Perfume

You become a sound that slowly leaches from my body into air with the softness of breath, a quiet keening, an undertone of heartache I've always felt.

You release from wrinkles, from birthmarks I have known and carried. From freckles that darken in the sun.

You unsettle from the folds of my clothes my hair my eyes like a memory—washed dried and fading fluttering outside on clothes lines.

You aren't gone although you are dissipating leaving in more ways than one. The perfume of you is still damp on poems I write with tears.

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by the lakeside

the season is pregnant with turtles leaving the lake to nest, heavybodied, with red-blue-iridescent dragonflies flitting across the surface in search of something, with wildflowers unfolding, fanning out from puckered buds into terse displays.

love is perched where thoughts of you linger. scattered like cast runes. among the fronds, with sunk, glistening pebbles. along the sun-fed veins of flowing water.

like crinkled paper-glass inside pockets of moss that cling to the earth.

like congealed nectar of floating algal blooms that are beginning to flourish.

like the slowly rising timbre of frog-song that reaches a crescendo and dissolves into nothingness at the slightest tug.

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You come to me soft as a cloud and I shape you into dreams that I want to see.

Cloudscape | SoulReserve 2022

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unfolding memory

the memory of you is still carried in the folds of my heart, in the unseen shadows that hold grey-black shape inside unlit spaces.

you are soft now, blended with all things I love and cannot keep.

like a face in the clouds looking in from the window open to the sky.

like the scent of a favourite flower that reminds me you'll always be here and there within clasping seams to be uncovered and found.

to be untangled from the smallest runaway thought of you.

to be loved forever in the pauses between breath and life unfolding.

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Splice

I find hollow screams of the sea caught inside their shells, the sandy shore awakened, pale and white to the dying, fighting light of the twilight sun that sinks, splits the world into two tearing circles. stars that prick pins and needles into my skin. and, time that slinks into unending grief, that comes wave after trembling wave. that never lets me forget, a piece is missing from inside me since you left.

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rivkahhannahsf

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the way tears fall

two halves of the milky moon on my lips, the sky draped dense around your answer. the stars break over the melting horizon, breathless and quivering, waiting for dreams to begin.

But we cascade from river to river of spells twisting over forgotten memories. Where we once were, now, we are only figments, the echoes of ancient promises coupled and falling from the sky into shapeless tears in our eyes.

rivkahhannahsf

soulreserve

the way tears fall

two halves of the milky moon on my lips, the sky draped dense around your answer. the stars break over the melting horizon, breathless and quivering, waiting for dreams to begin.

But we cascade from river to river of spells twisting over forgotten memories. Where we once were, now, we are only figments, the echoes of ancient promises coupled and falling from the sky into shapeless tears in our eyes.

soulreserve

dontmakemetalkaboutit

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sickle moon

The slight sickle moon, slices through the sky with its icy stare of silver daggers.

I pull back, withdrawing from its cool evening gaze that draws a thousand paper cuts on my bruised heart.

Even poetry falters under the brisk spell that tears the sky open to a piercing memory of you.

dontmakemetalkaboutit

[photo: Pinterest]

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sickle moon

The slight sickle moon, slices through the sky with its icy stare of silver daggers.

I pull back, withdrawing from its cool evening gaze that draws a thousand paper cuts on my bruised heart.

Even poetry falters under the brisk spell that tears the sky open to a piercing memory of you.

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this is how I remember summer

my summer is hollow sleeping on heavy eyelids that only ever dream of you,

wispy against a blue blue sky caught in the webbings of the pale moon, your moth breath soft in my ear.

I slumber with you inside heat in estivation, trying to mull what evaporates so slowly, becomes brittle, catches fire.

I taste yesterday through my tears when blood has thickened against my mouth and I have curled into a dense bundle of fire load,

ready to burn down to my roots trembling, but still dreaming of you.

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rivkahhannahsf

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a dreaming of you

Starlight pricks, pulls me out from my bedroom window.

Brings me into the moonless night cold and stony.

You are a millstone-grey shadow fading, ground down by my incessant dreaming of you, night by night.

Reduced, you become powder that flurries inside wordless corners. Pricks my eyes. Makes them tear, same as stars.

rivkahhannahsf

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a dreaming of you

Starlight pricks, pulls me out from my bedroom window.

Brings me into the moonless night cold and stony.

You are a millstone-grey shadow fading, ground down by my incessant dreaming of you, night by night.

Reduced, you become powder that flurries inside wordless corners. Pricks my eyes. Makes them tear, same as stars.

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I wish ...

Thoughts the shape of shadows Chase me through the painted sky And you fall like pencilled moonlight A ghost of the copper moon, smiling

I have forgotten the language we spoke These words like open windows of hearts, These words like coins that fall in wishing wells Of time, round and bright and worthless.

Weightless on my lips but for the sinking.

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calypsycho-deactivated20211101

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dreamscape

You lay curling inside my dreams, swirling. till i catch on a tendril and you unravel, memories of you awaken dreamy eyed and soft, beckoning me to follow inside dreamscapes that aren’t yet real, but I follow nevertheless wanting more than ever to see you again. your eyes warm, laughing. and mine swathed in an endless want of you.

we will burst into flames during our first embrace

that’s all it will take Chris

it will be entering a new universe, this one but changed

i know it

i can feel it in my spine

and belly, quivering, listening

to every word you send my way

uttered or not

waiting for the trial of birth

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dreamscape

You lay curling inside my dreams, swirling. till i catch on a tendril and you unravel, memories of you awaken dreamy eyed and soft, beckoning me to follow inside dreamscapes that aren't yet real, but I follow nevertheless wanting more than ever to see you again. your eyes warm, laughing. and mine swathed in an endless want of you.

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rivkahhannahsf

soulreserve

Speed of Motion

Time is wound ‘round me and I spin, like a top; The brevity of grief, the fleetingness of joy, I feel nothing; Only this speed of motion, uncontrollable turning of perspectives;

The earth spins, the moon spins, so does the sun; And this expanding knit of a universe, we know, spirals outwards.

rivkahhannahsf

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leap and curl

my eyes intertwine with falling light from celestial objects, while you swirl inside my dreams, curling. I catch on a thought and you unravel, memories of you awaken - dreamy-eyed and soft - lapping waves that leap and curl warm, at my feet.

waves that wash away footprints of time and reverberate like still sound trapped inside hollowed-out shells. sound that comes to us from another place and time, when we listen; like the ageless light of stars, when we see; like this dream of you, that washes on me before it fades away. yet you remain, undulating, sinuating - driftwood, caught in the crosscurrent.

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on cicada wings

If I had patterns on my tongue, like cicadas do on their wings - tiny structures nanopillars, that stretch and obliterate bacterial membranes; I would say your name once - one last time, and make peace with the deafening quiet.

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I remember you... your eyes like a sharp sensation - a falling meteor - fiery, enflamed, ablaze... caught in the net of the sky for the briefest, most unforgettable moment.

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on cicada wings

If I had patterns on my tongue, like cicadas do on their wings - tiny structures nanopillars, that stretch and obliterate bacterial membranes; I would say your name once - one last time, and make peace with the deafening quiet.