Listen: Were there ever any doubt as to the way I loved you, dear, please note —
today at your doorstep I dropped chrysanthemums and one piece of lost and stolen
time, seven daydreams fashioned by hope, soft paper vellum, a groaning week in May,
and only the best of chance.
 
Yesterday, I missed you so deeply, my chest ached for your subtle sound echoing
through thick cartilage to reach me amplified, misted, sweet, and bold — longed
for you as I long for the taste of your tongue on mine or the subtle heat of your clothed
shoulder near.
 
It is regular, lately, how much I dream I kiss you, touch you, taste you where our
hearts can top each other, where fragile skin glides and collides. So, honest, love,
were there ever any doubt as how I love you, listen. Look: Today a man too many
years your senior stood
 
in line before me; but when I cemented your brain and heart to his frame, immediately,
I loved him, gazed at him adoringly, with hunger, wanting at once the span of his
short build to hang on mine, the touch of his white hair to brush my chest, and the absent
smile hid behind a frown
 
to reappear. Oh, la — I nearly invited him to visit my bed, that erstwhile ghost of you,
clamored for his presence in those places I most seek you, in dreamy night or the taste
of your tears: Listen, distant one: were there ever any doubt as to how
I love you, don’t doubt now. 
 
Let me find you in my sheets and heart’s swelled music at long last, where I would
always, with best intentions, lend you this heart’s expansion should you want it,
let it recreate your pulse — for though this may mean I’d lose it for a while,
watching lingeringly from remote
 
as it traveled past foreign shores and climes, I’d tell it never cease its love
for you, then kiss it goodbye, offering just one ready piece of advice on
love and loving: To be true to me, completely, it must
deny you nothing.

Heather M Fowler

The floors creak a little.
On the walls I notice
nail holes and tiny fissures
from things just taken down.
 
Here, the door doesn’t
quite shut without slamming,
the bathroom has no
you, no table to hold
 
a piece of you in frames, just the hamper
and I, in a mirror hung too high
to see where your lies would
(often) hit below my belt.
 
Tonight, I have bought myself back
this way, with these new sights
of old rooms, old places but new keys
on my mantle. Mine. As if they
 
were new hands
on my face, on my waist,
new come-hither touches
waiting on air for me
 
in this quiet reverie
where I feel your absence
only barely and bleach all surfaces
knowing the true value of bleach,
 
is to evacuate germs, infections,
to rid the mind of old thoughts,
old places, old scents, old colors
ridden from my clothes like pictures
 
ridden from boxes. No, nothing
you own is here now. No messages. No
lost albums. No broken truths. Perhaps
it is strange to find solace
 
in these bare walls, to seek a clean
place without memories
in which to sterilize
my heart or my teeth;

perhaps some can let sit
other people’s tarnished things, wonder
if they’ll ever pick them up and wait
until the knowing of who
 
owned what would fade.
But I say, the color of
independence
is riddance, always white, white
 
white, white, white — like what,
in the bleach, your photo becomes
when the face dissolves away,
how the paper looks, peeling wet
 
then drifting
into grey skies, sheet-like and airy,
falling from the second floor window
where it is a marvel I even bother to
 
watch myself let it, or any
part of you, go.
Shame on me, I think,
that I should try so hard to see
 
an already fallen thing, fall.

Heather M Fowler

This is my long, lyrical love letter to the dullness of your soul; hear
the piano’s crescendo, the marching band, the three hyenas
waiting at the edge of the canyon near your house? Each day
I fed them lunchmeat and canned corn and rubbish, kept
them away from your door. Did that not mean something?
 
It was a service. Once, I owned my heart, before I sold it to you, but
now I see too late it went too cheaply. So, tell me, is your love for me
like a pawn shop downtown where I may buy or trade it back? Clearly,
you will cheat me, offer someone’s grandma’s lorgnette, a pair of stained hose,
maybe a cigar box, or a clock for what you paid me — and then
 
try to charge more to return it as you hold it, as it beats for me,
longing for me, seeing me — but I will not pay you then. Soon enough
I will go there at night for its rescue, break your storefront glass
like a burglar, steal it back, swallow it down my throat to land
again in my chest since it shrank so small
 
in your company it was more like a pill than a
palm tree, but my unanswered question will be: Will you
notice anything but broken glass
upon your return — the next day,
in your fugue, in your misery — (and)
 
later, when you find
you can’t have it back,
tell me,
will you even
know it gone?

Heather M Fowler