153.

I am reminded of you in the pit in my stomach
in my cigarette cravings and in pretending to be half-asleep
in the sound of second glances and missed opportunities
in cramping legs and in held breath

I am reminded of you in the shake in my fingers
in coffee grinds and backwards caps
in the gray and green of rain and the black of 5 AM
in waiting to be kissed and in avoidance

all I have left are reminders under my fingernails
kicking back dust into smoke from the evenings when I told you
"I swear I'll quit buying packs, just after this last one"
because I was so nervous to show you my wrists, my throat
knowing you had never brought me knives before, but
I thought there was a first time for everything

so I trembled and smoked and apologized
and you just smiled and stayed silent
swaying with your hands in your pockets

I spent every moment split in two, half ankle-deep in cement
and half putty-melting toward you
cursing my crossed legs and knowing
that nothing was left between us but yellow light illuminating
the nicotine we exhaled, and we sat in that standstill for months

now I am reminded of you in the creak in my bones
in opening clenched fists only to find them empty
in the crescendo, and in cutting the music off
before the song is over

152.

gather up every sharp and hollow memory you keep of us
(like every kiss I should have cursed you with)
and I will take them from you, and fill your hands
with violets and my yellow fingers instead

there are so many ways to say I'm Sorry

and I am pressing my lips to every photograph we never took
the way your breath smelled in the dead of night,
when you sang a crown over my head and held my shoulders
and all they ever did for you was turn cold

maybe this is what I deserve, silence like a punch in the gut
blinded by the absence of you and all I want
is the hum of your skin on my mouth
and the place on your neck that I kept secret, and I swear
I still trip over the way you smiled at me under the table
when your mother forgot my dinner order

you laced under me like crossbeams
and you lifted me up by the knees

now I am dripping like creek water and I am asking you
to please come back

because there is so much of you that I squandered
and I should have brushed my fingers all down your arms every day,
should have kissed your palms and your eyelashes,
should have wrapped myself around your waist every morning
and not let you walk out the door

there are so many ways to say I'm Sorry
and I choked on them all
and stayed quiet

151.

I am walking, footsore, back to the bed we slept in
travelling weary and wanting you like I swore I wouldn't
and you will always be the Her in my stories

and do you remember
how everything happened for us past midnight
all of our best moments wrapped in some half-haze, veiled
at 3 AM after he had stopped asking where you were
and we could cradle each other like eggshells in a feather bed

and you were always feather-soft, your edges blurred
through little crystal tears in the corners of my eyes
or maybe I just didn't want to see you
too clearly in the light of day

and we ended softly, too
no loud goodbye, just the hush of regret
and the words I whispered into your hair while you slept -

the words I laced into my fingertips, and
I still hold hands with them sometimes,
every pillow-lipped I Love You

and today I wrap them in a fist.

I have been blindfolded and foolish, thirsty for 3 AM
while I am walking away from you in circles
and coming back to you again

and do you remember
the things I showed you under the covers, my hunger
and the questions I painted black across your bedroom wall
how gently I kissed your skin and how hard I hoped
you would tell me your secrets

but we ended with a clap and a jolt
some storm inside me breaking, no clean goodbye
just the hush of a rain curtain closing you out
and drowning my broken back.

I am still waiting for our epilogue
but some midnights still fill my mouth like introductions,
like the first time we touched, our early years
your eyes and all the colors of you
and everything is thunder-swirled inside of me

so I suppose
that waking up at 3 AM will always sound like you breathing
and you will always be the Her in my stories

Gaslight

I am sick and you are cradling me in a borrowed bed
we are falling in love and you are telling me
you will make me better

cut to you wearing the headband my grandmother made
at a party, and I am wearing your hat over my smile and spinning
you are telling me I am the best thing that's ever been yours
and that's why you want to marry me

cut to you catching my arm before I walk out the door
you are telling me you will miss me too much, and that's why
I can't visit my mother alone anymore

cut to you kissing other mouths on the dance floor
and my cheeks red and wet three days later, my own mouth
asking you why. you are telling me you have a headache
and that's why you want me to stop talking

cut to me crazy in love and crying, you have convinced me
to rough-house with you in the kitchen
you grin and hold me while you are telling me
this is a game, and I am trembling

cut to me crunched into myself under our bed sheets, hands grasping
and empty of you, lungs wracked with fever and flashbacks
feet just starting to slip just past sanity
you are telling me you are worried about me, but
you just needed to blow off some steam
and that's why you left me here

