Behind Him (Day 443)

he hasn’t met her 

yet   but when he looks 

back   he sees her 

there   behind him   

just around the corner 

he just rounded   and 

before him 

is the woman he knew 

yesterday   who is 

no longer someone 

he knows   but someone 

he has yet to meet

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: MaxPixel

Ever (Day 442)

Sun sliding

behind the hills, 

we sat 

on the floor, 

knees crossed, and 

you told me that 

if I asked you to 

stay 

you would 

throw it all away 

for me. 

Why didn’t you

leave then? 

Could you not 

see that 

by giving up 

your own dreams, 

you were 

also damning mine?

Or didn’t you

understand that

what I meant

when I asked 

you not to leave, 

was: Ever.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: ribastank/Pixabay

In the Second Place (Day 431)

...in the first place, she said 

to the window, the violet desert 

night, her flushed face mirrored 

back in a reflection, where their 

eyes met. And, in the second, 

you don’t even know who I am. 

A swell of annoyance, or maybe 

it was boredom, lifted her off 

her feet for a few seconds, and 

suddenly, she could see herself 

from outside, from out there where 

stormclouds of stars piled up on 

the horizon, where a hot wind 

sipped sweat from your skin so 

quickly you never felt a prickle, 

where that silvery road unwound 

like a mystery, northward, over 

a series of rocky hills.

Outside, where the scrub brush 

met the drive, two glowing green 

eyes appeared like magic. They 

seemed to be looking directly at 

her, shimmering in rising waves of 

ambient heat. She gazed back, 

momentarily unaware of the man 

waiting for her to further explain 

herself. The green eyes blinked 

once, twice—then vanished as 

she stepped out into the evening

closing the door firmly behind her.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: fancycrave1/Pixabay

Too Many Apples (Day 410)

a heart wary of commitment

afraid of cutting 

more roses

than the vase can hold

or peeling 

too many apples 

for the holiday pie

a feeling like a little twinge 

of nostalgia for 

slices of coral sand 

and oceans

       so bright

           they singe the eyes

or like one too many 

long late meetings 

    at the office, 

while, at home,

I change the sheets 

on our old bed and clean 

all the windows

until they seem to disappear

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Jeremy Hiebert/Flickr

When You Rise (Day 397)

When you rise above 

the clouds  say hello 

to the blue for me

memorize its myriad 

hues and shades from 
ice to indigo  tell me if 
you can see the stars 

when you look up or 

if they are hidden by that 
golden light warming 

your flushed cheeks  rest 
a moment on 
the terrible wind 
that bears you aloft 

and look down on 

the soft undulations of 
the sea stretching like 

bleached cotton sheets 
beneath you  only the quilts 

on our shared bed 

can enfold you as softly  
only my arms support you 
with the strength of that 
high gale and 
the roughest tides 
of time we long to sail 
together will quiet when 
you are near again

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: macayran via Pixabay

Breathless (Day 395)

for the longest  that  want  time making

myself  that electric blood-singeing 

current  making you  lingering darkening

that look  widening  that rising attraction  

moving  leaning toward  when entering 

a room where another is  a moment

already  waiting a fraction of   that 

attraction too slow  long  years eagerly

outpaced  too lately  too forward  ancient 

foldings inward  unforetold distraction  

enough  just that  enough  I am  I don’t  

want that  I want that  I didn’t  but I do

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Jack Fiallos via Wikimedia

An Ordinary Letter (Day 386)

He takes what looks like an ordinary letter 

the paper slightly worn and smudged, 

but scrolled and looped with his extraordinary

handwriting, to the blue mailbox up the block.

Left hand snug in the pocket of his beige jacket, 

right barely holding the graying pink leash, 

at the end of which a heavy-set, low-slung 

white mutt ambles companionably.

Requiring only a moment to relieve herself, to 

sniff a leaf here, a carelessly-tossed food wrapper 

there, the dog (like the man) has few expectations, 

and is therefore seldom disappointed.

At the end of the block, he glances sheepishly 

at the empty streets and sidewalks—chastising 

himself for his inexplicable sense of shame—

counts to three under his breath, pulls the handle.

Like a jail-cell door, the mailbox clangs shut. 

