inlove with a girl who breathes like
snow so light, it is almost
nothing, nothing at all

inlove with a girl whose skin rubs against mine as
a tongue fondles peaches(cling)

inlove with a girl who sighs like the crest of a wave, falling
to meet the rest of it's body(russsshh)

inlove with a girl whose move-
ments collect eyes like her hair collects
rain or her toes collect sand

inlove like I am
inlove, like I am
inlove

this escapes me like the sigh escapes through the
teeth, feeling lucky to have been breathed
so it can graze lips
and finally d i  s    p       e            r                     s                                      e

into
the
                                                             ­                        e
            at                        s                      ­      
                  mo                                r
                                                 phe

there is no blood rush in this, there is no
heel-over-tit worship, waiting like
an obedient dog

we are getting old, coma-
tose, we are getting more
lace-like and fragile as we
go
go
go

races and
heavy everyday footfalls, good
practice for when we
lose our
legs

I will not end for you, no.
I will begin, and I will keep
on beginning.

I will lick peach juices from
my fingertips like mama's milk
dripping from the teat. I will wrap myself in
silk sarongs and stay that way for days,
marveling at the texture of my own skin.
I will run naked through the rain and
liberate myself in knowing that
what will happen will happen and
there is no safe way out. I will sit close
and listen. I will breathe water lying still
in a stream. I will eat poems for
breakfast and I
will slowly learn
how to die.

reachreach a
littlemore a
littlemore

closetoyou, closeto me

enoughtobe
close toyou

enough tobe
just
be.

the impression of everything
finally fit into the impression left by the first (as it always does) but

it was only the shallow end, and wonder goes
deeper, at least to the 6ft that goes over my head
(as it always does) and now

I am chopped into several different
pieces like the syllables in a word -- you've gotta
            
              sound
    
                me
            
               out!


you've gotta get me out
of the brain to the tongue to your
lips and teeth -- so sweet! the satisfying end to
one
big
word,



isn't it?

I'm up in knots again, today like
tug-of-war inside my chest like
little kids at recess - pulling, pull
ing but it never breaks because
who has upper body strength at age eight?

and tears like ringing a rag, can
never get every drop out.

and every day a bucket of water over my head,
head's so full my eyes could fall out, draw
out my sentences to fill the space between me
(at the top of the lungs like a
yawn perched, but it never rises)
and the space between you (I couldn't
ever fill it.)

the feeling builds and any way I lay
there's a pocket of my body to fill.

so I tuck my knees to my chest,
stretch my chin over top,
no escape, no empty space
curled up

like a newborn baby
so in the morning I
can re-learn how to breathe,
to speak and speak my mind

I can re-trust,
re-hope and re-
care.

breathe new air, just
one day's worth. so I can
re-position myself on the map,
point and say, "I am here!"

and feel it, too.

arms around you
like a sack of flour

curled up
     so delicate

I started
buttoning
my clothes,
hugging them
as though
cold.

the face of today is tired, tiring
to look at like aged and crinkled
paper, just
waiting to be
burned.

the cold inside my nose,
inside my eyes, inside my
hope globes and my curled
toes.

no heavy lifting or light
shifting of winds, just
full-on stale and hard and

cold.

kisses small and hand-
crafted, broken-in, a feel like
worn leather gloves, slipping
over lips (they were in need
of some warmth) covering no-
thing but the bare necessities - thin, and
they are something when
I am used to
nothing.

the cold just wants to hold us -
mold us into the blowing wind, fold us down beneath our coats,
bite deep - beneath our skin, beneath our bones.

so we won't forget
how our legs might shake
and our lips might chap
and our hair might brittle
beneath winter caps.

so we won't forget
how our voices go hoarse
and our noses glow pink
and the colder we get
the more the warmth stings.

so we won't forget
any of these things.

the cold just wants to hold us - selfish, but unknowingly so.
cradle us in long arms, carefully, inside the crook
of winter's elbow.

used to think
I was a dandelion,
as you were,

my end
tied to where you
begin,

rubbing
yellow into
skin.

there is a constant ache behind the eyes - dim,
like the dying embers of a fire. my stomach
is always too full of everything I didn't eat, the
foreignness spread like black mold beneath the
surface of everything.

picking at hangnails, picking at chapped lips, picking
the scabs that scabbed over my spirit.

my tongue is scratched like a scratched cd,
I have only one or two things that I keep
repreprepeating.

there is a build-up in my throat of apologies,
lingering on my breath and the truth I have been
keeping in my belly, the truth I have swallowed so
greedily, the truth is I haven't
much

truth.

it seemed when the air was thick with heat the streets were
seething like the sweat on my back as I'd climb each
minuscule lump in the earth as if it were a mighty mountain -
ten thousand feet tall. hair
stuck to my neck the way
kisses stick to your lips when
you want more than a kiss -
I'd pull it up and away from my face.

it has been
it has been
a lifetime and a half between the cold that was and
the cold that is - now, here, in my bones and holding down
the pavement with frigid arms, stubborn. my hair is
longer now, growing out and it curls like a cat at my
neck to rest, spreading like hot soup spreading
down my
chest.

your voice a sweet
          ripe
          be-
          cause
every morning in my
          stomach left
          gravel-
          like
coffee-stained tongues,
          rolling from tips  
          like peach pits -
          devoured
slowstickysweet, the
          center
          of each
          earthy
          peach.

the heat between my hands as I clench
them, between me and this
seat as I writhe against it, the ache
in my spine from sitting up
straight, the purse of my
lips and the
sting of my
eyeswide
dry
eyes.

no breath and then one deep
one. two, three. fourfivesixseven - !

slowbreathing.
no heaving sighs.
no looking left,
no looking
right.

hips are farther apart when I sit, hands are toes are
spread fingers like spindles like broken into minute portions of
matter, moving about in this



                                
                                         big                            &                        empty




                                                       not mov
                                                              ing but
                                                              breath
                                                                   ing and
                                                                   tingl
                                                                        ing, too

legs stick-straight
my hips don't gyrate
my hair's not well-trained
and my breasts aren't the same
size

my eyes
aren't bambi-watching-his-mother-get-strapped-to-the-back-of-a-van-BIG
they're not blue like the atlantic, but grey like
cigarette ashes.

my eye-lashes aren't a foot in length,
they don't billow when I blink
and I've lost so many, a ton,
ones that I didn't even
get to
wish
on.