“She dies trapped, duties to plant and progeny fulfilled.”

“We wait for manifestation, the mythic memory / Of their appearance yielding a fervent hope.”

“At the precipice of the treeline, you are finally relieved, / Standing solitary, competition and complication stripped away.”

Doubt takes hold of my memories like a layer of oil.

You give the spring new colors, and we slow dance down by the creek.

I was glad when you told me to buy a gun. I thought we could both go like that.

I swallow the air to capture its heartbreaks.

Brushing hair out of each other’s faces, an earworm, touching as though to memorize.

“The calm after the storm / atrophied”