I’ve thought of many pieces of poems, all bled through
with stains of you. All little shards,
with you-
red and dangerous-
drawn around the edges.
This town is not as laced with you, is that why it’s so lonely?
Because every other street corner or patch of sunlight
in the other place far from here
was saturated in purpose because you dwelt in it.
I feel adrift here, like a strong wind would tumble-weed me to the edge of the red desert.
If the desert is red here; I have not seen it. I imagine it,
red and crumbly, wavering in the heavy sunlight.

That is what I do without you. Lie here and imagine
the desert, dying in the heat.

Does the weather know we are one and the same? When that wind comes
will it know that we belong in the silent desert together? When we
billow along the streets I will cling so tightly to your calm hands.
I could live under the eve of a scuttling desert rock, in the darkness so like death
if I held your hand to my lips and felt a tremor there.
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