186. (Low Tide)

one by one, my limbs puddle and spread

into tide pools in the carpet, blue with music

shallow and clear

I was ten days tired two months ago, but

I still sloughed the sleep from my shoulders this morning

and walked from 9 AM through noon 

climbed at last into 7 PM

and laid my dripping skin across the floor

face-down

and sank, and sank

until I could see the coral sea between my eyelashes

the barracudas making figure-eights through fibers in the rug

the floating tufts of plankton dust

and I am low-tide languid now, stretching

sandy-toed toward the horizon

no ships, no sails

no need for white capped waves along my spine

just still water and the hush of teeming life in my veins

swaying as softly as untouched seaweed

and the moon turns me silver

when midnight comes

185.

touching the mirror like trying to pour honey all
down my shorn hair, my shoulder freckles
like trying to tell myself
you can breathe you can breathe you can breathe
but here it is cold and it is thin and I am knees-buckled and panting

here the sky is dish rag yellow, the trees too quiet
a cruel breeze bites my ankles and I am trying
to tell myself
you are safe you are safe you are safe
trying to drown myself in all the love I can find in my fingers
while my knuckles split

no one warned me I would only ever be half-sane
and now I can't get past this cracking vision, still surprised
every time my face falls sickly slow toward the bog at my feet
never fully standing straight, never standing for long

and all I can do is try to muster every inch of gold
spun in my teeth and in my veins, try
to whip it into something drinkable
and to coax it down my throat and over my face
and to tell myself
you will survive you will survive you will survive
even on my deadest days

184.

sit in the scorch with me

the sunburned window by my bed, and kiss me

like a spray of freckles

I may sweetly sweep your lips like lilac dusk today, but

what if I fall on you tomorrow like noon with no shadows
what if I hurt your eyes

promise me

that you will swim nose-deep into a green wave with me

when I am all sleepless storms and tangles

you say and you say and you say

that you are not going anywhere

but will you go with me

up between crags and cliff shards, bloody-footed

when you see tears in my eyes, because some days

I just need the sky in my mouth

will you go with me past the tree line

into the blind forest fog when I wake from a dream

and swear I heard my silence somewhere, finally,

and I need to find it

I know we cannot make each other fine, but
maybe we can make each other

grow, like the moss of you, the brown and the velvet

that spreads down my arms, fills my skin

like the vines in my breath

the fecund heart in me that you keep inhaling

what I mean is
tell me you are here

when I am soft enough to touch and when I am on fire

and I will help you find the love you were looking for

183.

I can feel your heartbeat in your hands
my praying palms pressed to yours, lashes brushing
and solemn lips taking silent vows in the harmony
of your pulse against mine

these are the moments I collect,
submerge them into my lungs and bathe them in golden water,
sew them into my shirt like cross stitch lullabies
that spell you across my chest, moments
like you wrapping blanket arms around my neck
your skin made sharper in the lamplight, freckled shoulders
filling my field of vision end to end like topography maps
telling stories about the summers you've survived
your eyes still cutting through the darkness starlight-clear
and rounder than any full moon I've seen

and I am not afraid to show my face now, open-eyed,
the scars and spots across my jawline
that you kiss and call clean
the bluest corners in me
that now house hundreds of imprints of you
my teeth that are starting to sound like your smile when I laugh

this whole time, I swear
I have been trying to write you down
but I was too sweet on touching you, too dizzy
resting my fingers in your feathered hair to pick up a pen
until now, in this respite
with your slow breath singing itself to sleep
and my topfull head spinning in your wake
I can finally reach for the bedside table
to press you into paper, and commemorate you,
and this fledgling us

Blue Moon

you ask me if I am scared
with my ear pressed to your heartbeat past midnight
the pitch blackness wraps our eyelids shut, but
I can still hear the honey in your voice
and we tell each other secrets in the dark, like
what bruised you this year
and whose splinters are still in your thumbs

you say that you find your pulse slowing
that you aren't scared somehow
and for once, I say, me neither

it feels so good to be so held with my hands shaking,
to see stars in your eyes
even when mine start to tread water
you look at me sometimes like today is our first day
and our last day
like my face is a revelation

and we hush each other to sleep with the sound
of fingers sweeping across arms like moonlit tides
your breath bathing my hair and mine rolling down your skin
and I am nowhere else tonight

182.

