4
Two poems by gabby catalano
water
“He laid his head in my palms
And I watched as he grew a garden of roses
Across a dying field.
He had the power to entrap me in flesh
Without it.
He had the power to fill it.
His shaky pulse hiding in all his aching limbs —
We depended on each other for breath,
For scars appearing when we don’t shower
And disappearing when we do.
We used to polish our faces before we saw each other,
But that was two years ago —
Before he went to bed and I braided my hair,
He told me that I kept it nice.
Sometimes we moved between
Unsent letters and shoulders and drinks,
And I wondered how a man can breathe
With tears in his eyes, how he can eat
With so much sweat over his head,
How I can eat in sight of so much ocean.
Down below his spine, the surf moved like
A body of morphine twisting up the coast.
He kept
laying in my palms even though his head was throbbing
And he said, “Death passes through you like wind,”
And I replied, “I think it passes over you like
Wind over water.”