151.

I am walking, footsore, back to the bed we slept in
travelling weary and wanting you like I swore I wouldn't
and you will always be the Her in my stories

and do you remember
how everything happened for us past midnight
all of our best moments wrapped in some half-haze, veiled
at 3 AM after he had stopped asking where you were
and we could cradle each other like eggshells in a feather bed

and you were always feather-soft, your edges blurred
through little crystal tears in the corners of my eyes
or maybe I just didn't want to see you
too clearly in the light of day

and we ended softly, too
no loud goodbye, just the hush of regret
and the words I whispered into your hair while you slept -

the words I laced into my fingertips, and
I still hold hands with them sometimes,
every pillow-lipped I Love You

and today I wrap them in a fist.

I have been blindfolded and foolish, thirsty for 3 AM
while I am walking away from you in circles
and coming back to you again

and do you remember
the things I showed you under the covers, my hunger
and the questions I painted black across your bedroom wall
how gently I kissed your skin and how hard I hoped
you would tell me your secrets

but we ended with a clap and a jolt
some storm inside me breaking, no clean goodbye
just the hush of a rain curtain closing you out
and drowning my broken back.

I am still waiting for our epilogue
but some midnights still fill my mouth like introductions,
like the first time we touched, our early years
your eyes and all the colors of you
and everything is thunder-swirled inside of me

so I suppose
that waking up at 3 AM will always sound like you breathing
and you will always be the Her in my stories

Gaslight

I am sick and you are cradling me in a borrowed bed
we are falling in love and you are telling me
you will make me better

cut to you wearing the headband my grandmother made
at a party, and I am wearing your hat over my smile and spinning
you are telling me I am the best thing that's ever been yours
and that's why you want to marry me

cut to you catching my arm before I walk out the door
you are telling me you will miss me too much, and that's why
I can't visit my mother alone anymore

cut to you kissing other mouths on the dance floor
and my cheeks red and wet three days later, my own mouth
asking you why. you are telling me you have a headache
and that's why you want me to stop talking

cut to me crazy in love and crying, you have convinced me
to rough-house with you in the kitchen
you grin and hold me while you are telling me
this is a game, and I am trembling

cut to me crunched into myself under our bed sheets, hands grasping
and empty of you, lungs wracked with fever and flashbacks
feet just starting to slip just past sanity
you are telling me you are worried about me, but
you just needed to blow off some steam
and that's why you left me here

cut to me waking you at 4 AM, bleeding
into the bed and you are carrying me to the bathroom
to wipe my legs clean of the red mess I've made

cut to me seeing shapes behind corners, holding your hand
as we take a walk to clear my cracking head, as monsters slither up
from the depths of campus fountains and I am convinced
that the hooting owl above us is coming for me, I swear
you are telling me it is okay that I'm losing my mind
because you are here, you are here

and did you wait until I came home from the hospital
before slithering under her covers?
or did you kiss her the night I checked in?
maybe it was months later, I can't remember.
my mind got broken, gets fuzzy
and I still forget things

cut to me folding my paper hands and swallowing tears
three months later saying I have to leave
you are telling me I am selfish
and you want me moved out by Monday

cut to you stretching the headband my grandmother made
over another girl's head at a party while I am watching
you are telling me I broke your heart,
and that's why you act this way

cut to you whispering my name to new friends
and stringing it together with words like "cold" and "heartless"
I am telling you we cannot be friends anymore, and
you are telling me it's no great loss to you

cut to me still telling our story to myself sometimes
still trying to piece it together, still tripping
through fog and a bramble of busted memories
still trying to forget what you told me

The Bee Burial

On that day you kissed my mouth, a warm grape-water kiss
and we made camp under a violet sky
drinking red wine and searching the yard for faerie rings
and buried treasure, catching glimpses of beetles and shy slugs
and at least three pixies, before we found him:
a dead bumblebee
lying face-up, nestled amid a grassy forest
tiny legs folded in dignity over his body.

Perhaps the spiders and the earthworms had mourned him already,
but we still cried for him, and let the spring breeze kiss the dew
away from our cheeks.

We gave him a soldier's burial,
a single blade of grass laid across his chest like a sword,
with dandelions and buttercups wreathed around his shallow grave.
And we sang buzzing songs, pollen songs,
and we hummed as we knelt in the dirt, and we vowed
that he would not be forgotten.

On that day we were solemn and enchanted
with magic on our mud-stained hands, and gold dust
in our hair and eyelashes.
Time hung honey-thick in the air until we took a break for strawberries
and realized half a day had passed, and we were halfway closer
to some ordinary tomorrow,
and our reverie was slowly beginning to fade
like swimming back to the surface of wakefulness
after a long dream.

So we waited as long as we could,
lingering outside while a hazy twilight settled,
memorizing the burial songs we'd written, and letting our love story
spill wine-red onto the blanket we brought.

And even years later, sometimes the hum
of a honeybee's wings in the morning
still sounds like a resurrection.

150.

you are telling travel stories, and I can smell meadow grass on your breath
as you talk about your itching feet, how they won't stand still for long
and I can feel mine growing restless, too

so I walk outside for once
and I make it as far as the back porch,
sitting here trying to swallow some green air, something clean
to wash the tar from my lungs.

you talk about vastness, about immensity
and I can see it in your mouth when you open wide enough,
blue mountains behind your teeth

and something cracks in me
when I listen to your wilderness songs

somehow I am nine years old again
and I am watching the sun climb a Colorado horizon
crossing my heart and hoping we never go back to Texas
and then I am nineteen, hiking through Arizona
pressing the photographs I've taken into my chest and praying
that the images will transfer, and my skin will become canyon-colored
and then I am twenty-two in New Mexico
cheeks raw from mountain sleet,
and from laughing too hard

my feet are cramping in these high heels, and I am curious
what you can see in my mouth when I open wide
whether it is all cigarette butts
and broken glass
the blood I've swallowed

or whether there is still some blue sky
in the back of my throat

149.

I will lay soil all along the carpets and turn on all the lights in the house
because the twilight is blue outside my window and I am a mess
with only halves of words in my head

I have visions of myself covered in moss
walking on cracked twigs somewhere no one has heard my voice
and even here, I cannot see my fingers

I think something is wrong.
can't you just buy one or two cigarettes? why a whole pack?
I've still got a corner of clean lung to blacken but I don't need a whole pack for that

I like to imagine warm dirt tasting clean, though
that maybe swallowing some could help me feel older in a good way
and there is a whole bed of it waiting for me someplace

I just need some peace and quiet and a break from this silence
with everything pushing at my ears from the inside

I just need to crack some bones open, mine or yours
either way it might wake me up

148.

curling my toes into little fists like eyes shut tight
replaying all my best kisses, every butterfly I've swallowed
tugging at bed sheets alone like your skin,
like your shirt when I am asking you to please come back
and I fold myself deeper into blanket rolls and I remember
why I don't do this kind of thing anymore.

because too many sunlit moments get drowned in the cracks and fissures
between words, like too many smiles I've missed while I am
looking just past your shoulder.

I leaf through these days and weeks and push myself into crippled love affairs
and push myself out of your arms and into your arms and there is
so much that I skim through

or skip forward to cloudy lips on mine again with my eyes closed,
pillow hair between my thumbs and damp eyelashes
twisting myself further down into my sheets
holding my own hips and lying against this headboard like it is someone's chest
remembering why loving is such a bad idea while I am missing you so damn much

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.