Love another tribute

After my mom died I would consistently sit down and write poems that began with, "in the event that you have been for two weeks, one month, three months, one year, three years..."

I can't do that anymore. All I can do is write another letter to love telling it what a fickle friend it is, but in the end I'd never dream to live without it.


Six years love and is this how you teach a heart that
there is no such thing as forever?
You pull pages from library books and
Pocket marbles you didn’t win
Somewhere a telephone book is missing the entire ‘Smith’ section
And you don’t believe in regrets.
Love I have watered my palms in the swirling stream of your
Eternal youth and watched my reflection age
As you slither away down shore
I float face up in a tangled beach
As your brown body mixes my desire
With sand and feeds it
To children who’d rather
Kick beach balls and finagle crabs on to fingers
That have never been pinched.
Love you slip out quiet as smoke rolling out of car windows
From lit cigarettes and vanish
Almost as quick.
Now I hide the lines of my face behind sun glasses and try not to remember
The feel of an ocean swell.
The salt that sticks to skin.
One open palm that still harbored the hope
Of expectation.