August Villanelle, and: Metonymy

August Villanelle

Late August nights, sky cooling, bright with fireflies:
I keep remembering the ache and burn
of sunsets, scarlet threads through broken skies.

These nights alone are quiet now. The sighs
of stars echo my pulse with your return
this August night. Cool sky bright with fireflies,

the sullen shadows flood your blue-gray eyes.
Each neighbor's porch light flares up in turn
as the sun sets, scarlet threads through broken skies.

My muscles tense with memory, the surprise
of your thick breath again. I can't unlearn
those August nights, sky cooling, bright with fireflies.

I'm watching your profile and I realize
you're never really coming home. Still I yearn
for sunsets, scarlet threads through broken skies,

your palm against my hip, the solemn cries
for touch. You're gone, you leave nothing but the burn
of August nights, sky cooling, bright with fireflies,
the sunsets, scarlet threads through broken skies.

Metonymy

An object stands in place of, then replaces
another. Body comes to mean the self
entire. The only way to live is through
the skin and soon a clear dichotomy

appears. There is only the consonance
of joints, the hush and crack of bone and tendon,
until the body is a metaphor.

I watched Eliza slide, bones stretching skin
to parchment, pitiable hollows of cheeks:
the raucous and guttural vernacular
of grief. She had no other language,

only the symmetry of fist and throat,
only the bones, their repetitions like
a villanelle, the whisper: wounded,
        wounded.