Kiss me like you want to be loved tonight.
Kiss me like you want to see the stars in my eyes.
Kiss me like you want to cross the bridge to the other side.
Kiss me like you want to be loved tonight.

When I pointed out the harvest moon to him,
as it hung in the sky, blurred yellow edges
hiding behind a fog,
he laughed at me.
And as the car pulled forward, I saw the shining yellow shell
of the Shell Gas Station shine over the street.
This moon is nothing like your’s.

I find
that when people try to impress me
it all becomes the more unimpressive.
Your talent and true skill
should speak for itself,
jump off the page of your notebook
and indulge my sights with the vision
of your gift.

So when you try
to oh-so-casually remove your shirt
and change as you walk by me
sitting on your bed, reading a text
on my phone and now starting to wish
that I was home,

leave your shirt on—
show me your love.

Don’t tell me about your award from the state.
Let me find the plaque as I wander around the room,
waiting for you to come back from the stove.
Your wallet is thin, but the food is most delicious
when it’s served at your kitchen’s round table.
And as the smells creep into your bedroom
from down the hall,
I slide my fingers along the bookshelves,
pulling out yearbooks and quickly searching for your picture,
hoping to find it before you can notice
I’m not there.
That’s when I’ll find the plaque, resting on a corner of the shelve,
not even hung up.
I’ll bring it up at dinner later, ask what honorable thing you did, good sir.
And then you’ll tell me the story,
And it will be love
ly.

But rather, I’ll sit on the edge of the bed,
nestle my jacket around me tighter
and reach for the intoxication.
I must make myself drunk with something other than love tonight.
I must find the part of me that only knows moonlight, reach her,
touch her, and pull her closer to me. Embrace this new me.
I’ll breathe in her breaths and then press them onto your lips.
And I will forget that this is not love and this is not safe
but I left that harvest moon in another state.

I think of you when the medication hasn’t hit me yet,

when the pills are starting to run low in count,

and the bottle is still resting on the counter, unopened.

-

I like to feel sometimes,

it’s a bad habit of mine.

It lets you back into my mind.

-

The pills take you away,

but sometimes I want you to stay,

so I make the pills stay in the bottle.

-

But that’s irresponsible,

it’s something illogical,

and I only let it happen once every moon cycle.

-

I reach my hands up towards empty space,

as I lie in my bed, it’s late, almost 1 AM.

I imagine that your hand is reaching back,

like we’re on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

-

You are a painting to me now,

that I can admire but never touch again,

unless spirits and fate bring us back together,

but I’ve learned to stop dreaming like that.

Reality has kicked in.

-

I never thought it would.

I never thought any of it would

ever make sense to me.

And the day that it did,

I stopped relying on the bottles,

and let myself feel pain for one last time.

Then I swallowed the pill,

let it rest on my tongue, stinging its taste

into my memory,

so I would remember to not do this again.

I would remember to not remember you,

and to keep the lid off the bottle next time.

they told me not to sip too much from the solo cups
if I didn’t want to get ***** tonight.
the feminist issue here is not keeping up
but keeping low, keeping unnoticed,
staying as safe as that moldy orange in the Safeway,
never gonna get plucked up and ***** that way.

they told me not to indulge my senses and enhance my intoxication
levels at risk of decreasing my chances of
survival against a ******
attacking me.

they told me I feel like I need to keep up with the guys with my drinks,
match my stack of cups to theirs, and I just think
that’s *******, I just want to drink my ****** beer,
but they said that’s how I’ll get *****.

well maybe I binge on a lot of bad habits.
I pile them up on the CVS counter like a checklist of things not to do,
smoke, spend too much money and time on ebay bidding on
vintage rings and things I’ll never need, eat a row of oreos out of
my roomate’s care package, and drink too much at the occasional
party where I fraternize with the males from planet greek,
but does that make me guilty for getting *****?

today I woke up feeling like a damaged cause,
like a present that fell out of the back door of a UPS truck going
75 miles per hour on the highway in East Tennessee
and I never got to my destination.
should I have buckled my seat belt tighter?

society makes me feel crazy for thinking I can try to prevent
a violent act of maddening hate against a woman’s body,
or maybe a man’s, let’s not discriminate,
brought on by alcohol, late night musing, and punch bowl brewing.
maybe they should tell the rapists to keep their pants zipped
and their ***** to themselves unless they are requested.
keep your hands in your pastel short pockets and
let me go on with my business of being a proud, righteous woman.

The clouds get darker every day

and the sun finds new ways to hide away.

God sends earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods,

fires that destroy everything that we love.

