Poem 1

I've been waiting to put this into words.

Seventeen, on the cusp of autumn. 
There’s nothing like it. Never was and never will be
With its honeying leaves
Golden hour petrified 
Vivid and coy. Like the smiling eyes of a first love. 

They're hazel, 
Hopeful and questioning; 
How will this time around shape you? 
Every autumn does. Every autumn has and will. 
My seventeenth will splay her fingers against mine and guide them
Over her freckled shoulders, dappled paths of sunlight and leaf litter.
When we slow dance
I cry into her the hollow of her jaw
And she holds me. 

I ache for it, I confide.
I ache for the moment to come
When I can put it all down. 
Maybe this time around
Or maybe never.
Maybe this weight is a forever kind of thing. 

I hope we are a forever kind of thing, I confess. 
Her gaze is dew on dawnlit clearings
Ready to let me down gently.
We are not. We are fleeting. 
Like sparrows’ nervous wings. Like eyes meeting across a crowded room. 
Like fingers brushing, seasons turning, ships passing. 
Ever moving away
And away
   And 
      Away. 

And I pine away to myself
Forests of it, dark and green
The petrichor so thick, I choke. 
It’s not supposed to feel like this
It's my hometown all over again. 
And this time around,
I’m too tired to put up a fight.

But when I close my eyes I see her,
And the light in her eyes
And the dew on her cheeks
And the rare September sunlight washing her hair in a holy glow
My luminary love
Found and lost and lost
Over too many seasons
And too many changes
And too many versions of me that fade
And fall away. 

It’s far too fleeting 
And the distance too far
For me to do anything but watch 
With my heart sinking 
And my vision blurring 
As I scream and sing and sigh
Only to ears of my seventeenth autumn.

Only she can hear me.