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