I turned eighteen, and the floor dropped out.

The summer before, the clean-shaven men
at concerts, the ocean, at grimy
gas stations, would gaze at me
with their sallow eyes and creep
closer, stuffing their tarnished
wedding rings into their pockets. I pretend
I don't notice the approach.

I'm sweetheart now, and the world is dying
to know about my day. The artless
small talk ******
my cheeks a shameful red--
always this crass, unsolicited
acupuncture.  

Now, I'm darling. I'm baby-- my
age the next delicate question laid
across their taste buds.

A year ago, I could blush and remind
them of my mere seventeen trips around
the sun, and off they'd retreat as if
the law were the only thing keeping
my clothes on my body.

The eighteenth trip has come and
past; from here on out
I fly alone, braving the flocks of
pitiful predators.

He always kept candles, loved
to watch their silent vigil stand
bright against shadow.
He lit them, letting himself
get lost in
their seductive mirage--
only long enough to
snap out of a haze
and extinguish the light between
his fingers.
In a way,
he lived for their death,
the curling of pungent smoke, mingling
with stale bedroom air.

But he also thrived on their rebirth--
the glowing ember, *******
breath from the smoke and
regenerating from ashes.

Tonight, my bed is uninviting, and the moon too bright.
I get down on my knees; I send you
a prayer:

I hope you still find strands of my hair
clinging to your sheets, collected in the dryer’s lint trap,
strewn at the back of your dresser drawers.
Despite the figures of my absence-- in lunar cycles and miles--
I sometimes linger in that humming interlude before sleep,
picturing you twisting in those wrinkled sheets,
flipping the pillow only to uncover my lingering scent.

The full moon is glaring; You,
like myself, must be restless
at this witching hour, stringing
words together, our thread-count tripling
as the stars blink out. But,
close that tired moleskine eulogy. Tuck
it in some ill-attended corner of your
room along with the remaining,
waning remnants of me,

and sleep.

The tide rolled in behind your eyes,
their horizons permitting slivers of grey morning light
to bounce off of all you beheld.

You sighed with a brine laden breath
that tickled my cheeks
with dawn's brisk numbness.

I felt a renascent smile sprout from my lips.
I let you wash right over me.

I'm not an idiot.
I have faced your subtle rejection
as often as one's own breath;
the sting and recoil dull with each
understated devastation.

Believe me when I say
that I kick myself
dutifully.
A jaundiced bruise for
each time the familiar
feeling creeps and wells beneath
my goose-pimpled skin.

Today, you brushed my hand
a second too long.
The day before, you leaned
against the wall-- I undressed
you with my eyes.

God knows
why I read into these moments.
The butterflies
are just as soon ripped
wing from flimsy wing.

I'm not fatuous. But I'll
take tomorrow's lashings with
a smile. Call me your
masochistic romantic. Cringe in
my blushing face.
Leave it to me to find the
cliched glint in your dull eyes--
for I will always get off on
falsities before
settling for indifference.

Two less-than-people,
****** and lounging

buck naked on your faded comforter.
The sun too bright, the air too thick,
our lips too slick with
the taste of each other.
In short,


the act of cracking
our rib cages open just
wide enough to let the dust out.

To think
          I would have killed
To kiss your lips
         And now I'd die
To wipe your taste from mine

My eyes swimming, the lamplight
bobbing as it is held in my gaze; I watch
the door swing closed with a
resounding click.

Just a moment before were your hands, floating
an arms length away from the sun-
warmed duvet, shuffling in the effort
of untangling your headphones,
methodically stowing them in the
pocket of your jeans.

The door sweeps shut, your silhouette in
the hallway lighting now stifled and
the dancing figures
of the oak leaves are
swaying together upon the carpet. The window
glowing soft and meandering over my shoulder.

With a resounding jolt of latch meeting strike
plate; I am left with the hum of passing electricity,
the grazing cadence of
my exhales,
and the lukewarm divot in the sheets where
I hold your departed presence captive.

I couldn't sleep tonight,
I had a song stuck in my mouth. I licked
my lips and let it out slow and low, slurring
the words that only you'd know, a dizzy
resonance in Morse for you,
for whomever,
for nothing.

I must be speaking from the dark.
From the static-muffled space in my mind
where the late-night humming is restless, where
the blurry parts of you throb against
my sinews, 'till  I succumb, let lax
my lips and let you out;

I couldn't sleep tonight,
or any stifled night like this,
You: mulled, heady, sonorant at my tongue.

Me: flushed, spinning,
amplified.

The leaves changed
early this year,

shriveled and fell
to my feet.

The breeze
grew bitter,
a spiteful sigh
blowing

a wayward leaf into
my shaking palms.
In haste, I pressed it to my heart;

                  two withered orphans, it and I

We were young,
patting the upturned earth
around our hopeful oak sapling,
warming it with
hot breath.
I imagined it sprouting, fanning out
overnight to
extraordinary size; but you
just giggled and told
me to be patient.
That one day we'd sit
beneath its shadow together,
humming a secret song.

Today, I returned to
our spot in the weeds.
The sun beat down, glaring
at my single shadow.
Axe in hand, I severed
its mocking spine in two,
working desperately to forget your
piercing, lilting voice-- your
absent footfalls next
to mine.

I step into the mid-June semi-dark to place
his letter in the mailbox. I flip
the flag to attention, adjust
my polyester robe, open a slit
wider down my center, let the tepid,
lukewarm twilight graze
my nakedness beneath.
I recede up the driveway,
padding barefoot upon the still-warm asphalt, when
the resonant hum of the bikes on the bypass
behind the trees seems to
all at once
lay flush upon the parts
of me left bare, the flashbulb
fireflies too bright, too alive for
the nocturnal lull,
and I pause at the stoop;
After a breath I step
dazed into the hushed air-conditioning
of the foyer, starstruck and
overexposed.

A fifth-wear flannel, reek and all, drifted past me today,
came and went as I sat cross-legged, marinating in the patina-ed
post-meridian.
He took one last apathetic drag from a half-burnt
cigarette.

Let it fall through his fingers and onto
the cobblestones below. Callous:
an afterthought, he ball-changed and crushed
the smoke-spitting litter
underfoot.

Left me to stare at it there,
still twisting plumes
of itself up and out, streaking, snatched away
in the wind.

Left me to watch this
wisp of him sputter its
death-throes in the street.

If you can feel it in your hands, you can take a bite of it.
Words I live by
when the trees slouch and the day fades faster.

We meet in the backseat.
The crunch of gravel under bald tires,
and the resounding halt among the wind-dried pines,
the parking break squeak and seat-belt clatter.
We waste no time-- slick upholstery
and quite honestly no shame,
just claws and sweat and dripping, sated lips.

The air waxes saccharine,
cloistered like this in a pile of limbs,
ambrosia-addled as we are.  
But the cloying reek of it--
of something overripe and rot-ward bound--
sanctifies this feast.

And despite the rush and rising ache,
we both accept the sacrifice.