*

I am in love with
your golden-reds

with the sting
of restraint

with pretending
the sweet salt

of your palm
is mine

© Sarah Whiteley

disturbances

the hesitations spring like reeds
that sway and bend at the edge of me

I have been disturbed beyond surfaces

as if the stone of your name were dropped
again and again into the heart of me

and I must swallow it whole or break

© Sarah Whiteley

turned earth

I had determined
(after the last)
to no longer offer up
the root of myself

let it beat
(I thought)
for nothing other than
to mark the time
passing beneath my skin

but then hands
(so mercilessly capable)
dug in and I am as earth
freshly turned and raw

and the root
(remembering yearning)
has caught the rain of you
and strains again
toward sun

© Sarah Whiteley

untitled

the moon has captured me
by the ankles, is
crawling through me
and I must burst
into new surfaces

this morning my hands
awoke, and for the first
time in years, ached
to find something other
than air beside them

but even without
the solid press of
your arm on mine, I
have found wonder in this
upended cup of stars

© Sarah Whiteley

I know when it is I am burning

I know when it is
I am burning –

when the sparrow
in my throat
bursts free from
the fretful gravity
of kisses nearly pressed
but not

and when gazes
glance away
from what has not
yet been but is almost
said and left to hang
between

I know when it is
I am burning –

when on the verge
of crumbling into dust
I find myself at precipices
and am far too fragile
to bear your touch
without incineration

but if at night
I may find my boldness –
and peace in being
still beside you –
then I pray time
will consume the day
and love bend
light away

© Sarah Whiteley

that I was I

that I was I
and you were you
and want being
what it is –
shortening
the shortest
distance between
two selves –

with the brevity
of “yes”
we were quite
suddenly we
and with nothing
but combustion
in between

© Sarah Whiteley

directional awareness

I could measure
your every step
in pinpricks
at the back
of my neck –
a limbed map
of proximities

© Sarah Whiteley

for a while

you were the sea

and no more could
I turn you away
than a sparrow could
the rumblings of a storm

but for a while
I wore you like raindrops
on feathers

© Sarah Whiteley

a few dried blooms

I have reconciled myself to much lately
perhaps too much so
and now the hydrangeas
have lost their azure
bleached to bone-papered petals
kissed too closely by the sun
come fall I would have picked
bloom by bloom the dusky blues
and purples from their globes
as they dried for a bit of color
to scatter across the table
but today the possibility
vanished into dry disappointment
if I could just instead pluck
a few small pieces from the sky
of that certain blue with the gold-tinged
hue of days’ slow slide into early autumn
I would not so mind the loss
of a few dried blooms

© Sarah Whiteley

letters to _____ – vii

in the fading hours
when light rolls
thin as skin
into the deepening blue
of shared night
I am as alive with you
in this dark
as the night insects
who wake to vibrate
each leaf into being
even by the stars
you remain sun-dipped
and redolent of day’s heat
I would have you tight held
and as wanting as I
exchanging breath
for pulse and tendons
taut with expectancy
for the benediction
of pressed palms
and the song I become
beneath your fingers
all questions of want
addressed by lines of proof
laid down by mouth
to shadowed curve
but more than all
I would have
the quiet best of you
close carried as the self’s
most secret pleasures
sealed safe
in hallowed certainty
beneath exalted night

© Sarah Whiteley