cut to me waking you at 4 AM, bleeding
into the bed and you are carrying me to the bathroom
to wipe my legs clean of the red mess I've made

cut to me seeing shapes behind corners, holding your hand
as we take a walk to clear my cracking head, as monsters slither up
from the depths of campus fountains and I am convinced
that the hooting owl above us is coming for me, I swear
you are telling me it is okay that I'm losing my mind
because you are here, you are here

and did you wait until I came home from the hospital
before slithering under her covers?
or did you kiss her the night I checked in?
maybe it was months later, I can't remember.
my mind got broken, gets fuzzy
and I still forget things

cut to me folding my paper hands and swallowing tears
three months later saying I have to leave
you are telling me I am selfish
and you want me moved out by Monday

cut to you stretching the headband my grandmother made
over another girl's head at a party while I am watching
you are telling me I broke your heart,
and that's why you act this way

cut to you whispering my name to new friends
and stringing it together with words like "cold" and "heartless"
I am telling you we cannot be friends anymore, and
you are telling me it's no great loss to you

cut to me still telling our story to myself sometimes
still trying to piece it together, still tripping
through fog and a bramble of busted memories
still trying to forget what you told me

The Bee Burial

On that day you kissed my mouth, a warm grape-water kiss
and we made camp under a violet sky
drinking red wine and searching the yard for faerie rings
and buried treasure, catching glimpses of beetles and shy slugs
and at least three pixies, before we found him:
a dead bumblebee
lying face-up, nestled amid a grassy forest
tiny legs folded in dignity over his body.

Perhaps the spiders and the earthworms had mourned him already,
but we still cried for him, and let the spring breeze kiss the dew
away from our cheeks.

We gave him a soldier's burial,
a single blade of grass laid across his chest like a sword,
with dandelions and buttercups wreathed around his shallow grave.
And we sang buzzing songs, pollen songs,
and we hummed as we knelt in the dirt, and we vowed
that he would not be forgotten.

On that day we were solemn and enchanted
with magic on our mud-stained hands, and gold dust
in our hair and eyelashes.
Time hung honey-thick in the air until we took a break for strawberries
and realized half a day had passed, and we were halfway closer
to some ordinary tomorrow,
and our reverie was slowly beginning to fade
like swimming back to the surface of wakefulness
after a long dream.

So we waited as long as we could,
lingering outside while a hazy twilight settled,
memorizing the burial songs we'd written, and letting our love story
spill wine-red onto the blanket we brought.

And even years later, sometimes the hum
of a honeybee's wings in the morning
still sounds like a resurrection.

150.

you are telling travel stories, and I can smell meadow grass on your breath
as you talk about your itching feet, how they won't stand still for long
and I can feel mine growing restless, too

so I walk outside for once
and I make it as far as the back porch,
sitting here trying to swallow some green air, something clean
to wash the tar from my lungs.

you talk about vastness, about immensity
and I can see it in your mouth when you open wide enough,
blue mountains behind your teeth

and something cracks in me
when I listen to your wilderness songs

somehow I am nine years old again
and I am watching the sun climb a Colorado horizon
crossing my heart and hoping we never go back to Texas
and then I am nineteen, hiking through Arizona
pressing the photographs I've taken into my chest and praying
that the images will transfer, and my skin will become canyon-colored
and then I am twenty-two in New Mexico
cheeks raw from mountain sleet,
and from laughing too hard

my feet are cramping in these high heels, and I am curious
what you can see in my mouth when I open wide
whether it is all cigarette butts
and broken glass
the blood I've swallowed

or whether there is still some blue sky
in the back of my throat

149.

I will lay soil all along the carpets and turn on all the lights in the house
because the twilight is blue outside my window and I am a mess
with only halves of words in my head

I have visions of myself covered in moss
walking on cracked twigs somewhere no one has heard my voice
and even here, I cannot see my fingers

I think something is wrong.
can't you just buy one or two cigarettes? why a whole pack?
I've still got a corner of clean lung to blacken but I don't need a whole pack for that

I like to imagine warm dirt tasting clean, though
that maybe swallowing some could help me feel older in a good way
and there is a whole bed of it waiting for me someplace

I just need some peace and quiet and a break from this silence
with everything pushing at my ears from the inside

I just need to crack some bones open, mine or yours
either way it might wake me up

148.

curling my toes into little fists like eyes shut tight
replaying all my best kisses, every butterfly I've swallowed
tugging at bed sheets alone like your skin,
like your shirt when I am asking you to please come back
and I fold myself deeper into blanket rolls and I remember
why I don't do this kind of thing anymore.

because too many sunlit moments get drowned in the cracks and fissures
between words, like too many smiles I've missed while I am
looking just past your shoulder.

