Superior

Early-morning tenderness;
you lay out your dress and press
your fingers up against the shower wall.
Coffee when the sun comes up—
you yawn and moan over your cup—
we wish it true, but time won’t stall.
Nighttimes spent with wine and spring;
the distant twang of banjo strings;
a thousand ways for us to be sublime.
Temperance in a lakeshore town:
For you, I’ll turn the grayness down
and plant myself among the whitest pines.

The cold air on our naked skin
makes the grave that we begin
to dig ourselves when we refuse to hide.
We reminisce and we relate
to the waving of the great
white north where frigid water keeps our time.
Your tired limbs, my tired mind—
you healed the sick; I made them mine—
Somehow, now, I fell off from their terror.
I trade the gray for white and green;
for something that you think pristine—
The asphalt brokenhearted bad news bearer.

Autumn’s gone; the winter’s set;
we live a Marquette temperament:
Born and raised upon the Detroit skyline.
A morning where we make amends
with humid breath and backwards bends;
we rise above the great above and sunrise.
I’m crazy but I can’t complain
‘cause now I live a wayward haze;
a silver-lining fantasy in snowbanks.
I’m wide-eyed, but I’m back-and-forth
between the grayness and the North—
I’m burned alive inside your mother’s gas tank.