147.

in the winter, which is coming sooner than we thought,
we become a cold and nameless memory
and I go back to just wanting a goddamn cigarette.

in the summer at least we were melancholy
and made of a little missing each other.
when the frost comes
we will be blurs.

remembering is for the springtime,
but by then, the picture you kept of me will have faded
and my smile will be lost in someone else's
in the back of your pocket.

and I will be here, still, thumbing through
the notes you left for me, reading them aloud
to a few empty chairs.

the summer is over.
winter is the season for staying in,
because the roads between our hands have iced over,
and I guess your tires are
too weak for this.

I'll go back to warming my throat with whiskey
since you won't be here to kiss it,

and I don't know where you'll go.

146.

flitting birdlike through my memories, gathering

little bits of broken shell and soil between my knuckles as I go

to build a nest

there are so many things I have learned, so many things

I have yet to learn, and I will make a house of them

I will be indiscriminate

weave and sew the slivers of self-doubt

with shame and brash confidence alike, like slender twigs

padding with fluff from old lovers' mattresses

I have been made of so many things

over these years, 

stained glass and skinned knees and everything in between

and I am patchwork quilt beautiful

with sticks and stones sticking out at the seams, all the things

people have thrown at me, all the things I have swallowed

I will make my home amid my feathered hopes

and oiled fears, and I am not pitting myself 

against myself today. 

there are too many pretty things

in my lacy framework, in this tiny cathedral I have built
there are too many berries and too many thorns

too many storm clouds and sun showers

I don't want to pluck anything out

of myself. I want to keep

all of it.

145.

you make me wanna write good more, find
healthier words with leaner muscles and better breath
words that can stand on their own two letters,
and lend you a hand
when you need it. because you always lent yours to me.
you were always my favorite thing
and I miss when you were
wrapped around my wrists and ankles, like a brace
the doctor gives you and says,
"this will help you heal."

and your words are strong like prairie winds
and they make mine wanna stand up taller and
puff out their chests,
and paint murals
with their typewriter fingers all along
my skin, and yours. because I write in the dark
with something breathing down my neck, but
you leave your pens out to dry in the sun
and they leave Texas heat
on the page.

you make me wanna take my medicine
every single morning, because I never want to push you
into hospital waiting rooms again. you were always there
to lead me by the hand, and show me
the green grass
when the sky seemed too bright to look at.
and now I'm on pretty good terms
with daytime, but I still write at night anyway,
and your country words are nudging me
out the door again,

telling me stories about us, and binding them
into a little book that I can read.

I still remember the night you were so drunk
that you wouldn't open the door for anyone
except me.
and I'm so sorry that I told everyone later.
it's just that I felt special to you
like a keepsake you wore in your shirt pocket every day
and telling the story helped me
not to forget.

144.

I am all blooming palms now, opening under sun warmth
and ready to curl green tendrils around something
sweet like hummingbird feed, like sugar water
ready to plant green roots a long, long way down
to have something to hang on to when the wind blows
and to push green chutes up through fresh-tilled earth
and get it all under my fingernails, to shake my hair and laugh
while the hot dirt falls from it like fairy dust

I have kept myself indoors and potted for too long
only stretching so far upward, only toward a ceiling, no sky.
but I am learning to lift my leafy skirts and step out
toward the light, past the backyard, through the fence

and I am a wildflower now.

no more gates, no barbed wire
only the hush of tall grasses whispering to each other
and the their sway, and far horizons blending into gray from green
and the soft embrace of soil on my feet
and sunlight drawing freckles on my cheeks.

(worn)

worn like sweater-holes, like your thumbs
pressing through my skin and me
wrapping around your hands

worn like foot soles, like miles
of asphalt without flowers peeking
through the cracks

worn like forgetting you, and then
it’s years later and I’ve worn so many other
people’s sweaters, and I’m

just worn out


(composed in sixty seconds at oneword.com)

143.

crooked and bleary-eyed, slurred and sideways sitting
still askew from the last breath you blew at me, bent like a branch
head tilted almost upside-down and asking how did this happen?
how did so many midnights pass between eye blinks, between heartbeats,
head pressed to your wrist one minute and listening for your blood flow
the gentle whoosh like seashell sounds, until I open my eyes two years later
head-slam ringing without you and without
so much as a cough goodbye?
and I stretch a hand to the floor to steady myself, but
my fingers find your hair instead and I am
combing through you again
blurred vision and veered off-course, I was doing so well
I was doing such a good job of forgetting you

I am dizzy at the scent of you and sad to think
that you feel like an interruption now
instead of a comfort

To Robin, From The Rest of Us

there may be moments when you are rubbing your wrists
and they are in gold shackles, and we are singing
"O Captain, my Captain, sail home
 we are waiting for you"
and you may not hear us, trapped
in an itty bitty living space, on Arabian nights
that fall too heavy on your eyelids.
but we can see you in there, Peter, even
when you cannot remember what fairies look like anymore
and hope seems childish, and you've been a grown-up
for long enough to know when it's time to close the window.
we may be singing, "O Captain, my Captain"
and standing on school desks, waiting
for you to come home and tell us
about poetry and beauty, and romance, and love
and how these are the things we stay alive for,
and you may not hear us.
but we are still singing it anyway, because
you taught us how.

and we just want to tell you
(just like you told us, once)
that it's not your fault.

it's not your fault.

it's not your fault.

we love you.