when the humble
bend their necks
we show to them
no humility.

companionship, not compatibility.
i have chosen immobility.
once i lived in instability but now i live
in his advice.

so water melts to ice,
my science trusts the imprecise,
thus in this world,
such comfort will suffice.

thus in this world,
that i created,
my latest, unadulterated:
i will live in shallow vice
i will allow
such comfort to suffice.

I am not mother, just lover,
to legs never met. Housewife, I once dreamed
of sweat over ovens, oh only to love in,
places I was told not to go. I am wet for another
touch, weak knee for ****, low self esteem,
I am student supreme.

not i, i am not prolific, of late.
i lack no creativity, only desire.
such expansive palate but no taste for creation.
i have words in my cupboards but i
go grocery shopping for a different hunger.
i am hurting for a different world.

I will alphabetize the authors of my insecurities and burn my Alexandria.

you are something akin to
a final shot of tequila on sunday night.
i wake up in the morning
push the covers off my body
and regret you.

Las Posadas, oh, a lot of, tequila mañana.
I listen to Mexican Radio in my room.
Sit in my bed and
wait for tomorrow.

They say there are more stars than grains of sand
and I hope that does not likewise apply to time
I sit, drop sand, count grains as seconds, and wait.

When temptation follows us all,
From the farthest pew,
He calls the poem,
"Untitled."

if the world before us were a binary search tree—
you and i can't carry on.
parent to nothing;
we were born leaves,
we stay leaves.
}

I met a girl at a house party, once,
whose boyfriend I had slept with
the previous semester before that.
We looked at each other—never
met—and the gaze held for just
a single second too long than it
should have. I knew, and she knew.
Sometimes you have a secret and
you can see it reflected in the eyes of
someone who knows. Who also knows.

I have been sharing a secret with just myself but
I saw that look in his eyes last night.

Even though I had lied many times
and there was nothing which you could offer my youth
to make it take you back—
we still both agreed:
for the first of March,
it was a cold day
with colder air—
the freshest kind of close.

Wish I never purged anything we shared
So I could count the days since we'd last spoken

I know you can't put a measure on sadness
But I can keep a tally of the seconds.

I do not know why the caged bird sings,
nor why I chose to stay inside on
the sunniest day of the year.

There were no birds, no songs, and no cages.
Only shadows of your house on the backyard.

When you get off work
—remember to brush
the quiet ghosts off your shoulder

said I shoulda' had a mother as I watched my tables burn

all of me was based almost solely off of you-i don't know if
we acknowledged it or not, but we sure as hell
romanticized it. i still look for you in the places you once were.
i still look for you in the places you once were.

Lately I’ve been feeling out of place in places that used to bring me a lot of comfort, I don’t want to be near groups lately, I can’t remember recent events because I’m too busy remembering how I felt during those recent events than the actual events themselves, my entire day to day outlook depends solely on one feeling, a constant feeling of always knowing you’re going to be late.

I tried to write of you.


I really tried to write of you.






\i don;t know Why i't didtn work---


I tried so hard, I tried
so hard, but it
was just a sign--
just a sign-just
a
sign.

It's not luck, lover
only privilege.

We head to visual court to give our testimony.
Blood rush to the podium of my neck
where another lover once bit.
I keep these bruises for you and I
to remember why we can't be together.

I haven't held a secret in so long, but oh God, I can feel their ghosts on my shoulders still. I locked a man in my closet and the flesh fell off to show a skeleton. He did not open the door. I wish it could have been different. I went back years later and found bone-shaped holes in the floorboards. Oh God, I never knew what those taps in the walls were. When my lover is not listening I tap back.

"Yeah, why don't I tell him that I ****** you too?"

735 days since my skin touched yours

In one second—a universe existed: each
with 735 Earths, each
with 735 cities, each
with 735 hundred sets of lovers, like us.

In one second—each planet had
735 extra suns. 735 cities burnt to
the end of their matchstick in 1/735th of a second,
the same second that we had last touched.

You asked me, then, if I ever thought I had loved anyone in high school. I didn't answer you, because all I could think of was if a world could feel the difference between the burn of 735 and 736 suns.


They can.

