I read the obituary and think of you.
I think of us together and how one day,
we won’t get to choose life or death.
It’ll just happen and one of us will be left
without the other. When I read books
about lovers trying to move on after
their sun goes out, I can’t handle it.
When my grandma died, sure I was upset
for losing her, but I was on edge by the thought
of my grandfather sleeping alone from then on.
And I know it’s so far away and I know
that it doesn’t make sense as a twenty-something
to think about it. But I want to tell you I love you
every time I hear someone has died. I want to run
my hands over your skin and make it permanent.
I want to believe that there’s an afterlife and we all just
become reconnected. When I hear someone has died
I want to hear your voice against my cheek, sighing my name,
over and over again.
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 2, 2014 at 1:52 PM UTC
I want to imprint on you. Just as the girls before me.
Don’t lie at me and say I can’t see the sharpie marks on your skin.
I got drunk because I knew I couldn’t kiss you sober.
I stumbled into you like you were the bathroom at a bar.
I took a look around and I couldn’t even miss them: drawings, words,
phone numbers and lipstick kisses. **** the mirror; don’t look at me.
Sep 30, 2013
Sep 30, 2013 at 9:54 PM UTC
Don't make me read a biography.
They're always such a tease and I
always want more. When did your
first tooth come out. Whose been lucky
enough to kiss you. Don't tell me where
you went to school. I don't care what
year you graduated: tell me where you
ate lunch, tell me what songs got you
through that bus ride home.
You're telling me the skeleton, give me
the flesh, give me the intricate details of
your nerves and cells. I don't want no
flashcard facts, give me that scrapbook
your grandma made. Let me see you get
embarrassed. Just let me see you.
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 11:25 AM UTC
My mother brought down the storage
box from the attic. I swore it was bigger.
I went through every single picture,
pulling aside all the ones I wanted
to bring back to Tallahassee with me.
I didn't think it could mean anything, but
I have no proof to show of my vacant father.
No picture of my clumsy, pre-teen years
where I weighed more than my mother.
When I pick out the pictures I want on my wall,
it's the past that I created for myself.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 10:40 PM UTC
You left faster than the door
could open from its hinges.
It swung while the scent
of blueberries and milk
and the memories you held
diffused throughout my lonely
room, on my lonely bed
where you had just slept --
where we had slept, but
don't come back.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
I will hurt my boyfriend the most. But he started it and though he thought
we finished it together, like civil adults talking about how to better
our relationship. I finished it later --
alone in my room, crying and pleading for something better, different.
You gotta understand --
When it's good, it's so good,
but when it's bad,
I have to write about it.
And I will find a new boy who doesn't care about that,
I respect the art, he'd say.
You gotta understand --
I will do this to you, too.
You are my next poem
and it will probably be ****** and make you cry.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 7:15 PM UTC
Not in a sense that I want to own it, or
that I want to take it away from others and conquer
the ways for which it stood and whoever might
have been there before me.
But I want to name an island.
A cryptic, unforgiving name and not in a sense that
I’ll be leaving it, because of the harsh and abrasive things its done.
Not because I was ready to be left standing there
not knowing the starting and ending point,
like how I was left in your bed.
You didn’t make coffee or ask me what time
it was or if I wanted a shower.
You don’t black-out the sun anymore.
Now at nine in the morning the sun shines early through the window
and the aqua walls flood and I’m stranded on
your brown-plaid bed, in the middle of your room and
you just swam off.
And I’m naming it nothing,
because why would I name an island when I have no one to share it with?
Dec 11, 2012
Dec 11, 2012 at 12:52 AM UTC
There were always so many lizards and cat statues made out of china. But at some point what started to matter more were the boys on the pubescent school bus yelling obscenities and stealing ****** kisses from girls stuffing their bra and being too cool to wear Limited Too. It became difficult to imagine the lizard cage behind the duplex, a chain-linked refrigerator box, when there was a school dance to be embarrassed at while forming dance circles, soda can in hand. Then standing on the corner waiting for my dad to take me home before any of the late night talk shows aired.
Flash-forward: A blow-up air mattress in the middle of the living room at five in the morning and we were high.
We’re growing up from: the VW that smelled of crayons,
skipping class to go to the library downtown,
the greasy spoon diner,
the Goodwill,
fall outs, anxiety, lorazepam, writing ****** poetry,
getting popsicles from whole foods and eating them in the park during winter.
The sun’s lavender light peaked through the closed blinds while the satisfaction of making out with a boy who likes boys felt as good as the realization that girls don’t always have to like boys either.
There’s a chance I could still catch a lizard.
And yea it’s cliché, but **** happens and things change.
Nov 26, 2012
Nov 26, 2012 at 4:59 PM UTC
Teaching me the correct way to make
a paper airplane. He took me to his bindery.
The machine beats bustled and roared and shook
the unruffled metal walls that made me feel
like I was sleeping in the middle of a dragon’s
den, its snoring breaths protecting me
from fathers who didn't know how to be fathers.
I just finished losing all my teeth,
the new ones growing in at different speeds,
my front two like frozen stalactites from different
ice ages. My hair was banana yellow blonde and I liked
to compare myself to a younger Britney Spears.
A potential avalanche of paper next to the metal walls,
vexed by one deep exhale and the pieces
would go up and around like dandelion parts.
My father, forever bound to binding the parts together.
He brought me a single sheet and began twisting and folding.
I always hated him for his genes, for having a Russian
heritage that made me annoyed at the klutzy appendages we shared.
Is it funny that I lie and say I'm Welsh?
It's not funny that I can remember every detail of his over-sized,
meaty hands, how he kept that silly ring on his finger,
the graying knuckle hairs peeking out:
free me!
Not to say I think about him every time I make a paper airplane,
but not to say I don't.
Nov 7, 2012
Nov 7, 2012 at 5:09 PM UTC
I smoked my first and last cigarette on your porch after consuming six nameless beers (that made me too drunk.) I thought: this is how I die. I thought: I’m not going to die. And I remembered that
I created this memory before it happened. You sang notes in your soprano my alto was jealous of. There was no grass, but cement and I had wished that you told me you
lived in the ****** part of town. A man came up and asked for our butts. I giggled, take the rest. There was a mason jar of damp butts and he stole them from you a week earlier. I
wanted to finish the eighteen pack but my body was so full and there was only one night to sleep on your mattress on the floor with quilted murmurs. Can I remember the ghost and the German Internet boys? I woke up still drunk and you drove me to Jacksonville.
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 10:33 PM UTC