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.