His letter slides down the chute, off the other mail

with a swoosh. Then, shrugging imperceptibly, as if 

to say: Well, that’s done, then, he turns toward home. 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Pixabay

Longed for (Day 363)

night imploded 

into sleek weeks 

of longed-for lethargy 

a million stars became 

months of quiet musings 

yet in the end it was not 

my lover blackberry-ripe 

with unnewsworthy stories 

who constrained my heart 

it was my friend

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Pixabay

Searching (Day 358)

searching 

   for safe passage

on a map 

of the gray 

   and rainy space 

   in your heart

no clear route 

   between 

   here and there

   just trailing words

dotted where towns were 

with small 

   black 

      holes

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Black Sunday dust storm, April 14, 1935 (US NOAA Public Library). You can see some truly incredible photos here: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=blacksunday-maps

Winter Cafe (Day 314)

The table where we used to sit is empty, 

bare but for a handful of citrus-hued leaves, 

uncomfortable chairs that never supported 

our backs or, frankly, our behinds, have been 

turned upside down, stacked one on the other 

and chained together like escaped convicts 

in an old movie--in it together until they are 

killed, recaptured, or freed by a stranger 

with an axe. You may have noticed, I am not 

being terribly romantic. There were days when 

seeing our favorite place this desolate would 

have depressed me. Perhaps, I would think 

of a simile, about how the sidewalk cafe was 

like our life together, unloved, abandoned, 

or some such. But today, looking at the bereft, 

rain-spattered tables, feeling the damp chill 

creep from the sidewalk into my toes, I think 

only this: I am different now. And I am glad.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image via Pixabay

He Cannot Pronounce Her Name (Day 311)

Unsayable, a scree of consonants

piled up at the base, he cannot

pronounce her name. Love, dear,

darling, forever come simply and

easily as sugar in coffee, 

the way she fixes it for him 

in the morning while he showers, 

rinsing off the night’s dreams, 

that dark oily scent clinging 

to the steam, making his mouth 

water like it does when he wants

 to kiss her unglossed lips 

the way they are in the morning 

when she wakes up, rosy 

and puffy with sleep, warm 

as a winter fire after a midnight walk 

on new snow, when the world 

glows bright as a full moon, 

and the drifts shimmer, casually

heaped against the fences,

already pitted, collapsing 
like those consonants at the end 
of her name, which he cannot, 
could never, pronounce.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Skeeze via Pixabay

1: Him (Day 303)

Snowflakes fall like coins 

from a lurid coral sky. 

Left out in the cold, 

he chases them, 

grasps at the shattered air. 

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: 12019 via Pixabay

Trail of Crumbs (Day 300)

We sliced the days 

thin as fluttering kite tails, 

savored every hour, and, 

in case we lost ourselves 

along the way, we left 

a trail of crumbs, remnants 

of a life that love consumed,

to guide us home 

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Illustration for Hansel and Gretel by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)

Lapsed Lovers, Part 2* (Day 283)

...but all frozen operas melt, 

the Earth loves heat, and 

sweeping shade trees

love the Earth, and there, 

caught in the middle, they 

recall their favorite scenes, 

rekindling cold memories 

in which the very pears 

hanging within reach, sing 

golden notes in dulcet tones

no lover worth his bruised

blue heart will admit 

his part in affairs gone wrong,

and even Cupid rolls his eyes 

at their sigh-soft gazes and 

insistance on playing 

that song again

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: The Embarkation for Cythera (1717), Antoine Watteau 

(One of my all-time favorite paintings!)

*Continued from Lapsed Lovers, Part 1 Day 281

I Tell You No (Day 238)

Because I tell you no, I tell you yes. 

You only have to guess to see me smile. 

Once in a long while, you might let me down. 

I’ll come around again, though if you wait. 

Too late is not the same as yesterday. 

And now the birds have flocked, and now have flown. 

The days have grown so short, and cold, and gray. 

You say I told you no, but I said yes.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Photo: Pixabay

The Starry Night (Day 219)

The brown serge, warm in the deluge, 

grew clammy and rumpled easily 

when squeezed into the five-thirty’s

ever-crowded, cramped seats.

Trillions of stars watched as he

—shoulder to shoulder with neighbors 

and strangers in the second car from 

the end—relaxed into the swaying ride 

down the coast toward the unknowable 

emptiness of this Friday evening. 

Somewhere, his seat-mate’s newspaper 

announced with barely suppressed glee, 

a devastating something or other

had caused property damage and,

almost certainly, loss of life.

Somewhere else, right now, he imagined, 

a plane was touching down on searing, 

crackled tarmac, bumping toward a terminal, 

fuselage already covered in red dust,  

overhead bins clunk-clunking, heralding 

the beginning: of vacations, of adventures, 

of memories of a lifetime. Unbelievably,

that lifetime was no longer his; no longer 

his, the smile, the camera, the deep bliss 

of the first, exhausted flop onto the hotel bed, 

the sigh of delight, the de rigeur perusal 

of nightstand drawers and room service menu.

Trillions of stars still watched, as the silver line

of his train pulled up to a darkened station,

spilled a swarm of damp, disgruntled 

commuters onto the pavement, and heaved 

itself southward. Hitching his collar higher, 

fingers wound tightly around the house keys 

in his pocket, he paused, took one slow breath,

then turned left and headed uphill, trudging 

slowly upward into the starry night. 

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Fæ via Wikimedia Commons