I leaf through these days and weeks and push myself into crippled love affairs
and push myself out of your arms and into your arms and there is
so much that I skim through

or skip forward to cloudy lips on mine again with my eyes closed,
pillow hair between my thumbs and damp eyelashes
twisting myself further down into my sheets
holding my own hips and lying against this headboard like it is someone's chest
remembering why loving is such a bad idea while I am missing you so damn much

147.

in the winter, which is coming sooner than we thought,
we become a cold and nameless memory
and I go back to just wanting a goddamn cigarette.

in the summer at least we were melancholy
and made of a little missing each other.
when the frost comes
we will be blurs.

remembering is for the springtime,
but by then, the picture you kept of me will have faded
and my smile will be lost in someone else's
in the back of your pocket.

and I will be here, still, thumbing through
the notes you left for me, reading them aloud
to a few empty chairs.

the summer is over.
winter is the season for staying in,
because the roads between our hands have iced over,
and I guess your tires are
too weak for this.

I'll go back to warming my throat with whiskey
since you won't be here to kiss it,

and I don't know where you'll go.

146.

flitting birdlike through my memories, gathering

little bits of broken shell and soil between my knuckles as I go

to build a nest

there are so many things I have learned, so many things

I have yet to learn, and I will make a house of them

I will be indiscriminate

weave and sew the slivers of self-doubt

with shame and brash confidence alike, like slender twigs

padding with fluff from old lovers' mattresses

I have been made of so many things

over these years, 

stained glass and skinned knees and everything in between

and I am patchwork quilt beautiful

with sticks and stones sticking out at the seams, all the things

people have thrown at me, all the things I have swallowed

I will make my home amid my feathered hopes

and oiled fears, and I am not pitting myself 

against myself today. 

there are too many pretty things

in my lacy framework, in this tiny cathedral I have built
there are too many berries and too many thorns

too many storm clouds and sun showers

I don't want to pluck anything out

of myself. I want to keep

all of it.

145.

you make me wanna write good more, find
healthier words with leaner muscles and better breath
words that can stand on their own two letters,
and lend you a hand
when you need it. because you always lent yours to me.
you were always my favorite thing
and I miss when you were
wrapped around my wrists and ankles, like a brace
the doctor gives you and says,
"this will help you heal."

and your words are strong like prairie winds
and they make mine wanna stand up taller and
puff out their chests,
and paint murals
with their typewriter fingers all along
my skin, and yours. because I write in the dark
with something breathing down my neck, but
you leave your pens out to dry in the sun
and they leave Texas heat
on the page.

you make me wanna take my medicine
every single morning, because I never want to push you
into hospital waiting rooms again. you were always there
to lead me by the hand, and show me
the green grass
when the sky seemed too bright to look at.
and now I'm on pretty good terms
with daytime, but I still write at night anyway,
and your country words are nudging me
out the door again,

telling me stories about us, and binding them
into a little book that I can read.

I still remember the night you were so drunk
that you wouldn't open the door for anyone
except me.
and I'm so sorry that I told everyone later.
it's just that I felt special to you
like a keepsake you wore in your shirt pocket every day
and telling the story helped me
not to forget.

144.

I am all blooming palms now, opening under sun warmth
and ready to curl green tendrils around something
sweet like hummingbird feed, like sugar water
ready to plant green roots a long, long way down
to have something to hang on to when the wind blows
and to push green chutes up through fresh-tilled earth
and get it all under my fingernails, to shake my hair and laugh
while the hot dirt falls from it like fairy dust

I have kept myself indoors and potted for too long
only stretching so far upward, only toward a ceiling, no sky.
but I am learning to lift my leafy skirts and step out
toward the light, past the backyard, through the fence

and I am a wildflower now.

no more gates, no barbed wire
only the hush of tall grasses whispering to each other
and the their sway, and far horizons blending into gray from green
and the soft embrace of soil on my feet
and sunlight drawing freckles on my cheeks.