The embers burn brightly and we come together,

standing with hands linked. Our love is our shelter,

and I can only wonder if this is what He meant

to create disaster so that’d we repent.

We only heal when we’ve been broken.

We only cry when the wrong words are spoken,

but I think it’s beautiful that we’re learning to

cry like a waterfall at the happy things too.

Let the tears flow and the troubles fade

as we watch new beginnings come our way.

Weddings, birthdays, graduations, and more—

we cry, cry like babies, until we can’t anymore.

We read beautiful books, let the pages crinkle and fade.

We jump in the puddles and dance in the rain.

We make dandelion wishes and buttercup predictions.

We know our days are numbered and we are already missing

the days when we were younger

and the days that we were free,

when mistakes didn’t matter

and our world was drawn out with chalk on the street.

We knew we had it good, but it wasn’t until now

that I realized I didn’t need to be older to figure it all out.

You can only move forward, but you can always look back

at the colorful kites in the sky and the hot sand on the beach,

and be ready to take a little hand with you as you walk that path again

with the next generation that comes our way, ready to take it all in.

I’m only a quarter of the way through this life,

not even that, at seventeen,

and I’ve already got a good idea

of where we’re heading to.

I’ve already exhausted my heat source.
There’s not much left to take of me.
I wonder when he will disappear,
turn ‘round the corner and never return.
He’ll ask for a dollar, and I’ll give him a dime.
I found it in my pocket, maybe on the ground.
I can’t remember, honestly, does it even matter now?

This is an attempt to hold on, to grip the edges of the rope
pulling up the plank bridge we stand on.
Is this love or is this war, or
am I just making it a bit of both?
The birds want to stay and make a nest,
but their feathers keep shedding in this cold.
This isn’t normal. This isn’t home,
so they fly south for the winter.
Is it Christmas in July, I wonder?

I’ll sit in familiar coffee shops and write
bad poetry while I nibble at chicken salad and fries.
The barista wears blue overalls and white,
and he smiles, oh he smiles, every time I walk by.
Two hippies sip iced drinks outside, framed by the window,
wearing ombre skirts, edges dancing on the ground, and
silver rings on every finger—turquoise, or birth stones perhaps
in the middle. And they muse about thousands of little things
that they will accomplish. Their babies will wander
in every world, no fear diminishing their travels.
Is it too late to grow young with the new age dreamers?

I find myself craving a cigarette, though I can’t remember
the last one I let dribble smoke down my throat.
A black and white scene, picturesque, so free,
standing on the street corner, any one, with relief wrapped in
thin little paper, tucked between *******, and kissing my lips,
the only lover I’ll never miss.
Replacing one bad path with another was ill-advised, I’ll admit,
but the flower blooming so early was too beautiful of a sight.
I think I see snow falling already in the street,
and we’re on the cusp of August, is it time to say goodbye?

She found out on a Thursday,
And the last time I slipped the smoke
Down my throat was Wednesday,
So I guess you could say this is Day Three.
Is it recovery
If you don’t see yourself as an addict?
But I guess every addict says that, don’t they?
And so begins the blessed unrest.

Each word laced with resentment,
I wonder how we’ll make it through this,
And I’ve asked her not to twist the phone cord
in her hands and scream at me from across the
kitchen because three summers ago,
she did,
and I sank far deeper than this.

The anxiety didn’t hit me until last night.
It crept up my back, like it was climbing each ****
In my spine hour by hour, till it finally touched the
Spirals of my brain and said, hey, let’s
Shock
A girl into feeling some pain.

I curled up in my bed with comforters over my head
and my phone lit up with his name.
He had gotten a text, was concerned, I guess,
And he listened as I rambled my achy words,
My humbled breaths.
There is nothing to hold back anymore.
I can’t afford to resist the tide much longer.

But I found
That he could distract me from the pain,
Involve me in another game,
A political drama not on the silver screen, but quite
Worthy of being.
We played with a deck of cards, building a house, seeing
How far it could go before falling down.
And when he said he had to go, he was home,
I didn’t even notice the skipped heartbeats anymore.

Feel my breath as it smoothes over the nape of your neck
like a fog, misting our windshields as we forget our sense.
We are the closest to dependence in this small world here,
than we will ever be in a Hyde Park bench relationship.

Don’t talk to me about love,
like you even know her name,
like you know the way she held my hand and rubbed my back as I sobbed into her veins.
Don’t talk to me about love,
as if you’ve heard of her before,
as if you’ve walked along the Pacific shore and seen the bottled notes I wrote you every day but threw to the ocean so only love would know my truths.

