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Untitled I

Pressed by the weight of waiting, bodies -
weather worn, for want of warmth -
break their bones in the cold.

“Careful,” you said
“That almost meant something.”

We once cared too much.
Too touched to give completely
to something so temporary.

Carefree, I dread
it almost meant nothing.

Emma Garland

Last night I dreamt about you.
What happened in detail I can hardly remember, 
all I know is we kept merging into one another.
I was you, you were me.
Finally somehow you caught fire.

Franz Kafka to Milená Jesenská

i woke without you and the igloo
seeming colder. i could peek
out the crawl-hole but if the entire
spinning earth’s imaginary i don’t want to know.
i have my pelts and visions
of you asleep in your summer skin loving
the deep heart of a tall grass prairie.
i have polar bears and snow
blindness. you have sunsets
striking the silent crows iridescent.
when they swoon to their own new beauty
and the chorus frogs kick in, do you think
of me thinking of you thinking of me?
i tell you what. if i had an albatross
i’d let it lift me like a message
to the jet stream just as the toothy flows
ingest our empty love-shell. you would know me
by the touch of ice on the tongue
of the wind. you would wait with a bouquet
of black feathers and the rest of
our story still warm on your lips.

-Andrew Michael Roberts, “the moments before the crash landing are clearest”