what if I told you

that you are where my mind wanders, aimless and dusty

when I am folded empty-palmed and restless 

in the middle seat of an airplane, when my only option 

is to close my eyes and find myself, and you,

at the bar where we met

your eyes blue as ice and burning, me shifting my powdered knees, 

swallowing lumps and laughter and the beer you liked

and then I am sweating three days later

blushing at you across picnic tables and looking for excuses

to walk over wooden benches and get next to you somehow

or curled up for four hours in your front seat

uncomfortable as hell and happy, or tangling our teeth together

one week after that, or stretched out glowing

on my carpet two nights ago

what if I told you 

I am still listening to the song that sounds like your skin

letting it press down on my back and I am smiling

under the weight of this violet cloud we are creating,

full to bursting with rain and the scent of you

what if I told you I have been

collecting and quilting the bits of us that have blossomed so far

for moments like this, when I am motion-sick

with pinched eyes at high altitudes

waiting to come home again

to the ground, and to you

181.

in a moment you find yourself suspended
in time like fossilized amber, hanging in paralysis between
staying in bed or facing the daylight
and you know there will be joker smiles waiting outside
your door to ask how you feel and what your name is,
but your throat has run sandpaper dry already

you are blank and space bar blinking, waiting
to stop shaking and put your icy feet on the linoleum
curled back into yourself like a dying plant, and you are
beginning to suspect that today
will not be one of your Good Days
you suspect that your loved ones might have to call the doctors again
that your fists might harden to concrete and your brain
might turn back into a bell jar full of frantic and frightened wasps

sour yellow light is seeping through your drawn curtains
and you are wrapped in scratched blankets, waiting
years for the moment when you are brave
or stupid enough to go outside

Jet Lag

I am at some sort of loss now, buckled and broken
over my own knee and nose
to the concrete,
scabbed fingers searching my skin
for something to soothe, I went five days
without sleeping or exhaling, five days
crunched up into my boots with a red peel-painted smile
and I have been on bed rest for two days but I still cannot breathe

and suddenly it is time to turn out the light
but I am too head-to-toe bloodshot and busted to sink
all the way into this sagging bed,
and my fingers have not stopped shaking since two
Wednesdays ago

all I have waiting for me tomorrow morning
is a chorus of congratulations that will slide over me like honey
on an open wound, and I will have to breathe through my splintered shins
and conjure up a crooked Thank You, and convince my knuckles to stand still
as someone reaches over to shake my hand

but I will still be coughing up smog from the bay, still
dizzy and drunk from basking in florescent lights
for a week straight, and I have missed home, have been
shoved into airplanes and taxi cabs and I have been told to smile
through my grinding teeth, and I cannot unclench my muscles enough
to fall asleep tonight

and I am full to bursting with tears too tired to find my cheeks
blood too tired to find my fingers, a heart too tired to keep pumping
hour after hour after stretching and breaking
and drowning and drenched in the ache of isolation

I am at some sort of loss, forgetting
what I am supposed to feel
working my jaw for no sound to come out
it has been too long a week for counting days, and I am
ready to throw in whatever towels I have left

180.

I will tell you a secret.
Even with your back muscles gnarled to hell
and the worst sunburn of your life,
even on your third winter alone, even
when your mirror is shattered
and you have gone six days without speaking,
even in your bluest blackest moments
and your harshest nights,

you are still special.

You are still a perfect collection of molecules
that hums and sways in harmony
and ends with you singing
and dreaming.
And your purity, and mine,
are the two true constants in this world.

179.

you are supposed to bend your knees backwards and
stand up on solid legs by now, you know it, but
something in you is still
slipping sideways and you feel like
your ankles never grew at quite the right angle
so you know that when you spend too much time
looking up and making promises to the sunlight, you always
end up with a mouthful of asphalt and busted palms
in which case, just stay in bed.

178.

I am creating a bouquet of you, hand-forming
your best features into little puffs and sprays, like
a sprig of your daffodil-lipped whispers
or a twist of your dandelion lashes
and you are propped up in my best blue vase
so I can make sure the aphids won't get you, but
the butterflies can still find your leafy skin
and kiss your cheeks as I do

177.

drunk and staggering
on the scent of growing up
and my own sweet breath

176.

after twelve months and too many weekdays and
360-some-odd evenings alone,
tucking myself in again tonight might
leave my fingers a little arthritic

but no one can fold down
the bed sheets like I can, and
after all these sunsets and all this solitude
I am rounder with self-trust
than I have ever been

175.

as it turns out,
there will be evenings when you can stand the sight of yourself
for the first time in years, maybe
that gray cast in your eyes will plume into an April shower
and petrichor will fill your lungs when you glance at the mirror
so don't worry
when lightning burns your hair and thunder claps
its hands over your ears too hard, because
we are all just water vapor waiting
to burst into rainfall
and relax

174.

two hands, four breaths
your lashes, my lips
our backs, those sheets
your promises, my fears
that night, our song
soft tears, rough knuckles
three hours, one sunrise
never enough,
never enough