(worn)

worn like sweater-holes, like your thumbs
pressing through my skin and me
wrapping around your hands

worn like foot soles, like miles
of asphalt without flowers peeking
through the cracks

worn like forgetting you, and then
it’s years later and I’ve worn so many other
people’s sweaters, and I’m

just worn out


(composed in sixty seconds at oneword.com)

143.

crooked and bleary-eyed, slurred and sideways sitting
still askew from the last breath you blew at me, bent like a branch
head tilted almost upside-down and asking how did this happen?
how did so many midnights pass between eye blinks, between heartbeats,
head pressed to your wrist one minute and listening for your blood flow
the gentle whoosh like seashell sounds, until I open my eyes two years later
head-slam ringing without you and without
so much as a cough goodbye?
and I stretch a hand to the floor to steady myself, but
my fingers find your hair instead and I am
combing through you again
blurred vision and veered off-course, I was doing so well
I was doing such a good job of forgetting you

I am dizzy at the scent of you and sad to think
that you feel like an interruption now
instead of a comfort

To Robin, From The Rest of Us

there may be moments when you are rubbing your wrists
and they are in gold shackles, and we are singing
"O Captain, my Captain, sail home
 we are waiting for you"
and you may not hear us, trapped
in an itty bitty living space, on Arabian nights
that fall too heavy on your eyelids.
but we can see you in there, Peter, even
when you cannot remember what fairies look like anymore
and hope seems childish, and you've been a grown-up
for long enough to know when it's time to close the window.
we may be singing, "O Captain, my Captain"
and standing on school desks, waiting
for you to come home and tell us
about poetry and beauty, and romance, and love
and how these are the things we stay alive for,
and you may not hear us.
but we are still singing it anyway, because
you taught us how.

and we just want to tell you
(just like you told us, once)
that it's not your fault.

it's not your fault.

it's not your fault.

we love you.

142.

I am propped up against myself at midnight
slumped breaths shallow and insufficient, the way I was
for you. and I have scoured my memories with a magnifying glass,
the campfire with my family, the meals we cooked together
for any trace, for any clues, for anything
but I only pick up a few blades of dead grass here and there
a few empty bird shells between my fingers, and nothing
like a first sign or a beginning of an end, no indication
of what was heading for me like a truck,
not that I can remember anyway.
so I am resigned to sit here wilting
only half-drunk and half-over you
glassy eyed and wondering
(as always)
where your head's at
and what did I do wrong
and who it is you're with now
and were you really that unhappy
and why and why and why
did you never tell me
any of this

141.

you used to say such particular things to me
leaving me notes that I still have stuck in my head, repeating
like the words to the songs we listened to the first time you got me high.
we were anomalous.
you were the only one who left that distinctive wrinkle pattern
in my sheets, cradled into the crook of me, folded
like seven years gone by and the build-up and the let-down
and the little imprints still lingering on my palms
from holding your hair while we slept
and listening to your breath song.
I memorized it back then, and even still
no one else's sounds the same.

sometimes I wonder where you are now, whether
you are making lines in someone else's clean-pressed sheets
whether you even read any of this anymore
but I think there will always be at least a smallish fraction of me
that is in love with you, some nook or cranny of my heart
that still pumps your blood vicariously

I think years will continue to pass
and there will still be mornings or moments
when I feel the ghost of you pressing into my hollow curves
and there was a space that only you could fill
and it will stay vacant, I imagine.

140.

my problem is that I spend too much time in graveyards
looking for lovers in the headstones
making little etchings of the epitaphs inside my wrists
sleeping on dewy grass over dead bodies
and I think this is as good as it will get, and I forget
the warmth of houses and open windows just up the road

my problem is that I fall in love over nothing
and everything, the way a shop girl says "your total is $15.25"
and suddenly I am pulling out my pen and sketching
a hurried picture of what we would look like dancing
and what colors she would wear
and I haven't asked her name

my problem is that I splash around in puddles
but I never drink water, and every summer leaves me thirsty
and every autumn finds me falling back to cemeteries
dozing between grave sites and daydreaming
about what affairs I could have had
with all these beautiful dead people

and I have not yet learned how
to love in present tense

139.

seventeen months later and I am still hungover
waking up head-sore and sandpaper-tongued, because
you kissed me too rough and I scabbed and scarred over
and now I scratch my lovers' skins when I try to tell them secrets
waking up sloshing with a stomach still full of you
from a dream where we talked, just talked
and my therapist asked me why that was a nightmare?
all I know is when she asks me, I have to sit down for a moment
dizzy and fluttering like a moth in my own glass head
and why was I so comfortable reclining into the cushions of you?
and were the thorns there all along, and why did it take time
for me to find the puncture wounds you left?
I don't know, I don't know
the wind is knocked out of me
when I don't know, still, with a seventeen-month headache
hanging limp over the toilet and waiting to spit you up
and be done with it, finally

