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KD Burr

Selected Poems


The author and her husband

This is a short collection of poems, written during the time I first reconnected with the man who became my husband. Each title is the date the poem was written, and the collection serves as a timeline for the beginning of our romantic relationship.

2/26

You are kerosene

I am the sparking match

I thought I'd let the flame burn out

But it returned

Red as autumn

The moment you walked into that smoky bar.

I think I fell for you that first night,

You asked for a cigarette

And lit it so coolly

I couldn't stop staring at your mouth

Reading signs in the wisps of smoke

Curling from the upturned corners.

Memories seem so cinematic,

The seedy lighting and your backlit halo

Casting a look of innocence you simply don't deserve.

I got drunk on the scent of your jacket

And the heat of your touch as you corrected my aim at pool

I couldn't focus on anything but your breath on my shoulder.

I had no idea then how things would turn out

And the way you smiled at me--

I was right back in sophomore Genetics class

Fumbling with my hands and words just

To end up settling for artless silence,

Thinking of the perfect turn of phrase two hours later.

But my world is different now

We exist together like we have never lived apart

And even though you scare me, and I think you're too wild to tame and I'm too broken to fix, all I want in that moment is you. And in the next moment, and in this one still.

Because the moment you said you loved me

I was reborn from the ashes into your religion.

3/23

The bar was so small it seemed unreal

A leftover movie set downtown

Where all types but our own go to congregate

We laughed and played pool anyway

Whiskey-fueled with our band of misfits.

We led the pack out onto the hazy street

The air was thick with mist tinted

streetlamp yellow

The silence shattered by a cacophony of laughter and shouted questions.

I don't remember what was said-

Just our answers, called out in perfect unison as our shadow moved,

One strangely fluid unit

Against the wall of a crumbling building downtown while we went arm in arm into the night.

You turned to smile just as I did,

One a mirror image of the other

and time slowed to a crawl.

My heart set fire to my chest when

you said you'd fallen more in love

I felt it too, burning there beneath the hollow of my throat.

4/16

Since I've known you

I had to learn

To every light there is a dark,

One never existing without the other

You and I are photo negatives,

Backward mirror images

The same, but not quite

and you complete me in a way

I never knew I needed

We are equal and opposite forces

Unmovable when we inevitably collide

You just push right back against me until everything implodes

On nights like that

You taste of fireball

And I'm drunk on cheap whiskey

I want to run red lights with you and

Ruin our lives in all sorts of new ways

I don't even recognize myself with you

The world has been dark and hazy

since your love has struck me nearly blind

And deaf

And dumb to all the things that mattered before

But that tenderness that rises in my chest when I see your beat up Chevy

almost makes up for the secrets you spill into me,

so heavy I can hardly raise my head to meet your smile

God knows I'm not perfect

And now you know it too

But it will never change the fact

that I would forsake all else in life

to sleep curled up next to you.

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