as sunflowers.

-LBCH

Meditation

Listen 
to the rain
plummet constant as minutes,
dive steady as our breaths,
the pumps in our beats,
drops
dripping on skin
over faces white as cotton fields, 
and brown as sodden soil alike,
over scalps bald, soft as pillows, 
or hardened ripe with age. 

Listen
as it hammers like a tired woodpecker,
to the tack before the trickle,
the hush before the shower, 
this rain you've known for years, 
connected constellations, 
drawn melting hearts, 
traced watery stars on windows, 
steady as breaths. 

Listen 
to it pass,
and come again.

-LBCH

I am searching for you in this sunlight of honey, the soothing warmth and the fifty degrees of the virginal breeze, the rhythm of wires, like belts, in a backdrop of motion, abandoned tires and telephone poles, like a row of old crosses, the water rings, river halos, the golden quaver of the melting afternoon, wavered by today's benign wind, like curious fingers tracing skin, the dull print of the moon, visible still, or visible already. I am searching for you in the cloud's design, brush strokes of air adorning the sky, like angel breath, boundless spaces, the faces of strangers sitting on each seat, the lyrics of songs I play on repeat, I listen for your name in the call of the train approaching the station, like the song of sirens, each stop a new syllable, codes like bible symbols, the howl of the breaks grinding the tracks like anxiety attacks. I stop. I am searching for you, but don't know what to find. You are already mine. 

-LBCH