it's a lot harder than you think.

you have to be from the South, like me
or the North, like I want to be
or somewhere entirely more interesting than Dallas
and you have to have the ginger gene
(because there's no way I'm having
blonde children)
and you have to like aquariums
specifically the seahorses

don't wear too much cologne or
pastels and don't ever smell like
frat parties, barbecue, or beer
and DON'T ever say that ballet is stupid.

you have to ask before we choose
the restaurant because I don't eat Italian
or Thai or Greek or Subway
and you have to hold the door open for me
even if we're in my own room.

listen to my monologues for class
and rattled-off to-do lists
as you lazily push the basket
and I grab it from you because you're going too slow
and mockingly call you a princess

know that I am busy, VERY busy
in fact so busy that I may not see you
because I am an independent woman
and there are stories to be built, dragons to be slayed,
and there are things my hands must finish
before I can start on holding yours

make fun of my Crocs
and the way I hiccup out of nowhere
and the days that I don't have time to eat breakfast
so I bring a Fuzzy's cup to class
full of off-brand Cap'n Crunch
shoving handfuls into my mouth between
snide remarks about Morrison
while you laugh inside your eyes
about what a cynic I pretend to be

hate me when I tell you
that I don't need a hug
and that I'd rather be dating Hemingway
or that I have rehearsal
painting cities, building histories

ignore my comments about you needing to shave
or on how I think I'd rather I'd never get married
and live the rest of my days writing stories
with organic vegetables and rainy days and
walks in the Carolinas

call me a ***** when I'm being one
(because I know I am about 97% of the time)
and tell me you would help me
if I would ever let you
whether it be Christmas lights or
physics lab or the gnawing pain
of lonely lonely lonely

let me read my books, propped up on
my pillows and nestled into a glaze
and let me have my expectations
of Rochesters and Darcys
even though I say I don't
and when I have to sew a blanket for class
and I say the stitching looks awful
tell me no, it doesn't
because I desperately want you
to know that my favorite color is lavender
and I love watermelon and stationery and
online shopping at 2 am
and I desperately want to know
your elementary school, your favorite song,
your middle name
even though I pretend I don't

and sometimes when I say I'm right
and you know that I know I'm wrong
just pick up your spirals and turn to leave,
then stop and say
"my favorite book is Gatsby, too."

and smile and call me crazy.

it's a lot easier than you think.

you always seem to be around when I do
the stupidest of things
like that one time
at three in the morning
I asked Katherine to roll on the ground with me
down the hallway of our dorm
and you happened to come up the stairs
and I made eye contact with your California smile

and that one time I told Sarah I was going to diet
until I reached my birth weight
of six pounds, seven ounces
and you overheard the conversation
and awkwardly walked by

and that one time
that I had a craptastic day
and you happened to sit next to me in at dinner
and a rock got caught in my Croc
(why I was wearing these I don't know)
and I accidentally fell while trying to get it out
and you just took another sip of Diet Coke and left

and that one time
that I for some cruel reason of fate
decided to count the exit signs in the cafeteria
like that was a brilliant idea
and you happened to be on the other side of the door
so I basically ran away
only you followed me

look, I know you think that I
was doing these things on purpose,
even though your face is always blank and expressionless;
I know on the inside you  think I am
the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
It has been exactly six days
in a row
of me doing the STUPIDEST ****
and you always happen to be there,
waiting for me to spill something,
sing something,
trip and tumble down the stairs
for your own amusement?
maybe so.
or maybe I'm just clumsy.

and I also know that you probably think
I have a massive crush on you,
that I stalk you and wait for these opportunities
to make myself look like a genuine freak
just so you
with your sun coast hair
and your summertime lips
will notice me.

but I don't.


I was just too bad to be a good girl
and too good to be bad
and you were just beautiful.

i wonder




if someone else called you

to tell them a story

because the nightmares wouldn't cut their ropes,

would you kick your heels

upon your desk and spin

a tale as long as the night itself

until they fell asleep?



"a beautiful red-haired princess

lived in a land

far far away

but she was so amazing

that the prince would scale

the highest of the mountainsides

to see her"



you were always writing me

into fairytales

and sometimes they helped

fight the darkness



did I ever tell you about those nightmares?

how I heard an old Chicano folktale

about La Llorona

and how she came to me in a dream

weeping and screeching

and clawing at her eyes

and shrieking "Ayudame!"

through the tangle of the black woods in front of me

twisting riddles through my slumber.



do you know that

sometimes during barre stretch,

when we shoot our legs skyward,

or when i'm filing college interviews

your smile-laugh ripples

through my ears

and I grit my teeth

through peppermint pain

and try to drown it out?



did I ever tell you

when I got the phrases

"La Llorona"y "la rana"

scrambled up in my brain?