138.

like how I can go from watching the ceiling, the Christmas lights

lining the upper corners of my room and imagining

them as floor lights on an upside-down stage

and I am dancing on it

and ten minutes later I am upright and crumpled down

crying into my knees and hanging like a bat from the carpet

things tend to flip around on me that way

breathing in right-side-up and 

falling off the ground on the exhale

I'm tempted to just stop trying

to stand on my own

137.

and I promise before this is all over

I'll look over to the passenger seat and there will be

some beautiful person casting yellow smiles in my direction

leaned out backward and sweating with the windows down

and maybe I will swap my cigarettes for suckers

and start putting sweet things in my mouth for a change

maybe it will be summer or maybe

we will sit cross-legged on some winter hearth instead

counting each other's fingers and telling ghost stories

wrapped in campfire colors, kissing marshmallow mouths

maybe we will stay under snow banks

for a while, or maybe

we will let autumn creep up behind us 

and tickle us with dead leaves, and we will fall 

back into piles of dandelion fluff

sneezing and giggling and remembering our childhoods

things like what our parents said at Thanksgiving

or how tiny our hearts were, and the first time they broke

and then maybe we will fast-forward to spring

weaving reed baskets and whispering secrets

into the little hush of creek waterfalls

and twining into each other like green chutes

holding leafy hands, swigging moonshine under porch lights

drunk and flushing at each other

and happy, just happy

136.

just learning that you can't make your ex's parents
love you forever, that you have to say goodbye
to the families you create sometimes
and you have to realize that
you can't be everyone's favorite
all the time, that people
move on in their lives after you're gone from them
and people dislike you or forget about you
just learning things like that, the things
no one tells you about growing up
about what it feels like
to watch years pass under your feet
the calluses that form there
and the constant lack of closure, memories
tucked between your fingers where
you imagined wedding rings might be by now

135.

mourning the losses of smiling twenty-something
women I have never met, and their babies
who were never born
I am struck
by how separate we are
and how much I miss everyone
counting back from twenty-something, all
the lovers I've collected
all the babies I could have not-had
all the women who would kill for just one
what a strange little ledger, and how
sorry I am for everything

throwing off the thought of skin on skin
like a hot blanket, like ants
icicle sweat breaking off my forehead
bolt-upright at 3 am
and should I be grateful?
and was that intimacy?
remembering these women with no daughters
what their nightmares must have been like

and how did it all go
from making little almost babies to waking up
five years and twenty-something beds later
and trying to string you all together
and make it make sense
and how separate we are
and how much I miss everyone

and how sorry I am
for everything

134.

it's difficult to say when I'll stop
writing about being young and drunk, maybe
when I turn 26 but probably not

it's just easier
to type words like "languid"
and "paralysis" because they're the ones
I've practiced spelling the most

(I still have to use the dictionary
 for others, like "prosperity")

and I don't blame you, or anyone
else, really. I just wish
you had asked me for what you needed
instead of deciding I couldn't give it to you

but I suppose I spent a lot of time
re-writing old stories with old words instead of
reading what you left by the bedside
so it isn't your fault.

maybe I just wasn't done
being young and drunk yet
maybe I never will be, I don't know

133.

things like purple lilies on my hips
like the words that died behind my teeth
or the words I wish I'd killed
instead of arranging them into floral wreaths
and handing them over
like naivety at 19
things I can't get back
like the knots in my back
from twelve months back, when I was
not strong enough to push him off
or busted fingernails white-gripped
on roller coaster handlebars
just to feel Texas heat punch me in the face
things like that, or like
bleached-out snapped-off sunrises
washed less than blue through tree branches
like seeing them through half a window
things I've buried
that keep pushing upward through the soil
air-starved and crazy
like staying awake instead
and not being sorry
remembering things like that.

