July.
July has left and taken you with it.
I am bad at letting go.
August hasn’t started, yet I’m a week deep.
Your birthday hasn’t passed yet, but it has.
You’re holding my hand until you’re not.
I’m kissing your cheek, right?
There is nothing I love I haven’t walked away from.
-h.c
(07/08/2026)
Muscle memory.
I am defeated and clinging to life purely out of habit.
My lungs have taken enough breaths to remember their function.
My heart has always beaten and so it continues to do so.
The physicality of being alive has become tradition.
Christmas in August.
-h.c
(08/08/2026)
Eyelash.
Every morning I rub my eyes,
I’m told it’ll age me sooner.
An eyelash will come loose from its home
and take shelter on my palm.
I still wish for you health and happiness.
When I look in the mirror, thirty years from now,
and I gaze upon wrinkles formed in flesh,
I’ll hope they came true.
-h.c
(2022)
Tiny.
I miss you.
The feeling of calm in your arms,
and the smell of coffee and smoke.
So frequently sweet, sweat,
honey soap.
All of them felt like home.
I miss your laughter.
Am I still tiny in all of this grief.
-h.c
(2026)
Tell me one of your space facts again.
I’d like to forget that the world turned before I met you.
That it will continue to do so in your absence.
The age-old debate for creation is answered only by your heartbeat.
Atoms hum your name.
Your eyes quasar and I long for oblivion.
-h.c
(08/08/2026)
This love a worn chair.
This love a worn chair.
Creaking spindles play tunes of laughter.
A seat that holds fleshy remnants of portrait pink.
Stained by drinks spilt in my clumsiness.
Nicks on the stile from a wine-drunk tumble when trying to beckon you to dance.
The stretcher warped from years of holding up the weight of us both.
But the legs stand sturdy still.
Drenched in memory of two intertwined upon it.
I want to pick it up and break it to pieces, watch it pour out splinters of witness.
I tuck it under the table and smile anyway.
-h.c
(2024)
Make me your puppet!
I am tired of my skeleton.
Replace it with wire.
See how well I dance.
-h.c
(09/08/2026)
I am not your rotten toy.
You cannot try to scrub me clean and wonder why the stitches come loose.
Sometimes we think a stain must be gouged from flesh before I can hold you.
We did not pick up a needle and thread.
Nor tape, staple, glue.
Just soap, bowl, and elbow grease.
I thrash beneath the suds.
When I rise from the tide I tell you I love you.
-h.c
(28/08/26)