Oh, my God, who did
Scare. I turn upward my eyes,
Walk, and faith my fears.

tHERE aRE pLENTY oF fISH iN tHE sEA


i swung a bat and hit the ball—

and the ball kept talking to me until he found someone a little cuter at work. or that's what i assume.

you keep saying, "at least you played the game,"

but i would rather have missed the ******* match.
crane my neck like a swan. hang my head. give up good, give up so good. canadian geese.

it happened again. it ******* happened again.

First comes love, then


              she does

I'd give up used bookstores, libraries,
old love, and free chai tea lattes
to be alone with you.


All of the things I once believe caused feeling—
Just moments and memories

in a great spectrum of
*"I forgot—just being happy. being happy.

So I prioritize
and keep going,
close my eyes.
close your eyes."

So pleasure twists to grief—
Sweet Eve looks for just relief.
We were looking only for release.
Because Adam died.


Adam died.

I told you once, that my nihilism
was the only thing I ever bet with.
I wasn't lying, then, really,
when I told you I had nothing to lose.

the world turned and
turned and you put
it under your 4th finger
on your right hand when it
was spinning on your
coffee table next to a
carton of canadian classics with
one left in the pack. you stopped
it like a quarter and you put
it in your glass and you raised
your arm and drank and
you made me repeat myself.
and you raised your arm and drank and
you made me repeat myself.  i kept


going until i got dizzy.

you loved me good, but
he hated me better. i'm
a sucker for passion, oh,
the thought of him still
bites.

she looks like me, but she does not
hate like me. she loves,
and she loves you, but you
have always wanted to be hated. and i
can hate you.

and i can hate you.

The skylines, the cruise ships, the water in every window.
From the sixteenth floor of my permanence—
I do not write to you.

I believe in something greater than I—I believe in probability.

I was always lost
in many thoughts, and many glances,
other beaches, circumstances—
Ravelled in, a set of hands, of another man.
Oh, all with the same name as you.
Oh, all with the same name as you.

Never wrote of you.
Maybe now I'll write for you.
So here you go, you.

I wished you the world, but the world was already held in your eyes.

I wish I could show you all the words I wrote on my body
That you probably wouldn't approve of
(you enjoy the meaning—but not the idea).

But you don't want my skin anymore.
And that's fine.
That's just fine.

You've crossed my mind five-hundred times since you've told me—
Wanting to be a functional person, wanting to be a decent daughter, I am cut up and stitched together with threads made of perpendicular thoughts on parallel timelines.

The only way you know is the only way home, but you can cross the street if you need to.

Tears—from, or in front of, or in the arms of
My mother, oh God, do I love her,
Breaking down faster than gravity can act on salt water.
The words dissolving under my tongue—
quicker than I can spit them out.

It hurts.
It ******* hurts.

i still remember the specific strand of ****
that we breathed in february of first year
behind my building on saturday night
the first time you kissed me.

it wasn't the first time we had kissed
but the first time you had kissed me.
there was green on the taste of your lips
and blue under my tongue.

i walked by that same smoke bench a few weeks ago
wondering how many others had sat,
smoked the same strain, stolen the same memories.

"How to cut yourself when you're a modest man in a relationship:
Drink, write, never read, and burn."

The second could have been three times as long, but you'll always remember the first.

Oh Ruth, you left me in a scattering—
I hit the gold foil
and I was gone.

you were made of
good intentions, thin hips,
and soft shoulders.

i was weak,
with bruised knees,
and thought with my lips.


if we were to ever agree on a god:
he would be physical—and he
would know our secrets.



he would be made out of them.

I had a home
and I hid a
secret in the floor
boards. I would
like to say I was
bored but I know I
was only lonely and
tired of drinking. If
you can hide a
body in a closet—
you can hide a
memory under the
bed. I like to think
I did not mean for it
to be this way.
But now, his
skin has fallen and
he is a skeleton in
my closet and his mem-
ories have spawned a
monster under my bed.
I like to think I
did not mean for it
to be this way.
I am hoping my
husband never
taps on the walls.
They will
tap back.

You got better, I got bitter.

We never make eye contact anymore—
But your friends and I do—
Which is weird—I don't remember them being the ones—who stuck a finger in my—

you told me you loved
red, blue, and geometry—
and the next morning
i found red
lines on my back
and blue
circles on my neck.
i know you've read
the things i've written.
i know you know
the things i've done.
we share a secret within
the line of our vision.
we never spoke about it.




we never spoke about it.