Don’t talk to me like you know my pain,
like you’ve torn open my scars
and seen my pulsing heart beneath.

Don’t talk to me like you have felt my love
because, truly, you have never let it touch you.

So please, don’t talk to me about love.
I doubt you even know love’s true face.

The winter breeze strikes my face.

All I see are the holes and breaks

on the Earth below me,

in between the lands,

where wheat sails in meadows and

fish stream through cold rushes.

There are smoke covered forests

with no canopies to catch us

and sand speckled mountains

which bones roll down freely.


I measure the jump with a nickel and my thumb.

The clouds look so comforting,

but through them,

I fall.


I pin my legs together,

as if with a needle and a thread.

I close my eyes and savor it—

it’s a free fall in the end.

The arena crowds my thoughts,
A thousand messages, a thousand stars,
but all I can feel is you.

You taught me how to breathe,
But now I can’t sing.

Lead into Chorus:

Water’s in my lungs,
Quickly filling up,
And I just miss the taste of air.

Chorus:

You’re all that I can see,
But there’s a galaxy out there,
And I just want to see the light.

I don’t know how to separate
From this love gone sour, this heart beat dissipating.
I miss someone who isn’t here,
a stranger in the bar who drinks my bittersweet air.

Some say I should seek a fortune teller,
someone who can cure my slumbers.
I just miss the taste of dreams.
Take me back to sleep.

Water’s in my lungs,
Quickly filling up.
And I just miss the taste of air.

You’re all that I can see,
But there’s a galaxy out there,
And I just want to see the light.

I don’t know how to separate
From this love gone sour, this heart beat dissipating.
I miss someone who isn’t here,
a stranger in the bar who drinks my bittersweet air.

I’m blind and lost in a crowded room,
But you can see straight through.
You’re the only ghost I’ve ever met,
And now all I want is to forget.
Go, go, go go away ghost.
Won’t you, go go, go go away ghost
Won’t you, go go, go go away ghost
Please go go, go go away ghost?

One person sings chorus as another sings “ghost” lines. Intensity builds.

Then, quietly:

Go, go, go go away ghost.
Won’t you go haunt somebody else?

If you can manage

to resurrect my words from the furnace,

I beg your interest

stay long enough to read them

all

and that you’ll still hold me

as the mirror falls off

the wall,

the lake spilling out and

drowning my reflections.

I’ve had many a confusing dream about you,
ones that have grabbed me and nearly ****** me
off the bed, and others that have made me sink
deeper
into the sheets,
caught on your every word,
knowing it will end so soon and I’ll be
reaching out my hand for your hair so I can
tuck it behind your ear and tell you that—
but then the anchor rises and the ocean splits,
a miracle switch but for me it isn’t. Its just
guilt that I wanted to hold onto you for longer
when you’re no longer mine to hold onto,
and frustration that I couldn’t even use my time
wisely, the little time that I did have.

"Maybe next time,"
I whisper into the dawn.
But then I begin to harbor some hope that
you won’t come back to me
since you’re not mine to have
and its just cruelty that brings you back to me at night
and its just cruelty that makes you leave me when the sun rises
because you
are a moon that crosses the skies
in a circular motion
and I am
only a star
that knows how to keep on flying
away from sensible notion.
I know not what safety is
and have only my dreams to guide me.

There was heat lightning as I walked back home that night.
it was Saturday, or rather, Sunday,
5 am, still dark
when I got his text and I wondered this: how far can two strangers go?

how quick can two fall in Love,
and just how quick does it take
for ignorance to come on?
Love is not Love anymore.

but I’ll admit to missing this,
only to you, my reader:
I do sometimes miss the sight of my once lover
walking towards our table with two cups of coffee in hand.
he hasn’t memorized my order yet, and I’m content with this.
it’s moving slowly, we’re just friends that happen
to spend a lot of time together, and share favorite movies,
and favorite songs, and could listen to a newly discovered old album
all the way through
just lying on his bed
and gazing at each other.

we could stare into the other’s eyes till we found our own reflection.
he was in me as much as I was in him.
Love is not love anymore
when I’ve left that part of me in upstate new york, in another land.

Love is being content.
but I am not content with myself
or my others that try to be significant,
like the one who sent that text,
hopeless, romantic, and misguided.
I am not in Love, reader,

not since him.

so when I got this text and he said that he could imagine us together,
holding hands, in a state beyond
nice, simple, naïve, simplistic
friendship,
I paused

stuck in my place,

for long enough that the lightning had a chance
to greet the storm.

the rain pummeled down, extraterrestrial,
and the bag of White Castle burgers I carried
disintegrated.

as the bag narrowed down in size, sliders plopping down onto the pavement
I kept running towards my home, trying to forget that our friendship was in question.

