Honeysuckle and Heat

I want to write
a poem 
compare the dew of your lips 
on a wind-swept 
summer morning
to honeysuckle 

try to pen the 
flashing light
a sugary floral balm 
of lemon daybreak and 
daffodils,
of hand-picked posies and 
-held walks
around mundane street blocks

but I stop short of ink
and lose track
of similes, 
forgotten
that I've reduced you to
abstract meaning, 
begun
to compare dreams
to a summer's day

I'm listless 
trying to draft a 
suitable allegory 
to express the wistfulness
of our nostalgia, yet 
it's that time of the night
where I 
surrender 
sofa-sunk and dehydrated 
vibrating from the churn
of the day

where I wish I could find the 
words
show the people that
biting into you 
before the pancakes
and the maple 
makes a scene 
between my thumbs and chin,
is like baking cinnamon
in some small cabin
where wood crackles
and heat tastes like 
molasses,
where the frost only
has just begun 
to blanket
pine

I want to paint
a visual so charming
that it takes the
reader
a singular heartbeat
to draw their own conclusions
that you naturally evoke imagery
of 
crawling jasmine 
across picket fences 
in a city that never 
rises above 80 degrees,
where a cool sap-filled breeze 
is as promised as a 
message of good
in the morning,
and how when we blink 
too closely
our eyelashes kiss,
and I can smell
the date fig taste 
of your breath
as you pull me closer
and breathe life into the day,

but I'm prompted,
as if by the clamor of plates
shattering at a wedding feast
of your figment,
of the mirage 
your aura leaves 
when you head back
to autumn 

missing is like
anger
a deep hum in the softest
part of you
a feeling so edged
you'd wish it would carve
bone
If only I could offer you 
a femur to whittle,
trade the heat of anger 
for a blue sky picnic 
of ripe strawberries,
howling goldfinches, 
and banana-baked bread.

As the season deepens
and the imprint of
longing  
is chiseled into my loveseat
I drift in the static, 
white noise
between memory 
and fantasy
where your absence becomes 
a cold plunge
where I find the negative
of your bloom
a reminder that even when
the temperature drops
below zero,
and we've spent all of August
marrow suckling honey 
and roasting aside alpine lakes,
that, like the huddled mass of twigs
left from flown lovebirds,
the echoes of our moments linger.