for her in D minor

Mikal Wix

And I cannot stop talking to you
every night my fingertips reach the fight,
the rose veneer holding you snug,
like nights taut when we spooned,
your head on my arm, I’d die all over
to be there in the spheres again
that chase each other around the high,
full of midges dancing over your lips
holding hands in the December sun
breath floating out in front of us
like promises ferried by lunacy.

But the wood is no longer warm to touch,
you exhale a sinus rhythm in my ribcage,
a stubborn reprise, a well-worn psalm sung
among the cloistered pages of ashy saints
robed in newborn moths, emergent mornings
to find an otherworld to conquer
in the resignation syndrome of sleep.

Your wings were never a problem for me
even when they lost the air to speak.
But then you landed softly on the one key
I could never reach, a sign for all the rest
that opened the window and let it flow
back under the trees, a note of froth
to float up inside the white caps,
everyone else left to dare a crest,
or to remain here in this place together
and apart

because no core can hold in the spin
of decay, this path of quivers
holding us down together
in feathers
and foreshadowed tremors,
our unfettered hands in release
carried away by feats of balance,
of lift at every turn
adagio.

Mikal Wix is a queer writer from Miami. Their poems are found or forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine, North American Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Moss Puppy, Portland Review and elsewhere. They are Associate Poetry Editor of West Trade Review. All published work here: https://linktr.ee/mikalwix