One Last Love Poem

I confess being nervous to preserve you
before the little things fall in chasms of lost wishes.
Maybe it’s not ready but it escapes
like cigarette smoke in a sigh. Before it’s too late, before
fully waking from living this life, I will write
to your body, to your telling stories.
I will drink them into my day like a subtle wink
you’d throw me in a crowded room. I will always
see the charm of a chickenpox scar interrupting
your long lashes, your eyes set in navy
flecks of almost grey, how they will still look
into mine to instantly know how I feel.

I’d like to think I have photo sharp memory
but I still crash down to earth
noticing the strands of your hair
around the house that will sadly vanish in time
and golden bobby pins I find becoming
mousetraps that snap down on smaller memoirs,
subtle as your scent on skin beyond perfume.
The cling to clothes a eulogy for squeezing
into your neck. Your scent will dissipate in the quiet of
home, and I will desperately conjure it when I hum
improvised songs we sang to television melodies
we know and punk mixes we wore out.

If I could, one last time, I would kiss the freckles you hate
on your alabaster skin, the cigarette burn
on your arm that matches mine and shows our survival
so far, the two moles you hate
you know where, the small scar on your knee
you once showed me. Either way, I can hold on
and let this all collapse into the calamities
of beauty, rising to be collected
when I don’t know what else to say or when
I let myself swirl into other sensations of you
I’m still sorry I couldn’t hold onto.