Beaches

lovers' breath rushing over skin, torrid
and soft as a sea storm in July
and tumbling over my own toes, tangled
in bed clothes trying
to reach the tips and edges and undersides
(shell-pink and mollusk-tender)
of someone I don't talk to anymore

or the sweep and sway of her saltwater hair
in some grassy breeze, I could have sworn
we were tethered, but
she sailed off back south anyhow

or waking up from some drowning dream
to find him starry and sleeping beside me, my eyes
reflected in the surface of his shoulders
and sinking back down again

or her hands on my hips, gulfweed-slick,
curling around each other
ankles hooked in the current and crashing
our sunburned cheeks together

some things I pocket and collect
like sea glass and sand dollars.
some things are worth remembering.

172.

I found that picture of you leaning
rain-spattered against a stretch of wooden railing
mountain ranges washed along the horizon behind you
and a rare kind of smile
pressed into the lines of your cheeks, the kind
I did not pull from your mouth often enough

you looked happy.
and I hope that somewhere, someone
will paint that same smile on your face this year.
I hope you can trace a map through your grinning teeth
back to a warm bed by the end.

171.

what is there left to say
when you have collected twelve months in your pockets
and the pages we promised to write together
are still empty, darling,
we sobered up like a slap in the face and maybe
we didn't give ourselves enough time
time, time to adjust
to sleeping eight solid hours and drinking clean water
and I am sorry I never called you pet names
I know I spent half the time shooting
fevered glances over your shoulder and mine,
on the lookout for those ghosts I had just shaken
and you spent half the time waiting
to cough up all the mud you ate as a child
and sometimes we forgot
each other

maybe if we had opened your apartment windows
once in a while, let the storms blow through
maybe I would have wrapped myself up
in you to keep warm, maybe
I wouldn't have left our bed
so cold every night

170.

don't tell me you could
have hugged my knees and wrapped me in rain, don't
bathe me in your blue lips and cut me off
I am all pumping blood and no
one to share it with

don't remind me what we could
have been on some fifteenth date, warm as kindling
and crackling merrily in each other's hands
I could have sworn we
could have been something by now, I could have
sworn off you by now, but

don't tell me when to trip
over your threshold and out of your doors
I am perfectly capable of seeing myself out without your
fists at my back

and don't call for me with that rasp next time, in fact
just don't come to my window at all

169.

come find me tonight
strewing flower petals and
rocking back and forth

I will paint my skin
sing my eyelashes to sleep
and breathe, always breathe

168.

I have two more years' grit under my fingernails now, two years
of shredded skin and teeth marks, but
I can still dig you out from beneath it all
pull the splinters of you from my cuticles and remember
all your fractured promises, the slivers still embedded between my ribs
remember your crushed fiberglass breath
all the reasons I wake up wheezing and alone at 4 AM

on my best days I have bled you from my system
on my worst, you still circulate through my veins, still seep
from my tear ducts to my fingers, through my pen
onto paper, still linger
and wait
just below the surface of my skin

Whoever You Are

what will it take to find you, strolling
somewhere under yellow sodium lights, hands free of mine
and have you been waiting like I have been waiting

have we met already, raincoats sweeping
past each other on a sidewalk, have we stood
under violin showers together
did fate sit by and watch it happen

will I stain you with hunger someday
when we are finally interlocked at the elbow
am I holding the ghost of you too tightly already

it's just that I can feel you sometimes
in the list of baby names I made last year on a whim, or the dreams
that feel like memories until they evanesce and scatter at dawn
something tells me whisper-soft that you are out there
and that you have been waiting
like I have been waiting

167.

eyes creaking and still caked in flaking mascara from 8 AM
finger bones weak and too shaking because
what did I fill my blood with today?
my first coffee in months and
not much else, I think
this has been a longer 16 hours than most 4-day stretches
and I still haven't heard from you, or anyone
since last week, or if you have tried
to shout in my direction maybe
I just haven't heard you through the glycerin built up
between my ears and the air, and sleep
hangs around me like a veil
that I still can't touch

166.

fill my empty hands
so I can grasp at something
more than shredding straws

I am weighted down
by the silence of all my
unwritten love songs

Mending

1. Hang a picture frame around your mirror. Find the bluest marker you can. Trace the curves of your face, and be gentle. Get your fingers dirty with the ink and breath of it.
2. Change the sheets on your bed. Keep them cool and spray them with lavender, if you have some. Burrow into your bed at 9:30 PM. Fall asleep without apologizing for it.
3. Pick at least two mornings every week to sit with the sunrise. Make a list of the colors you see in the sky. If you find a new color for the first time, give it a secret name.
4. Write a list of your hurts, the little and the big, in crimson lettering. Fold it softly. Place it in your favorite old journal, bless it, and tuck it away in a closet.
5. Breathe. Always breathe. Drink the air, thank your lungs, and bring life back into your bloodstream. This is how you survive. This is how you start over.