La maestra told us we would be

leyendo un cuento

sobre la rana

en the pond

and I thought she meant a story of

La Llorona

the wailing woman

maestro of a symphony of screams

and my heart stopped working

and I told her, "No puedo, I can't."

and she said, "Silly girl, la rana es 'the frog'."

and laughed.



do you remember when

they took me to a grave

and you told me about cancer

and how you thought that you'd die young?

you said it

so calmly

as if the dead around you

were offering up their Easter lilies

as a bridal bouquet

to be tossed to a lucky relative

and i just looked at you

with sea-glass eyes

and you kissed me

as the tears spilled over

into silent rivers

down my cheeks



i wonder

if sometimes

when you listen closely

you can hear the bottle-sculptures'

mouths lisping with the wind

or la rana

croaking in the pond

and smile-laughing right along with you

at me.



if the story has a different beginning now

or a middle

or an end



or if you've written me out entirely

or maybe just changed my fate



"a beautiful red-haired princess

was punished for her vanity

and doomed to wander and wail

for all of eternity

for she had done wrong."



and am I La Llarona,

the weeping woman?

because that's all I ever

seemed to do

The dreams are gone now

or, rather, the nightmares

but there are some things

more haunting in reality.



i wonder if she hears

the coded tick-tock

of the static

or the shrill cries

of tortured souls

forever searching

forever lost



i wonder

if you love her

more than me.

I tiptoe hence from
crack to crack in the
asphalt of our parking lot
trying not to hit the yardlines like
we did in marching band
practice, carefully, steadily
with six steps to a stripe
six-to-five six-to-five
left right left

and I'm trying not to notice
that the trees, their leaves are
turning now to the colors of
the hairs upon my head

copper
and ash
blonde brownish
honey
and the sweetest of
auburn
on my left
right left

and I'm not doing a very good job
of not noticing these things
like how I pretend not to notice how
you smile when I'm not looking but
you are, you're smiling, you're
looking at me and perhaps catching
glimpse of the rainbow of follicles
emerging from my scalp

which is great and all, but still it
makes me nervous makes me jittery
pocketwatch in my ribcage
tickticktick

I scuff my foot across the yellow
paint of parking spaces and joke that
we would have pretty children
because that's always been a topic
that's one of those half-joking, half-not
topics that all
boy and girl friends have even if
they aren't boyfriends or girlfriends they're
just friends, it's still a tender subject
and today I'm feeling
brave except for when I
trip over a word and widen my
eyeballs in embarrassment
until they can see the very
tips of my eyelashes and I
feel very odd indeed
because I realize no one thinks of that
except of course for
six-to-five six-to-five

and I've mapped out my life in bottle caps
and those pepperminty things you
can only find at wedding receptions

and I ****** them in a jar until I stir
them into prophecy and they tell me
if you were another boy if you had a signet
for a seal and possibly a stallion or at
very least a cloak
or a practicality for inventions more useful
than those of divinities
but you aren't no you aren't

and in another life were you a
nine-to-five nine-to-five
and in another time you could've passed
and we could laugh our days away by
the fires and read Whitman to our
Siamese and drape ourselves with kaleidoscope
quilts in lavish armchairs and just
breathed

honey, honey for your toast

breathe, don't cry
crying is for
the weak

and in another life I could've smiled
without abandon I could've
let your fingers brush my jawline let
you read over my shoulder and occasionally
turn the pages for me and I
could've seen our future and let you tell
me I was beautiful and possibly loved you
...but I can't love you.
This is not another life.
this is mine I tiptoe fragilely
from crack to crack and breath to
breath to keep myself from falling off
the edge and so I murmur quietly in my brain

ash blonde brown auburn burgundy and
six-to-five
yes, six-to-five
and let me close my eyes to blink

you tell me
you're not foolish enough to tell me
what you really think
and you laugh and I tell you I'm stopping this
train
of thought before it derails itself and causes those
catastrophes where thousands die
of head-on collisions and
butterfly feelings
and stricken-through unfinished

like I'm in a game of hide
and seek but you're pretending
not to know where I am hiding
so I can be the last one
left
right left

so I halt myself at six-to-five
and let you kiss me anyway

you don't know that in those
few choice words
you've given myself away

I thirst.