132.

these days I've noticed I am dewdrop tears
on my own petal cheeks as often as I am
kitten-curled in my own bed, warm and happy
and sometimes I am both at once

like today, when I am searching my lungs
for breath, unable to find it and gasping
even as there is slide guitar music
playing behind my ears, and
in a moment I am smiling

and then remembering back to last week when
I was hurling broken sobs hard into a pillow
backed into a corner (on purpose)
waiting to wake up from another flashback

or this week when I picked a little beetle
off my skin in the night, in half a nightmare
and found it dead in my sheets the next morning

and then I look up and there are still
yellow-specked leaves sighing outside
my window, and I am shaking
hands with the sunlight

I do not know how to reconcile
the way night holds me underwater sometimes with
the feeling of waking up clean and well-slept
and how both can happen in the same 24 hours

and how I have become the kind of day
when you can see the sun and the moon
at the same time, in the same sky

I'm talking to myself and we're at the point where all I can really think to do is stay in my room today, and I am trying to decide whether that is a good or bad thing. I have twinkle lights in here and the window is open, so that's something. It's just that I can't see straight, that my head is all spun out and talking only makes it worse. Going outside means questions and hellos, and I'd rather not chance it. I'd rather stay inside and dream about picking apples and knitting sweaters, and fire crackling in a hearth in someone else's house somewhere. It's summer here, but I like the cold better. So I put the air conditioner on high. And all I can really think to do is stay in my bed, because standing up means dizziness and back aches and I'd rather not chance it. I'd rather stay inside and keep repeating myself. Someday it will be time to dance with someone under canopies, to sleep through the night and make promises and feel all right most of the time. But for now it's time just to wait for rain to fall through the leaves outside my window.

131.

fast forward four years, and there are still
dark-haired moments when some slight girl walks by
and I can see your shadow in the curve of her waist
and I keep a numbered list of you in my pocket, still
unfolding it to read the things I remember:

1) you tasted the way wine does
without the hangover, until
a year or so later

2) I let you tug my arms around
crowded rooms, through hallways
your hands carrying mine
pulling me like a kite and laughing

3) you called me meadow-words
like hummingbird and honeybee
before you flew away

and the list goes on from there.

sometimes I wonder whether I wasn't
born with a chest full of paper hearts:
a few for me to keep,
a few more to hand out here and there
and some of them have been ripped along the way
and some have dissolved in rain puddles
or been tossed into waste baskets

but one of them is still
in some old jeans-pocket of yours
in the back of your closet somewhere

130.

this is the kind of morning when you remember
so many baths you spent as a child
looking, small and naked, at your hair underwater
watching how it flowed around your hands
and feeling for all the world like a mermaid
for all the world like a magical girl

this is the kind of morning when you realize
that it is already 1:30 pm and you are already 23
and morning walked past your window
as you slept and dreamed alone
of red lips on yours, red like your hair
has always been, underneath itself

and you are dyeing it back in three days
coming home to your red self again
after spending so much time black and blue
the colors in your hair, the bruises on your skin
the years when you ran your baths
with more wine than water

and you are wondering now
whether mermaids swim in Texas rivers
whether you might find yourself sun bathing
at 1:30 pm next weekend, on warm banks on hot towels
bending over the water's surface again
and dipping your hair in

to see if it still swirls around your hands
the way it used to

129.

chasing ghosts around this empty room, I am
painting voices on my skin in red and gold
drawing mouths I have never met
pressing my lips to them
pressing my knuckles
into my own knees, tracing
the profile of my own hips with my fingertips
until my hands feel numb, like someone else's
decorating the walls with echoes
of songs not yet written for me
fleshing out phantoms into warm breath
imagining what shades of violet I might turn
under the weight of some melodic love

with my eyes closed I am exquisite
and I am not alone

128.

I have recognized this unraveling
held my own threads as they slipped and fell
through my fingers like rivers
I have seen myself unfold in slower motion
and I have realized

that every fog-thick midnight filled
with smog gasping cigarette smoke
every desperate bathtub sinking and every
cracked skin morning, head split in two

has led me here

not every busted rib happens for a reason, but
I've heard that bones are stronger after they break
and I am all raw fibers now, ready
to be re-sewn

to get nice and knotted up in new ways
over someone else, or over my own reflection
singing love songs in the mirror
maybe it is time for me
maybe it is my time

to pull my own strings through loom loops
to become any tapestry I choose

127.

