Smoke wafts up from the lounge
among young bamboo.
I am standing on the balcony
backlit from a desk lamp,
cutting the ends of her hair.

The soundtrack of laughter
drowns out the news story
about the Japanese man
who ate a woman in France.
The French didn’t want
to deal with him and
neither did the Japanese.

He lives somewhere here
and has published too many books
for a murderer.

I wish the boy upstairs could see
us from his balcony in this beehive.

He never looks for me.

I have not loved anyone since the spring.
I'm beginning to have my doubts that I will ever find that perfect matchstick moment again.
But I'm throwing myself into everything,
trying to scare myself into love again.
What we had wasn't love but god
in the movies that's everything that love was made of.
I don't mind being a bad memory.
I don't mind being that Katy girl.
Because I ******* know we had something special
and I could have loved you forever.
Let me be that complicated girl.

I'm sure she's beautiful, Hubble.

It's been a year now, I have not changed. A sweet sailor told me once that poems were the only art form that allowed, demanded this much melancholy and I am none the less tragic. You would have laughed in my face had you seen him and I. Soft, silly boy opening up into bloodied lips. Pressing flowers into his hair, contritely convincing myself I was not the monster you wrote me out to be.

I won't tell you that he couldn't love me, that I could never keep him.

I'm sure you already know. That's how the story goes.

The song plays.
the air is hot, heavy, buzzing,
my head is spinning.
We wade through
sea of people
I am pushed hard into metal fence,
I pull out my camera,
he kneels before me.

God reaches out his hand to puny mortal girl and
I am Mary's monster.
I am electric,
I am alive for the first time.
Finally the fear does not eat me whole.

I bit into you and
there was nothing scary there,
I had to let you go.
I've always loved monsters more than men.

I am tired of chasing straw haired boys,
Who smell like earth and stability and everything that should be good for me.

I hurl myself like a meteor at them,
crash headfirst and they insist I am more fire rocket than girl.

He picks a girl who looks like him,
And I insist it is not because I am not straw haired.

But it eats at me, persimmons drip just like strawberries.
Why did you pick me if you could never even love me?

I am still learning pigs from men
and men from gods.
He was sweet today;
he said my name;
the curse is broken;
I am over him.

He is steadfast in the belief that
I cannot write him into my stories.
He has told me already that I confuse him.
A man is a man is a man.
Maybe I'm mad but that's ok,
because the orchestra in my head does not sing your name anymore.
Close your ears to what you do not want to know.