I am getting tired of the sea
every morning, whispering, “duermete”
like we are lovers
who kept each other awake all night.

To wish her goodbye…
say, I am leaving Miami, him, not you.

Reminded it is not just love that can sweep
someone off their feet –
also thinking I left some of my food
in his refrigerator, two gallons of milk gift.

I believe I will return,
not for liquid, not for anything tangible
just a redo of our last embrace
without an ocean of salt lulling every

goddamn thing,
and I believe I exist in there somewhere –
sea-wide, seaside, we rest just us.

I only miss you at night.
That's where the absence of your arm around me is painful.
Even the warmth of your body next to mine is gone.
That gentle glow of heat that pulsated off your body onto mine has left,
Leaving me cold with only blankets to wrap around me.
The simple pressure of your fingers locked with mine is gone as well,
Leaving behind empty spaces.

Empty.

You left holes in my life.
You ripped down the wall I had worked on for 20 years.

The comfort of that boundary around my heart crumbled when I met you,
And though it felt right when you were around,
Now that you're gone my heart is raw from exposure.
The hurt you've caused creates holes,
And I can't build up my wall fast enough to prevent them.

I miss you more than almost anything.
It's such a different sort of longing than what happens when you actually lose a loved one.
I didn't lose you, you pushed me away.
Even though you're alive, you've killed your presence in my life.
This yearning to have you back is pointless,
And yet night after night I find myself hungering to hold you.
But it's only at night.
That's when I miss you most.

I wanted to lay for awhile
in the incomprehensible darkness,
eyes needling all the things
which they could not see.

I'd imagine I was on Mercury,
where the hot, hot sun once turned the ore
to slag rivers carving up the surface
now the miasma of heat roams
the barren hilltops and plains
starving
for there is nothing left to consume.

Or Venus,
breathing poison,
weighted down and cooking me,
hotter even than Mercury,
where I'd watch the lightening play
across the saffron sky,
from the calderas of spent volcanos.

Or Earth,
where I lay awake in the night,
dreaming.

On Mars,
digging up fossils,
prowling riverbeds,
searching for memories in the broken rock
and bloody soil
Olympus looming in the distance.

Jupiter,
where my heart would break,
amid all the thunder
shouting itself against the gales
There is Ganymede,
silent above the endless storm

Or Saturn,
floating in the shadow
of those celestial rings
where Titan guards over them
ready for thieves in the darkness

Uranus,
where there are oceans of liquid diamond
glittering endlessly
through the alternating
decades long days and nights.

On Neptune,
beneath the sky so blue
and torn apart by the winds
nearing supersonic
over the burning ice.

Or lonely Pluto,
where I'd forget myself,
there in the dark.

I was searching my pockets for a story to tell my daughter on the night before Thanksgiving when she was looking especially nineteen, shouldering the immeasurable weight of being nineteen, and I couldn’t find one with a good three-act structure, but I started to tell her about the kind of vaguely existential warm knot I always used to get in my stomach when I went home from school for Thanksgiving, and how I couldn’t decide at the time whether it was happy or sad, but now I knew that it was happy for certain, and when you think about how once things change they are not changing back it can be kinda heavy, but you don’t have to think about it too often, and we had this new recipe for cranberry sauce this year and you don’t even have to get up early to watch the parade.

When I went downstairs at nine the next morning to put the turkey in the oven, she was smiling in front of the TV, sipping a cup of black coffee with her dad.

Legs shiver,
eyes hurt,
brain screams.
Hands ache when I write,
but I do.
I cling to the screen.
Like a brain dead body,
no soul,
only jealousy.
Then desperateness kicks in.
My Parvati is dead,
like Siva was slowly disappearing.
Can I hold on?
For how long?
Will this longing drive me mad,
or is it planning on sparing me?
Tick tock tick tock,
the clock goes,
blick block, blick,block.
Tv sounds are jarring,
the commentary is blasphemy,
often with misleading sounds.
I can feel my brain dying.
So it has,my darlings.
Good night.

It's not me, it's you
these words they haunt beds
but I can sleep at night.
Rather be cold, covered, and neglected
than hot, naked, and rejected.
Yeah you're winning cause you have feelings
but nothing is ever what it seems.
Crying and purging at the thought of my body
but I won't let you see me because I'm shaking.
You're so far away from my tree that I appear
to be still but my leaves are trembling.
I never asked for thunder and rain,
you were supposed to bury the pain.
Instead I watched as you endlessly shoveled to find
the root, so the the thorn in your heart can be extracted.
But I won't let you get soil deep
forever bound
chained and held in my hand
curled up defeated
a snail in a shell.
Sicker everyday.... all because I didn't wish you well.

Shame
fingers point
and they blame
you.
Libra weigh the scales
I'm tired of the lower hand
I want you so bad it's stupid
It's stupid that I want bad news
Yearning centuries now for something new.
I want you so bad it's stupid
it's stupid that I want you so bad
so bad, my want is bad,
but I'm stupid for you.

The Victim and The Villain
interchanging between the two
chemistry ignited in red
but now we're entering the blues
The positions they change as frequent
as lies that transform into truth.
The Victtim and The Villain
they live inside of us;
and they live inside of you.

Upon the crumbling moss-streaked wall,

A single shephard leant,

As he sadly counted peaceful sheep,

His mind on unpaid rent,

his loving wife, and doting son,

this cool sweet scent of night,

and now we leave the fretful shephard,

He’ll go to war and fight.