Mackenzee E. Crosby

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A nascent wind

gives back the smoke from my drawn apart lips

trees rustle with summer's last life

dancing in their limbs

That was the last day i saw a green like the one below your brow

foreshadowing days to come brought

calling crows and cold

Cold without your arms to draw ahold

as the bath water left standing when i found you out

cold

on your mattress

and warmed you with a quilt

That day left me cold as the hydrangeas

in your grandmother's garden

the early brisk of fall, only beginning to wilt

Warmth lives 

Fickle fingers dance

warming skin, sallow

still full

Flakes of felt melt outside your door

lips leaden with lust covet the spaces between each dimple

deep enough lakes lie inside, once dry

A bystander to a temple lain

with thorns beneath it, never roses

but that is not this

here warmth lives  

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Hours I’ve spent lying here before the dawn cellar concrete cooling cheeks hold smoke watching for messages I won’t find in the moon’s craters I never let it get far away is the breeze that swept you from me it returns short of chilling coming never leaving you only chapped skin and a summers eve behind it making a bed next to mine cold the morning stirs I’ve covered the mirrors in the hall scared I often see you in them I’m reading the tea leaves no particular pattern in the cusp of my cup thoughts of you slip through when I give it a whirl,

I let them

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How the dew sits comfortably on the grass after a drought 

is the way i fell back into you

A dim light lingers 

A quiet intermingling between us and the soft trimmer of leaves outside your bedroom window

Falling,

Falling

Cold spring

There is no ending like laughter following an apology

I thought spring was for mending,

not a season beginning, breaking 

bending 

and bluely ending

Morning tide

My chest, a moon to the tide of warm breath–

leaving, then receding into lips drawn apart

From them a gasp is met by morning sun

seeping in through the blinds,'here for me again

I greet her with hostility–hesitating only to pull the quilt over my head

She waits patiently, 

filling the room as my slumber stirs and when i open my eyes

I am cloaked in her light

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I fell in love with your hand today, the left one 

Embolden, delicate and resting against the soft white backdrop adorning your frame 

I think of how it would feel if you cupped my face in the delicate thing

You might trace your thumb over my bottom lip,

soften it with a kiss and months later i'll resent it.

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I find refuge in words written and melodic

In breezes courteous in course between branches barren–only the cast of a gray sky and dotted with life as my skin in the seasons

Among them I stand sobered by air crisp around my neck–beneath their limbs oblique in nature and whispering the wind's siren song

Both of us reaching to close the width between fingers and I am met by glass