Splinter #4

Teach me how to write with flower stems instead of nooses.

c of me.

Cancer caused concerns and cups of chamomille,

cuts to cicatrize a colon and cinnamon skin, crossroads

in fading copper (summers we danced bare feet in the mud),

cents for crude ideas (when to lay in the grass and below)

and the crystalline cringe of the corner of strawberry lips,

carbon clips in coal strands of hair (not as pitch-black as thought)

and crinkles on bedsheets and foreheads, one deeper than another,

the cold kept creaking and leaking through the cracks

in skin and spine and winter came sooner and stayed longer

when centuries shrinked to courtesies within two and few years,

cowards flew the cusp of closed fingertips and we let go,

-

(C U soon she wrote on dried died flower paper and meant more

than she knew how to bear)

-

I fold kinks in scarves and your handkerchief and stitch a tale of my C in your heart.