the hunching and the quivering
the way your hands are stripped like leaves
void of color
the way we *******
too many times to unearth ourselves from this
coffin of the bed. Morphing your face
into howling ground—those
days are hungry and wild,
moaning to be gone

remind me of the way it tastes on your lips
of the way the smoke is coy with you, holds itself around your mouth
for a lackadaisical second, the way you appear in shades
under the moonlight; is patient; is occurring slowly to my eyes

the smoke holds, breathes on its own accord
the lapse of lilac scent far removed from last summer in
the northern woods, teeming with a softness even in the ******* chirp of  birds nestled on birch

now it is gravel; it is jarring; it is the way you hesitate like cigarette smoke;
caught between leaving too quick or never leaving at all

i.
In your arms, I felt like a child
Not a woman.

Listened to warmth, the
Tin raindrops outside and this

Bright light. Accepted
it and laid on you. Worn

Like the Midwest flatlands,
many arid miles longing
terribly

To comprehend, I can’t.
A glimpse of the shadows

Of the mind in the day of you:
Stripped and tender,

Raw. I bury my head
Like a child.


----------------------------------------(alternate version)


ii.
Like a woman – like a child
In your arms – (is) – raw
I bury my head. I feel like child.
Listened to the warmth of
Tin raindrops outside and this – stripped and tender
Worn, the mind in the day of you
Bright light like the many arid miles
Like the Midwest flatlands, longing terribly
To comprehend. Accept it
and laid on you.

The carcass of subway walls brick paved ways foreign tongues the hulled out ribs of a train car drenched in scents unfamiliar:

You no longer know what you want.
What you want, you can not have it.

The checkered cabs have come and gone.
Hot melon, lime juice sipped by girls with practical names like
Petunia. “Fill me up,” she saltly said. So, with words, she swallows up out, erode the beds of fingers and of the sand, rode up the preying tide, rusting the shoreline like a spoon. Poison ivy and pennies, brass nickels and gums.
Flaking leaves from branches, barren and sad. Growing up from them are twisted spines, prodding the landscape of iris greens. Drowning pinks, hot melon, lime juice -- quickly,  swallowing raw.

What else can I say but a chest feels heavy with every moment
When you forget to understand fully
Memory is just time—and then time
Identifies us. Just sever the head and forget the rest.
Red. Red worry rests on a blue
Heart. It rests on the chest and it
hurts to breath.

I’m dying, now. Right now.
And it seems fruitless to worry about inevitable things but
heart throbbing head pounding twisting dance two left feet
             (on the brain) (on the brain) (on the brain) (on the brain)
       anxious sleeping on the brain silently on the brain

What's the difference between
Silent terrors? Stalking
In day bloom in life’s bloom
And the miserable future,
The hopeless past, full

The house burned down and I lacked the curiosity for the world outside of those walls,
now ground
up and spit out.

It's not like it matters to me; it matters to no one.

So I keep dreaming,
only in your bed or nothing
I cannot think without you.
I can only write without you.

Keep dreaming, only in your bed
Or nothing. Or nothing, flooding over the rim of the cup,
is everything—it used to be. Now
memory squeezed me dry and left the pulp