Triolet

Pieces of you get left behind.
Ripe dandelions on a windy day,
stragglers by design.
Pieces of you get left behind:
your skin, your breath, your imprint on my mind.
Sometimes I wish the whole of you would stay.
Pieces of you get left behind
as ripe dandelions on a windy day.

Methodically walking because it’s the only thing I know how to do
as I contemplate leaving you.

I know you’re not the one but I still want you to be.
You’re too different from me.

I just want someone to love;
to love me.

To hold hands with down the street;
recite poetry.

But don’t cover me, nor devour me
or make me feel incomplete.

Life’s just not that neat
even with all the straight lines I see

as I walk from line to line
on the squares of sidewalk.

I gawk at the way we follow lines:
the crosswalk
the timeline, and tick-tock, the clock.

Even the cigarette in the hand
is a line to our death.

Oh nonsense, nonsense, none of this
makes any sense, like the yew and the moontree,

some great powers that be,
an inverted universe

where I am a poet
and the lines follow me.

Samantha Kolber
from 1/17/08