I spent too much time rearranging my teeth
into little words, to spell out little stories hidden in my mouth
spent too much time tucking your name into them
and I did not open wide for you, did not
stick my tongue out for you

and you kept your lips locked, too
kept your hands in your pockets, fists curled
around whatever you could not tell me
and I was so afraid of holding your hands
that I never let them open

so I never saw inside your palms
and you never saw inside my mouth
and I spent too much time wading through thick
darkness, eyes blinded, arms outstretched
feeling along walls for your pulse

until you flipped on the lights
and asked me to leave

and after all this time, all these
swallowed teeth and all these months
I still do not know where you were

125.

moments like these make the best poems
swimming in the shimmered blurs between blinks
dizzy and swaying to silence
existing only in stop or fast-forward
or pass-out
waiting for the moments like these that make
me too afraid to text you back, too afraid
to get up from the couch because
it feels like self-loathing and I am so comfortable here
sinking into over-stimulated and catatonic
and do not touch me, I swear

you were not born with poisoned fingers
but I have been haunted for long years, and
my skin cannot tell the difference now
between ghost hands and yours

126.

building stair steps from my screen porch upward
to a silver moon, bare feet blue-washed in starlight
shoulder blades spreading outward
through my arms and fingertips with feathers
growing wings and walking skyward
in a midnight clear as day

you are like fresh air
in a good dream

Trial and Error

I am trying to stir you into my tea, in with the honey and the chamomile. Trying to fold you into my winter clothes, trying to work you into the dough of me to see what kind of bread we will make. I have been looking for someone like you and I am trying you on like an Easter dress, and will you kiss my curves and skirt my hips or will you press my ribs too tightly? It is hard to know how you fit until I start to sweat. Until I taste you in my tea and in my bread crust, until I wake up tomorrow refreshed or hungover. All I want is to taste relief in your mouth. To push my arms through yours like sweater sleeves. But just wait until August comes, and it's coming fast. And I will start to melt, and I will shrug you off. And the time for tea will have passed, and I will kiss some other lemonade mouth instead.

How To Start Again

get in touch with that feet-in-the-mud
feeling, that fist-against-mirror hard sting again
remind yourself what it is to ignite
to brawl and to crash and to embrace
and to write it all down

bring fresh flowers into your study
bring dead insects and bottle caps
the empty smoke bombs he left in the yard
and you found them like fairy treasure the next day
before you knew what was under his skin

and then remember what was under his skin
what you felt when he scraped himself into you
how livid you were, how purple-cheeked
bring the bile back up your throat
and then write it all down

get in touch with your whiskey-drenched nights
only leave the whiskey out this time
get in touch with what you hated
and what you craved, what you choked on
the things you've put in drawers by now

remind yourself what they tasted like
what it was to be miserable and ecstatic
collect your wildfires and your chest pains
the pieces of you that ache and dream
carve a space for them

keep them sacred, give them air
nurture your hunger and your terror
cultivate your joy and do not forget your hate
get in touch with what has been simmering in your gut
dig into the earth of yourself again

and whatever you do
you must write it all down

naiad

I am a splash and gurgle, playful like a cool drink and it is all spring and wind through the reeds until you drown in me. I am all ripple, all ribbon hair leaking outward into a halo around my face. Drifting backward while you think I am smiling. And I will tell you to swim a little closer just to see you at the drop off, when the water is past your waist and you did not know the lake ran this deep. I have watched brave men sink like rocks and float like logs, watched them breathe fresh water and surrender. And they have thanked me before the end. You can build river rafts to ride me, can build ships and fleets and navies and try to calm my skin, but I will hurricane swallow you down. I am vast and dark and ancient. And I am not afraid of you.

I Suppose We're Growing Up

and all at once we are older than we realized
turning out the lights before midnight
to get some sleep, because we deserve it now
because we have been staying up all night for ages
and this year has been a hell of a long day

and all at once I find you where you have always been
next to my hand, and your fingers find my palm
and they walk into the space between my knuckles
and your voice is over my head like a crown
you are taking nothing from me

we have wiped our slates and our bloodstreams clean
we have made space in ourselves together
and this is what I will keep in my pocket tomorrow:
the blue darkness and the velvet of you
and your mending hands

Blood Moon

the moon is red tonight
and I am frightened

that I never learned to exhale pain and heal
that I swallowed all my bad memories like baby teeth
and chewed an ulcer through my stomach

and my fingers are still prune-wrinkled
after soaking for years in stagnant water
salted and bitter and rheumatic
and combing my hair still takes hours