Love is not love anymore.
it scares me more than it should.
I’d rather let my seven dollars go to waste,
than give into love’s blind, bitter taste.

I’d rather my toms be pounded down into the pavement by the rain
and later spend three days drying in the back of my closet
and have the security guard stare at me, confused,
as the last of my sliders fall down onto the sidewalk outside his door.

“That’s a mess,” he says,
as if I didn’t know,
and he makes no move to help me clean it up,
so I choose not to reply to him.

This is a different kind of missing you.

This is a gentle yet rushing I miss you,

the I care about you and want the world for you I miss you.

This is the I can still feel your twinkling fingers dancing along

my arms—with careful touch for a freshman lover—I miss you.

-

But my muscles aren’t shaking anymore with missing you I miss you,

and this is the I think I know now that you miss me too but you still

haven’t said the words to me and neither have I but I"m

pretty sure now and that makes me miss you in a more

understated yet understood way.

-

I didn’t cry yesterday. Or today.

Tears may have touched my vision,

but they never blurred it.

I’m not afraid of this kind of missing you.

It’s much sweeter than before.

It’s the I care about you and I want the world for you I miss you,

and I want to be somewhere in that world I miss you,

but it’s okay if I’m not right next to you for that to happen…

I miss you.

Cold wonderings ***** at my back, and I
slide my hand, with a palm heated from another night,
across my bare skin.
I’m learning to love myself when no one else can,
and at least, for a moment,
forget whose door I just walked out of.

Let me be light, let me be light tonight.
Let this path be my air, my destination a distant sight.
Consider a rooftop, where I can see the pale moon,
hiding between the Twin Towers’ ghosts.
Maybe it can goad this artificial light
out of my cold
tile home.

Let me be light, let me be light tonight.
Let my heart be as hollow as the shining white knight.
This concrete, it screams—what song does it sing?
I am tired of sleeping with burnt eyes and lost dreams.

My shoes feel so heavy in my hand,
but the gravel has numbed my bare feet’s skin,
and I whisper to you, my poet in hand,
let me be light, let me be light for you.

I sent a letter to somebody once.

People thought I was very strange.

Maybe for writing out my thoughts and admitting I was

hurting and that I kept rewriting the words he said to me

in my head. Engraved in my memory and new memories

were the words he said

and the ones I didn’t.

It is senseless, it is wreckless,
It is ****** up nonetheless that
There is still nothing to be said for your death
They’ve arrested two guys for selling drugs
But what’s that got to do with what’s above
We need to remember you for your life, not your death, Marianne
But that’s all I seem to know you for. And that’s just not fair.
It is hopeless, it is sadness
That has come around to haunt us
In these moments, in these days, after you fell
From a window, so senseless
Did you even know you were falling?
Did you know that you were dying?
Did you know that anyone else was awake, across the way,
With her window open, at 4 am, early that Saturday,
And she heard you scream,
She heard you fly,
she heard that sonic boom rush that comes when life leaves us,
and rushes you off to another place
where you just watch over us
and I wonder if you saw
how nothing happened for a moment.
Fifteen moments, fifteen minutes, that there was silence
And I stood there looking out my window
Wondering where was the sense in this world to guide us down that street,
Where were the people rushing down to the courtyard, running on the concrete,
Searching for your face, for your familiar body, for you to be okay.
There was nothing.
For fifteen moments, fifteen minutes, there was silence.
And then they started coming.
And I stood there and watched as sirens and lights and cars, they all flashed,
They all came in a flash and ran around in a flash and blinded me with a flash
That didn’t leave me that whole weekend.
I don’t like sirens anymore. They mean someone’s been hurt.
Like you were, Marianne.
I heard a glass shatter and a cryptic scream, and I ran to my window to see
It sounded like someone had been hit by a car, slam, crash, break
With reality, break with life, break away from the lights from the sirens that only come when it’s too late,
but there were no cars on the street, not that I could see. I couldn’t see any accidents, at least not in front of me.
Should I have called? Should I have said something?
Here I am proving the bystander theory that I learned all about
In that lecture last Tuesday.
You’re more likely to be helped if only one person sees you fall,
Instead of seventeen or fifty or a courtyard full of freshman
Still up watching tv getting high eating shrooms playing videogames
Whatever you wanna call it, whatever you wanna say you were doing
Was it that important?
And who am I to talk? I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t do anything.
But I’m writing you a poem, Marianne. If you can even call this a poem.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to remember you.
I’m trying to know more about you.
Because I hate knowing you only for that second that you fell,
For that second you might’ve ****** yourself over and fallen out the window in Brewster Hall,
Because I know you were a great girl, you were smart and you were cool,
And I wish I could’ve known you for your life, instead of this death, so cruel
And where is the memorial? Where is the flag? Where is the announcement saying
We are here to remember
No **** no we aren’t. We are here to forget. That is what we do best,
As humans, we forget. We push it to the side, go on with our lives, because that’s
That’s how we cope. We don’t. We pretend it didn’t happen, that she didn’t fall by that bench.
A girl died ladies and gentlemen. And we know her for her death. And that is a fault we need to fix, a life we need to resurrect
Through memories and poetry and spoken word at events like this
I hope you hear this, Marianne, and know that girl who heard you fall
Hasn’t forgotten you and never will.
I’ll be okay, but I’m not who matters. It’s the girl from Taiwan
Who loved to play soccer and greet people with a smile,
It’s the girl who loved her boyfriend, and was in love with this school,
So in love with the place she never even had to visit
To know she wanted to come here,
And this is what she gets.
Death. She came here for that American dream, and she got it
For almost a year. Not even. It’s terrible.
So here’s to you, Marianne. Rest in peace. Sorry about the way we met.

