I miss her golden waves crashed upon my foam-green couch,
Her pleated skirts riding up our winter-warm thighs,
Slow-motion kissing in the indigo dark of my den,
Rolling around the library floor after dark,
Heads spinning off of molly and Tito’s
Like the old globe we knocked over.

My angel in the snow went down(right) cold on me,
Leaving only the steam of her breath on my neck,
An arthritic chill in my fingertips and chest,
Worse between REM and reality,
The space above my nose and
Below the tree-line of my mind.

No piling of blankets can keep the cold out of my bones,
No fistful of pills can keep the heat inside my head for long.

I remember her in blue velvet garters, bowed chokers, erotic arias,
Vignettes as meaningful as whole reels, even bubbled and cracked,
Tears pearling over mink lashes, midnights spent searching for lost contacts,
Pony-tailing her from the onslaught of acid(ick) puke, afternoons wasted wandering
Into sundown, scudding from the ice to snow forts, licking the frost from her eyebrow,
Unafraid of sticking together until the season thaws and spits us out like swirling Pisceans.

I hope she regards me still as helpful, a dog-eared page of poetry and devotion,
Someone with the capacity for kindness—wider in scope for her from its exclusivity.
Recalls and keeps the secrets of a bent-up childhood, all those rueful misdeeds
Where she was only accomplice in my better half, the starlit plotting our bond.
We never made off with more than Claire’s charms or what our past flames
Originally stole through deception, sex, or promises the clock ran out on.

Yet I regard our spoils as sacred, reclaimable with a sterling pickaxe.
Walled off with icicles, I await your return, our next great mistake.

Or at least mine.