I am frightened that mirrors will still burn
holes in me, that I still need to cloak them
in wine-heavy drapes past midnight

that when you try to stoke your breath into my lungs
they will fill with rose paint and I will choke
bleeding thick and poppy-scented
all perfumed panting, panicked

but I have forgotten that I am only
nightmare-locked tonight, and pruned fingers
are only relics of this time last year

and blood moons pass, and I have learned by now
to drop a thread of silver sunlight into my paralysis
and even when the night is scarlet black
even when it is easier to stay asleep

dawn will still break in its time
and I will still be awake by midday

The First Time I Told You

fingers stretching cold toward your flame
I have been the gray sky and the thunder
and you have been the rain
that lets the ground drink fresh water

and my fences were never iron
only aging wood and lattice work around flower beds
and you have found the hinge and the gate

I have been shaking frozen
all bare branches and sleeping for months
but you have hung tire swings in me
you have reminded me of spring

and we have made a singing silence
blanketing ourselves in rest
we have woven safety nets like hammocks

and I have been waiting all this time
to tell you how much
I love you

Some Way to Detach

I am struck by my tendency to start poems with

"I" or "you" or something self-conscious or other

and the ego, always the ego

sculpting worlds small enough to post on spindles

just to whirl them around our fingers

and look how far we've traveled

look how much we know

surely there is some way to detach

I make things too personal and I forget

that seasons turn and death sweeps in like autumn

surely there is some way to remember

that fabricated spirituality is only a distraction

from the God glowing in each of our skins

and we can only find it when we hold each other's hands

but really hold them, and listen

to the way our pulses harmonize

but it takes time, time

and a constant reminder 

and most days I cultivate my cynicism with pride and care

mouth dripping with venom, surveying everything

like I am about to buy or sell it

I should not be this narrow

surely there is some way to detach

I make things too personal and I forget

that tides go out and continents shift over time

surely there is some way to remember

that I am not my failure

that you are not my disapproval of you

I am so tired of forgetting how

we are all holy light

draped in fear's clothing but still pulsing underneath

still patient and brave and untempered

surely there is some way

to learn that

again

Your Collected Works

I am falling asleep to the sound of you
pictures of your face bathed in sepia, folded at the edges
running slides on a projection reel as I close my eyes
and when I wake in sheets that smell like you
all that is left is a love note on the bedside table

this is my writing song
sung for you when my mouth runs dry
and I am nothing but moving fingers

know that I will keep every letter you leave for me
know that I have made a book of them already

You Are Kind, But You Are Young

you formed me with feather-soft hands

palms warm and working the clay into something you saw in me

some smallish candle gleam that you washed over my skin

waiting for me to become the lover you dreamed of

but not the lover I would have been (had I loved you)

I have no interest in letting you paint me by numbers

and fill in my dark spaces with washes of watercolor 

what you loved was only ever a sculpture you created in my image

and I was never marble-strong to begin with

you are kind, but you are young

you have not yet learned that rough edges make soft beds

that sometimes broken arms are the ones that can hold you best

so take your time finding out

what love looks like under covers, warm and blended

less like pressed flowers and more like soil

and I will spend my days in the arms of someone

who already knows what I really look like

Unlace

I have tied too many ribbons to my ribcage
spending my nights pulling bows into knots
and interlacing lovers into my bones
until I was all string and no substance
I have sacrificed myself on altars of my own making
giving away everything, taking too much in return
and I have been all desperation and waiting
for someone to see me crying
just so they could help me stop

I have put pressure on points that were too sore
to hold the weight of my expectations
but I am ready to start untangling the snarl in my chest
to stop painting fictional saviors inside my eyelids
and keeping them shut tightly enough
to block out the sunlight

I am ready to unlace the streamers from my breast
and mend my bones before asking
anything of you

Some Nights (Still)

burrs still sticking to my skin, I am trying
I am trying, I am trying
to move forward

some nights I still taste like
boxed wine and lamplight at 4 am
some nights I am still twelve months ago

some nights I am still wading
through the translucent gauze of nostalgia
peeling its layers from my shoulders
or pulling its blindfold from my eyes

and some nights I am still waiting
for the cracks in my ribs to stop scraping
against my lungs when I inhale
still holding my breath
and counting to ten
hoping the pain will have gone this time

I am barbed-wire tethered
but I am struggling against my own fences
because some mornings
there is a gray light dawning behind my eyes
and I am trying, I am trying

I am trying to pluck the sharp grass from my mouth
to fill it with cool water instead
or enough air to tell you

that I want to be more than just
a ledger of goodbyes and failed attempts
that I don't want to be last year anymore

some nights I want to taste
less cigarettes and more spearmint
less like the blood from my bitten tongue
and more like the way it is healing

some nights I am trying,
I am trying.