I’ve tried many times to understand you,
And each time I forget,
that you’re one of those people that can’t be
forgotten, but one that people desperately try to.

You’re that stranger you pass on the bridge
wearing regular clothes but a strange smile
that’s not a smile at all, but not even a frown.
It’s not an invite to talk, but talk is all you want to do
with this person,
so you can know why her cheeks are so red
and no one is keeping her warm in this cold.
Why is she alone when the world wants to hold her?

And she’ll intrigue you for a short while, this gust of wind
that never really settles
for anyplace other than where she feels safe,
under the covers, with a book and her shovel,
so she can dig her secrets deeper and deeper
and then scream up when the hole’s past six feet.
She’ll say I’m ready for your help, I’m ready now,
but as soon as she’s up, she’ll be off. Just watch.

It’s a cold secret that she keeps in
that non-smile of her’s as she crosses the bridge,
and I want to follow her again
—for the last time, I swear—
but I remember how many times I’ve said that before.
It’s not worth the miles with her. There’s no destination,
just a cruel circle that teaches you nothing,
nothing but how to exhaust yourself
and how to breathe in deeply.

I learned how to breathe from her.
It was the most constant thing about our journey.

Cherry blossoms petals and rose pearl earrings,

An umbrella left stranded, stark and white,

left open on the pathway.

Silver heel imprints on the pebbles

find new faces each night.



I sit on a cold bench

that bathes in the sunlight,

holding hands with her picture.

I bid Paris goodbye.

It is not until my parents leave my brother and I to wander about the Musée d’Orsay

on our own tick tock desire and dollar,

where we take in the sunset and clock frame I recognize from a black and white photograph my mother took when she came

herself, and I almost trip over the rope that protects a Monet—

“Excusez-moi!” I almost scream—

that I am left to breathe in Paris at my own pace.



Perched on a stone bench high enough

that I have to awkwardly throw my body onto the slab

like I’m a sacrifice to the gods of love,

I chew on some ham pressed

between some lettuce and two halves of a baguette,

and I throw the breadcrumbs,

at first caught in my hair,

to the birds,

the ones who wander around the courtyard of the museum,

waiting for fools like me to feed them after viewing great art.



Some are gray with white tips

at the end of each feather, and others

have their heads cloaked in navy blue,

almost black,

as if they

splashed into a River Seine full of paint,

and it never washed off

their plump,

yet delightfully light

bodies.



And the paint stretches down,

surrounds their neck like a

lion’s mane that darts into the same

gray that paints the sky

in the winter Hemingway described

to me in his book.



Raccoon stripes wrap around their wingspan,

and their eye contact

is like that of a Hitchcock psychopath

who wants to ****** me for

not sharing my sandwich.



I am easily guilt-tripped by the pigeons of the world,

and Parisian flutterers

are no exception.

I rip off bits of my sandwich to throw to the grounded creatures

caught in a plight of hunger outside the museum.



They pluck at the chunks too big for their beaks,

and I slide off my perch

to meet and greet with the birds,

flustered by the sudden supply of bread crumbs

and who peck and beck towards me.