 

You rip through here

a hurricane

biting through civilians and officials alike

until their bloodshed stains the streets

and the streams tick off the tally of your victims

your only aim to crush and maim

regardless of the death toll

or the reason

or the phasing of the moon

And then come crashing down again

 

while we are left, shaking our heads,

to sweep your secrets

into crematoria and coffins

Then dust off our hands

to wipe away your tears

 

and scrub away the fever

That leaves a ring of soapy sickness

in your bathwater

And then hold you,

bitter infant,

until the tide falls away

 

The constants, the healers,

What some call the mothers

though you are not our blood children

 

We are the ones that soothe your cuts and burns

Listen to your side of the story

And settle the fights of dollar bills

and ancestors

that you scorn without abandon

Hear you simper for a lullaby

As we rock you back to sleep

 

But the sighs don’t escape

until after we’ve checked under the bed for monsters

for the hundredth

or the thousandth

or the millionth time this week;

we can’t let you catch on

that the only real beasts lie within ourselves.

 

We would give you the moon

Had you not tamed it

And the deserts for your sandbox

But no matter what we give

You want it all you want it all

And we want nothing

NOTHING

in return

Just a single peaceful night,

vengeful child,

tea stirred with vanilla and sleep

but your screamings pierce our dreams

and nightmares

 

We are the worrywarts

The unsure

The cautious and the skeptics

Who don’t believe in jumping on the bed

Or in other such adventures

 

We are wrinkled brows and unpressed collars

The “it’s for your own good”s and the seamstresses

That stitch your heart back together

Before it’s broken one time too many

 

And you end up like us.

 

We are the aftermath, the backstory,

the prayers and dictionaries

that make it out of life alive

The Barmecidal harmony, the snatches of hymns

 

We are the scraps of coffee-tainted paper

that you slap against the telephone poles

As if the taste of scathing news-ink

is a bandage for the hurting

And we fold debris into our kerchiefs

saving them as souvenirs

 

And you call us close-minded

You call us cowards

As you snap your jaws and roar

down a vast and lonesome prairie

like the wind

 

Fast to laugh

and quick to run away

 

As we wander the streets lonely,

the gaslamps shattered on the cobblestones,

and stoop to collect the pieces

of the life you left behind.

 

Forgive them, Father,

for they know not what they do.

To my ex's friends
who all friended me on Facebook
even though I'd never met you
once in my life

I graciously accepted
your cyber-creepy gestures
and you all wrote on my wall
and told me I looked nice

three months later
I broke up with him
and now you keep your distance
and don't even like my statuses?

guess I'm not so nice anymore.

My grandfather's not dead
but you act like he is

the way you tiptoe around the closed oak door
way you whisper in a scratchy voice
when you talk about the future

way you pop in your
set of pearly whites
and bare your teeth too easily
when he asks you for a glass of water
and your brassy trumpet tells him

of course, dear, are you feeling okay?

You think that I've caught on
and know better than to trade him secrets
beneath the cracked door to your bedroom
like copper pennies for freedom

and that I don't remember him
throwing diving sticks at the bottom of the pool
then snatching them up and waving them above his head
far from my six-year-old reach

or when sitting upon his knee as a child
I would pick at the edges of the sepia photos
as he traced the veins of our family
back to seventy-second great-aunts
and royalty

I help you count the red pills
as I recall my favorite hiding place
(your fireplace)
and you shake your head and scold me

that was an awful place to hide
what if there had been cinders?

I tell you

we live in Texas

and tuck my wishes back into my pocket
and mention that Granddad thought it was
a fantastic place to visit
and that I would sit there for hours
and pretend I was a phoenix
from the old mythology books
in the musty back of your closet

You laugh as you slip him his pills

you can't possibly remember that

But I remember and
I insist on discussing college while he's in the room
his wrinkly eyes smile when I plot out my dreams
and he knows that I know
but I keep our secret anyway

you simper at my mother

oh, isn't she precious
hopeful and hoping a cure will be found

but you don't realize I've already discovered it:

Pretend like nothing has happened
Don't let them see the ticking hours on the mantelpiece
As long as we know that we're not older
beneath these transcripts and chemotherapies
the real world doesn't matter
not really, not at all

My grandfather's alive
even if you think he isn't
but he is
and he's sitting in your drawing room
so why don't you pop by for a visit?

we're only pretending, anyway.