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