I hear laughter, but it sounds old,

and I turn to face the security guard

who shakes his head in his seat, chuckling at me.



His smile is young, but his badge is *****,

like the street outside the metro stop for Notre Dame.

His duty makes him speak French, and I mumble English in return.



“Madame, please don’t feed the birds!” he laughs, and I push

my bread back down into my bag, embarrassed as an American in France can be.



I kick my feet up to hurry the pigeons away, and they fly up around me, like

a wave of the black and white color spectrum, caught up in the next surprise.

whisper me to the sea.
salty breaths enlighten me.

let the wind capture my soul
as it passes me, brushing shoulders
with the crowd of tourists and locals
that meander through the clock tower plaza,
a town renovated to appease to the soldiers
and the thousands of Americans who wish to claim
respect and claim their connection to a place
they learned about in a History class,
a few years back.
there must be more.

the salt cleans my nostrils of any hate,
the air filling me up, lifting me away,
and I feel weightless, like I’m about to arrive
in the freshest of places, the greenest of spaces,
and the best chapter in the book of my life.

I am a tourist myself, but my mind is cleaner
—don’t take my comments as hate,
but only distance from their kind—
and it’s this slate that the sea wipes
again and again with each breath,
like each gallop a freed horse makes
in the fields of this same island

a few years back.

a grass blade, a bead of sand, a drop of the ocean’s water
in your hand, seeping between the cracks
of this world’s distaste, and I have begun to wonder how lovely
freedom must taste, particularly on the tongues of those opposed,
denied of the wooden planks that could carry them home,
and whose only solace was in the song
of the ocean kissing their skin, massaging their back, and
letting them float and imagine that there is something more.

for the ocean is the only way we can ever know how to fly,
our feet never land and our hearts beat towards the sky.

Wind, capture my soul—

pass through me,

brush shoulders with the crowd of tourists and locals

who meander through the clock tower plaza,

wishing to claim their connection

to a place they learned about in a History class

-

a few years back.

There must be more.

-

Salt, clean my nostrils of any hate—

the air fills me up, lifting me away,

And I feel weight-

less,

like I’m about to arrive

in the freshest of places, the greenest of spaces.

-

I am a tourist myself, yet my mind is cleaner

—but please, don’t take my comments as hate,

rather just distance from their kind—

and it’s this slate that the sea wipes

again and again with each foamy breath

like the gallops a freed horse makes

in the fields of this same island

-

a few years back.

There is something more.

-

A grass blade, a bead of sand, a drop of the ocean’s

water in your hands, seeping between the cracks

of this world’s distaste.

I have begun to wonder how lovely freedom must taste,

particularly on the tongues of those opposed,

denied of the wooden planks that could carry them home,

of the ocean’s kissing that lets them float and imagine

that there is something more.

-

Whisper me to that sea.

Salty breaths enlighten me.

There is a girl who wears velvet

and a white string of pearls.

She loves black Mary Janes

with white ankle socks,

and cherry garcia lips,

that leave those soft stains

on white table napkins.

-

A knowing smile,

a simple smirk,

a drawn out wink,

is all it took

for a black and white lens

to capture this girl

who wears velvet

and cherry garcia lips.

There were only two mirrors in which she could see herself.
She could look in the pools in Rome and see no reflection.
The Baths in England offered her no solace.
The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles would only torture her soul.
Her sight was blinded from her potential,
her heart caught mystified, transfixed on a cure.
Soft circles, almost ovals, with black and white finishings,
haunted her memory as she traveled the world.
It was only in the oceans of Greece,
when she could see the sky in her hands,
as they filled with the translucent puddles of Gods,
that she let herself remember his eyes
and the love she once saw in them.

She stands there in her checkered dress,

velvet tights tucked into riding boots,

no time to change between her lives.

She’s on the move, caressing the lines between

mountains and slopes that rise up and let you see above

all of these worlds, and then she comes down to brush her hair,

pull it into a honey bee hive, apply her mascara that would

never dare run down those porcelain cheeks.

Her skin is milky, and her eyes are stars,

as she rubs a speck of dirt off her legs,

before it crushes itself into her impressions

of knees, of sturdy, strong, stable,

and before I blink she has run behind the church

to where the horses roam behind wooden blocks,

fences put up by the pastor’s son last summer,

the one she had dated for a day then discarded for a dream,

and she leaps over the barrier

before I can even dare to wonder how.

Should’ve figured she’d know how to make a show of her escape.

Guide the horse into her pathways, show them the streams and grassy fields

they needed to cross together and instill a fearlessness into a creature

made fearful by past strangers, but she pushes them forward with a simple

brush on the side, soft glide of the hand, then a gentle push into their skin

that would make anyone want to run towards that setting Arizona sun.

