The Goodbye Letters
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I. “Dear Brother,”

Goodbye in September
means goodbye forever.
Your feet are cold and
I can’t look at you, I know
at night you can’t breathe
and the demons that have long
been housed inside your skin
peel back your innocence
as unforgiving shadows.
You have my blood;
I’d give you half
my soul’s weight to keep
but I know you leave tonight.
So here’s a kiss, for the journey

(and this letter;
keep the toys in the top drawer,
the autographed soccer ball, the chocolates.
if you travel far, take care)

II. “Our fights are always like a new birth, dear,”

In the first page of the book I bought you it says
“From Betty to Carl, in grateful appreciation”
Two people we don’t know, but they loved
the poems about frog hearts and roses.
My clothes are wrinkled like an ocean for you,
(adapting to your curves)

The geraniums still talk to me on the sidewalks.
If you’d like to know, I have mastered excuses
for you leaving, but I still wake up every morning
thinking that your lips are pressed against mine.

At night,
stars from the depth
of my marrow
still miss your eyes.
Goodbye, and find the things you are
(they are not here; you can take
the pictures and the credit card receipts—
the only remnants from what was good)

III. “My Country, final destination for my hands,”

Saying goodbye in August, I saw your
Fingers extended like a crane
through the sand and volcanoes
I traveled towards
(your wings spanning continents,
one of your legs always above water).
Goodbye, when I come back
I’ll find childhood again, dancing chained
under the same sky I remember—
color-coded to capricious clouds,
tucked into the corners of the land.

(I watch from the north
where the sun doesn’t tip the earth.
Until we meet again,
I give you the halves of my second heart.)