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