Part of me wants to scream at you:

That could be me!

I could be the girl who loves you desperately

and holds you until you fall asleep each night

and makes sure you know you’re never alone,

you’re never alone in this fight.

-
The other part of me holds me back,

tucks me into my bed, lays the sheets carefully over my chest,

takes my palm in her hand and says:

That was you.

It was right,

but it wasn’t right enough.

I am desperately trying to ease my way back into solace,
caressing her name as I smear paint across my eyelids.
She floats off the tongue like a silhouette dancing against the wall,
feathery and light, a fairy that can’t be caught.
I coo at her resemblance to the girl in the mirror.
She looks so good, I wonder where she’s been.

Her eyes sing “found, I’ve been found” but
I can only see that home when I close my eyes.
The mascara stained eyelashes flap against my cheeks,
And the butterfly finally escapes.
I feel her slide down the bridge of my nose,
Gliding on the curves of my collar bones,
bouncing off of my shoulders into the air.

If I open my eyes then the silence will come,
The little girl inside me will have run
back to Neverland, and I need to chase after her.
I can watch her fly away if I stay this way, so I’ll know how
to follow her later, emulate her flight path
between the tightly packed houses in the west district
and the turns and curls of royal palaces.

I focus closely and memorize her route,
down to the star map and ballet flats,
and carefully, wearily, I open my eyes to sunrise outside.
There is a new day to be lived through, but I do not belong.
There is a song to be sung elsewhere, but when do I run?

I am lost.

I am vacant.

I have no space to occupy.

-

There is air.

I can’t breathe it.

There are only hard lips

and crushed butterflies.

-

I see the sky.

I am lost in its

appeal to steal me away.

-

I contemplate

and I consider the

choice of flying far far away.

-

I was once only a dreamer,

a doe-eyed romantic,

who wrote letters next to

short coffee cups.

-

But the cups got taller,

and the words grew longer,

and I moved onto Wonderland.

-

It’s the in-between, the far

behind-the-scenes, where

no one will ever look to find

these dreams.

-

So I’ll store you away there,

with your tea and honeysuckle,

and I’ll tie my feet to the bed

so I can’t leave again.

-

I contemplate again,

and I consider the choice

of flying far far away,

-

of jumping on a plane, or of you

doing these things, but then I

remember one truth:

you live in reality, and I don’t.

I puzzle you as I try to avoid stepping on the cracks of the

cobble stone streets of Paris and raise my camera to my eye to

frame a picture of the Pont de l’Archevêché and catch

lovers eating each other’s faces out in the left third of my shot.

-

Can you say “très dégoûtant”?

-

I harass my family for days about how we need to purchase a lock

from the vendors of Paris and eternally inscribe our family love onto it

with a black Sharpie from America, that would mean the world to me

and they shook their heads, not understanding why I was so enthralled with this

notion of love.

-

They didn’t know I was falling out of love in the city of love and locking my

nineteen-year-old heart’s impressions onto a bridge, but with our family name on it like a mask to cover up the unreturned love that burned in my chest each day

for two months while I wrote poems to forget him.

-

It is not until my parents leave my brother and I to wander about the Musée d’Orsay

on our own tick tock desire and dollar, where we take in the sun set and clock frame

I can recognize from a black and white photograph my mother took when she came

and I almost trip over the rope that protects a Monet—

-

“Excusez-moi!” I almost scream—

-

that I instigate a scheme to leave my mark upon Paris.

By the second to last day of our trip here, I find myself

finally sure that lover’s pain is all too real but

family blood is the only thing that escapes that scrape.

I want our name on the locks of this city, where people write

the dates that they have placed their love on the bridge

and occasionally admit a second date onto the lock

when they come back with their continued lovers.

And it is the most wonderful, lovely secret ever shared with me,

I think, as I peruse the sea of locks on either side of me, later that night,

my brother and I take the lock and key purchased for three Euros and write

our names and date on one side, leaving room for my mother and father and

other brother to find themselves and their love and put it on the lock too one day.

-

Then, we threw our key into the River Seine and I walked away

with my mark left on Paris.

Believe me when I say I’m in a deeper love that I have ever been,

and I promise to love you more than J. Alfred Prufrock loved any woman.

I opened a door. I unleashed the lock. The tension

inside is already gone.

Turn the key, feel it be

free.

Engage the new light, feel it

unwind.

It has forgotten how it feels to be outside.