165.

what did you see most when you looked at me
my legs, a convex curve of creamy hip and thigh maybe
the ellipse and sway of my back
did you see my velvet edges, my slope when I lay sideways
did you see the sun-streaked strawberry twist of my hair
the crook of my elbow, the flush in my cheeks
and was that all you saw

if we're being honest here, I'll admit
that I did see the details of you, the crisply ironed ridges
of your shirt against your shoulder blade
the softer stretch of waist to ribs beneath your dinner jacket
I did fall asleep that night and dream our bodies
painting waterlily-colored against a bed sheet canvas

but I saw your eyes, too
not mirror-flat, but fluid and full to brimming with you
the stories you told me, your brothers, your secrets
saw your lids and lashes flutter shut as you laughed
committed your irises to memory when you trained them on me

and if I found you today, closed my eyes,
and asked you what color they were
I am not convinced that you could tell me

164.

spinning behind my eyelids like a fifth whiskey ginger
it always seems to come back around to this
folded over my own stomach and convinced
that I am what I eat, and mostly, that makes me
battery acid and chewed nerves
(tonight, at least)

I can spend ten months sleeping easy
but all it takes is one swallowed wasp wing on one morning, one
dry-grass inhalation to scratch those voices open
and I am whispering to myself again,
conspiring with catastrophe behind my cracking knuckles
and let me tell you, it is a comfort by now
to bathe in the sweat of
everything that could go wrong

all it takes is one look at that blood blister on my toe
to remind me that even good days leave scars sometimes
so what's the point of healing

163.

the bulrush and the willow waltzing, balmy breezes humming
secrets through the thirsty reeds and tugging urgently
at a spider's web
the beetle makes a failed attempt to scale
a craggy precipice of fallen tree bark, birdsong trilling
and faltering and skimming the distant treetops
and the gray silk of the lake rolling dreamily against the bank
in an unending effort to rest its head
on the sun baked rocks,
and sleep

162.

your tiny hand, my clumsy braided hair
mockingbird songs without echoes
half a dry breeze in August
snowflakes and that eyelash on your cheek
that my finger kept missing

sometimes the smallest things
are the hardest to hold

161.

what do you make room for
shuffling shoe boxes bare-handed beneath your bed
knees pressed into gray grit, the five-year rubble accumulated there
and cheeks red with the sweat of rearranging, what is it
that you make room for

is it the set of bruised voicemails still squatting
in your phone, the ones where his voice lied and sounded velvety
instead of thumbtack sharp, will you keep them
tucked into some box spring corner, vaguely under your waist

or is it the blankets we clothed our couch in,
cat hairs collected and every ruddy wine stain on our carpet
and two slim photo booth sleeves, taken four years apart
are you taking our years apart and plunking them into a jigsaw puzzle tin
are they keepsake-worthy or will I find them
six months down the road, cycling through their third yard sale

what are you making room for these days
those new calloused hands you found - I think they feel just
like his did back then - will you collect the marks they leave on your hips
display his best intentions in a glass case
is there still room in your pockets
for my stray bobby pins

and what will you take with you
tomorrow and next year
will it be something I made for you, or will you shrug me
off your shoulders like a wet coat
and close the garage door

160.

it is not my split ends, not all my ruined dinner attempts
not the things I have burned in my life

it is not what you told me with your knees pressed together
not your unsent letters, nor your broken tooth

it is not what cracked your heart, not who bit mine
not the jagged bits of fingernail you left behind in my bed
nor the thousandth crumpled tissue I tossed into your trash can

I don't know what it is, but there is something
keeping the both of us in orbit, hips swinging around each other
keeping the porch lights on all night so I can see your freckles clearly
when the cool front comes, and we sit outside until 4 AM
call it gravity or electrical wiring, but
by now it is not our darkness holding us together
so perhaps it is our light

Cassiopeia

I have seen you up there, pinpricks embroidered between splattered stars
no doubt you are a swirled celestial blush up close, all blood pink
and pluming violet, but from here you only look like tiny freckles

and I have heard your story, night by night - how you dared
to anoint yourself, to bathe your crowned head in dark oils and sing yourself sacred
how you dared to name your body exquisite, exalted, ecstatic,
to drench your kingdom in the glory of your skin

