strong enough to keep things

from falling apart.

The first time I saw you

I fell apart.

I had no idea who you were.

You walked into a studio I was in

and walked out.

Minutes later I was a puddle

in the parking lot,

my friend’s hand on my back

asking what was wrong.

I couldn’t explain it.

It was 2003.

I had no woo-woo in me

back then. I didn’t believe

in reincarnation.

I just knew I’d loved you once

and would again. Months later,

still not knowing who you were,

I saw you on TV reporting the invasion

of Iraq, then the occupation of Palestine,

a bloodfire in the sky above you

and you not flinching,

or I thought you weren’t flinching

until we started sharing a bed

and I could see the war

behind your eyelids,

how you tore the covers off

every morning like a kid

unwrapping a gift.

Like the dawn of a simple day

was everything you’d ever

put on your Christmas list.

I’d still be sleeping when you’d leave

for circus practice. Circus practice,

where you’d walk the tightrope, twirl

on trapeze bars, then come home

and pull me into the front yard to teach me

how to toss juggling balls

into a still-blushing sky.

When I think about why we broke up,

why you flew all the way to Croatia

to let go of the juggling balls I made you,

I know it’s because I was a terrible juggler.

I couldn’t figure out how to hold something

and set it free at the same time.

So I dropped the ball. Convinced myself

I was up in the air about you

when really I was up in the air about me.

It’s what we do—turn our bodies into museums

of what was broken. Blame

the checkbook, the affair, the bottled up

tears. Blame the toast going stale

the day after the wedding.

We rip the letter off the keyboard

instead of control, command, escape, delete.

Say it was the turbulence

of long distance instead of the baggage

unclaimed. But at the carousel of clarity

(otherwise known as fifteen years of therapy),

I see I wasn’t running from the war

back then. I was running from the peace.

The love I did not believe I was worth.

And because that lie held so much grief,

I don’t know that I ever got over you

as much as I got under

the engine of myself

to fix the machine of my love,

which now runs okay

but still runs way too much,

if you know what I mean,

and I know you know what I mean,

because this was not the first lifetime

we said goodbye

without wanting to say goodbye,

was it?

TIME PIECE

I’ve never known who Nick is.

I show up just in the stranger of time,

sift every grain of sand from the Pacific Coast

into an hourglass that fits in my palm.

I turn the hourglass upside down and Vancouver