You’ve been walking barefoot in a street speckled

with snow, like salt and pepper on an egg,

sunny side up with toast.

It’s easier to walk this way—scarred and frozen,

you say, you say,

as you pull the scarf tighter around your

neck,

button each button again and again.

The freeze creeps up your uncovered legs,

tickling each hair, each bone, each cellular day.

It lights them up before cutting them down.

The trees lay bare, they lay and they

lay.



But the snow is shivering into a river,

and you’re finding the road is shy and bitter.

You open an old door, forgiving the lock. The tension

from outside is already gone.

Turn the key, feel it be

free.

You twinkle your toes, and feel them

unwind.

They have forgotten how it feels

to come inside.

Wishing to slip back into my loneliness,

I cover myself with a rain sheet, mud, and leaves.

Turn my back to the wind, and let

the world pound against my knobby bones.

Cold, bitter, I want to be

Alone.



The forest behind me, the spirits in the trees,

their cackles mixing in with the wandering thieves.

Steal from me my worries and sorrow,

take from me

what tomorrow will bring, surely,

I feel that their stories never leave me.



Too loud, too loud! I scream for the storm

to pour down harder, release this aura

of spell-bound lovers. If my scent is

refreshed, discarded and replenished,

I can be free.



I will take to the sea

what tomorrow will bring, surely,

and wash it away before it can haunt me further.

Trusting the free fall more than I should,

for it treats me better than solid ground could,

I let my disguise fal

ter and a pearl of laughter escapes me.

There’s a gentle hum in my ears at all times.
Sometimes it’s ringing, calling out to me to
take action—
do something with my day—
and other times it’s smooth, in waves,
rocking me to sleep like I’m by the shore,
about a hundred feet out to sea, and the water
is breathing into me, humbling me.

When the nervous ticks come, and my body starts to
shake
break
wake,
I fight to get back to shore.
I raise my hand up towards the sun, curving it over the cloud, and
scooping up the last bit of air that I can
because I know I’m going down.

And then I’m on the couch and he’s making me laugh,
And I feel myself pushing the bad feelings down.
They’re like a sinking rock that I accidently dropped,
I didn’t expect it to fall so fast,
but now that it’s gone, I’m starting to
relax, breathe in, then out.
Never knew why I kept the rock in my pocket, thought
it was just something I was meant to keep
locked close to me, so that it couldn’t hurt me
when I lost sight of it.
But I watched the rock slip away from my grip,
my fingers reached
instinct
but his arm around my shoulder
reeled me back.
I imagined my pebble, worn and dark,
smacking the shells of an undersea pavement,
and staying there
while I swam away.

He pulls me in towards him,
skin against skin,
and the tide tries to pull my feet back,
but he makes the world raise a white flag for me.
Our mast is stronger, catches the wind in flight,
grips the curve of the wave just as it’s galloping forward,
and we glide towards shore, like clouds in the sky.

I wish you’d let the sky shine bright for you.
It’s so blue outside, the good kind.
Move the curtains to the side, sneak a glimpse,
Sip the air
slowly
and whistle it out.
Step carefully so you can hear the porch steps creak
and feel the wood under your bare feet without
worrying about the splinters. There aren’t any.
Just come outside.

The fields will part when the time is right,
and the sky will illuminate the guiding side.
And when you find that the earth can hold your weight,
that the world won’t collapse when you confess your fate,
you’ll see how the clouds shield you just the right way
from the hard rays of the sun, but you can still see the glow.
And it may time some time, your feet may burn and sore,
Blister even, maybe, but time heals all wounds, I swear,
Even the worst of heartaches.
Even my heart is breathing again, slowly.
It is

pumping.
Just consider that if glass shards can be glued back together, mirrors hung
back on the wall for Snow White to get ready in, and the
veins in my wrist sealed back up with love and rain,
there is another day for you to see.
I am not porcelain. I am weak,
But every time I am broken to the ground,
I rise like the willow tree.
There’s a reason she’s my favorite—
For she haunts her pleasures and cries all day,
But seeps her sorrows into the ground till her spirit
Rises back up through her veins.
The rings of the tree reflect not just her age, but her strife.
This woman has been broken. She’s crumbled yet rised.

She never dies, only cries.
The willow tree will always survive.

An endless ringing of the phone,
but no one’s home to hear its drone.
Unopened letters with the stamps peeled off,
and pictures faded from forgotten thought.

Smoke surrounds your silhouette
as you lose yourself in the next cigarette.
And the phone keeps ringing,
and I know you're home,
but I think I'll keep
saying
that you're gone.