I have heard how they punished you, cursed your vanity
strapped you down to your throne, and hurled you into the stratosphere
they said you should spend half of eternity upside down
cheeks bloated and blue, eyes bloodshot
just to sap the elegance from your skin

so I have imagined you slung in the sky, hung up by your knees
spinning slowly with your skirts tangled into your hair
and you are warning us girls on the ground
not to be too beautiful
you are telling us not to ask for too much
not to say our own names too loudly, for fear
that you will wake one night and find a field of us
all strung beside you, like sparkling dewdrops on a spiderweb

159.

what I need is some of these sticker burrs snapped off my skin
someone to come and pluck me clean, or teach me
how to do it myself

and I'm always running too warm, so
what I need is a freezer pack pillow maybe
to hang ice cubes from my earlobes and wake up blue-lipped tomorrow

what I need is to stop wallpapering my arms, my legs
with a roomful of foreign fingerprints, to stop wearing them like leopard spots
to stop naming myself after the people who have touched me

I spend five nights out of seven in a four-alarm frenzy
so what I need is ceiling sprinklers, sleeping with soaked hair
on a soggy carpet, and some peace for once

to sink to the sea bed, what I need
is the swish of a conch shell against my ear
no more choking on sandstorms and singeing my eyelashes

what I need is the breeze and the hush and palms
face-up, poised to catch the sky if it falls
and some peace for once

158.

now that I have swung my ribs wide for you
and asked you into my lungs, how long
will it take you to dive into my bloodstream
how long will it take me to breathe and bleed you out

did you bring me here to fill my hands
with all the autographs you've signed
to get me drunk on the water these blue lights bathe you in
and even with you crooning sideways at me, two fingers
against your lips and your breath in my hair
will you still be fifty feet away

will I stay heavy-lidded at noontime tomorrow
just to feel your dusky smile against my face again
will I draw my shutters and paint what I can remember of you
inside my praying palms, and kneel at my bedside
until you come back home again

is this what you wanted, what I asked for
you pull and tether me to your side before you walk away
so that shades of me still trail behind you
like ribbons across state lines

should I be sorry, or should I keep
your wildflowers in my pocket, sticker burrs and all
is it worth it for the slant of your sea glass eyes
and the sharp huff of your laughter through a cold night

157.

look at what I have left myself
some transparent retinal burn, a copy of your cornflower eyes
pressed half against my memory or lost to it
and using your name as a bookmark

and how can I hold you lightly
when I never held you, only waited
for a swig of strawberry cider across the table
(something to keep my fingers from itching for yours)
or a fluster of blood in my cheeks at your grin

I am painting wings on your back
and forgetting that you are neither angel
nor bird of prey

and forgetting the precise shade
of your hair, your teeth
I only ever saw them once, and now
I have left myself with only screens to smoke
illusory reminiscence and nothing to sleep beside

but if I sought your skin and sewed our hands together
if I found you tonight, and fleshed out the blurs in my recollection
with the solidness of your hips and elbows
would we hum together
or fall away

perhaps you are at your best in hindsight
perhaps I should let you stay there

156.

I watched two girls embrace in defiant answer
to some question: yes, we are here
and they kissed with cracked leaf lips, desperately
like every gust of wind was out to tear them

we all kiss in the shadows
of men, spitting flower petals on the pavement
as we unbind our hands to pray
at the alters of freckled knees and elbows
of softness and slope

no, we are not going away
but we wait for nightfall sometimes
before we break our fingers and show each other
our blood and bones
sometimes we think we need cover of darkness
to revel in the pinkness of our bed sheets
to braid our lipstick mouths

these girls did not know
that half the passersby were unfazed.
they were bristling with spears and armor
accustomed to battle by now
and terrified, and in love

155.

tired of writing myself weak, punching
keystrokes with cracked fingernails
swallowing second-guesses and spitting them back at you
printing angry poems into wallpaper so I won't forget
on mornings like this, when I wake up with bile in my throat
and I can't remember why

tired of writing myself weak, raking
fingernails over my skin and leaving red marks
and pretending you put them there
I am terrified of waking up on mornings like this
and forgetting you, and forgetting what you did
and having nothing to write about

154.

the day is sweeping sunlight fingers through my hair,
brushing gold over my eyelids, and I have never noticed
how my skin can candle-glow at noontime

and the breeze has spoken to the leaves
coaxing them to sigh away from their branches
and land on my shoulders like a spray of freckles

this is the first day of the first year with my eyes open
stretching languid muscles, testing my strength
and I am bathing in my own breath

so I kiss my soil feet and say a quiet prayer
to the god of secrets - crossing my head and heart,
a promise to keep this between the earth and me