this is for the boy i loved
so much i let his name
become a bone in my heart,

the boy who breaks dawn
into symphonies, a night that lasts
a little longer.

his nails cut crescents,
bloodless moons
in his clenching palms.

he is not the kind of boy
who can make a fist
out of such fingers.

i take him into the rain,
him and his violin and say
play me something, amor

see: how easy it is to love him
with his fingers trembling
on the strings, how his liquid

lull catches in the droplets
clinging in the hollow of his throat.
yes, he lets me at his neck.

i have scraped my teeth
over that sacred dip for nights on end.
the sky hangs so low, so still around us,

i am sure god has turned his face away
for a moment. he has given me a night
in which his song stills even light.

see, how beautiful
a boy on the cusp
of drowning.

four months later,
he will look himself in the eye
for the first time and swallow

all of his father's heart medicine.

i couldn't love him enough
to stop his body becoming a husk of soil,
an underground strain.

i couldn't love him enough
to make his heart
a song.

i am standing in a room of boxes
at midnight, shirtless and swaying
to a tune on the radio.

it aches something of his hands
in the stilled street,
something swelling, cracking

inside of me. i open
my mouth to sing
and am choked by feathers.

look,
still

the song-bird of slivered moons
rising from this little grove,
the marrow he left singing.

again, i lead him by the hand
into the stuttering of the rain,
the swollen streetlights,

the aching moon.
again, he lends me
one more hour to live.

one more song
that softens my bones,
leaves me trembling.

charlie, i see you like this:
keening, curled over your violin
soaked in light.