Poems with Simile

I woke before you and did nothing about it. The radiator ticked. Your shoulder rose and fell.

My hands still set the table for two. Not every night—just Thursdays, when my hands forget

My father's chair still faces the window where he watched the street as if expecting a delivery

My father's workshop smelled of pine and something electrical— the ozone ghost of a drill

She does this thing with bobby pins— holds three between her lips like small dark fish

The house at three a.m. becomes a throat that hums with all the things we didn't say, and I lie still as someone in a boat

Blessed are those who aren't sure. Blessed are those who came to church for the singing, stayed for the quiet,

August is a thief who comes dressed as a gift: the peach at its most golden

He doesn't know I keep a list. Not on paper—in the body, in the part that doesn't forget.

The maples don't grieve. That's the first lesson.

There's a song that knows more about your life than your therapist.

Saturday starts with silence, slow and soft, sheets still warm from sleeping in.

The best basketball happens after the game. When the gym is locked and the scoreboard is off.

My brain has no off switch. I've looked.

The birds don't care that you're trying to sleep. They have a concert.

The kettle hisses its slow complaint— ssssssss— like a secret it's been holding since last night.

Under the lights every town is the same town.

The first month, I kept calling. Not on purpose.

I looked it up: inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn't just grow wings. It dissolves.

The tulips don't know it's still cold. Or they know and they don't care.

Love is like a house fire— not the kind that starts in the kitchen.

She walks like she knows something the room doesn't.

Korea is a peninsula— land reaching into water like a hand trying to touch something.

I've been trying to describe your eyes for six years and I keep getting it wrong.

Scotland is not a country. Scotland is a weather system with opinions.

The trees are undressing in public again—no shame, no apology, just color falling like confessions too beautiful to keep.

I didn't know I was looking until I found you—the way you don't know you're cold until someone hands you a blanket.

She wore the backpack like a turtle shell—too big for the body, perfect for the bravery.

Say it slowly: thank you for the Tuesday rides, for cutting apples thin,

On Sundays he polished his shoes at the edge of the bed, small circles, black cloth,

After the guns, the field made no speech. It lifted poppies

At first she shows us only ceiling, then one eyebrow, then the lamp. We say tilt it down.

Every app asks to know me: where I slept, what I bought,

The sign says home is twenty miles. I choose the road that makes it forty. Past the quarry,

All winter the motorcycle waits beneath a grey cover. I turn the wheels by hand,

At the red light, the engine warms my knees. A child in the next car

Our robes were ordered in one size: cathedral curtain. We climb the steps like weather,

At measure thirty-seven the altos vanish. Not from the room.

The final amen has seven endings. The organ chooses one. The choir chooses another.

Question ten still waits with four empty lines. I have written however

The roof stayed on. The old elm did not. Its roots lifted dark earth

The whistle sends us climbing from blue water into evening. Wet feet slap concrete.

For twenty minutes the path climbs through white air. No valley, no destination,

By morning, the flags are damp. Someone sweeps confetti from the station. The winning shirt is still worn proudly.

Your shoes remain by the door, one lace under the other heel. For weeks I step around them