"What have you been up to?"
Without a thought, i use the word “lately”
as though introducing a brand-new, better version
of myself — happier, less broken
i use the word “lately”
to insinuate that this development is NEW!
RELEVANT! SIGNIFICANT! NOT AT ALL TEMPORARY!
i use the word “lately”
to pretend that i’ve changed
that i’ve grown out of my default state
of blue
should i tell the truth?
i haven’t changed
i haven’t grown
i just keep breathing
i hope that’s good enough for you.
Mar 24, 2020
Mar 24, 2020 at 9:16 AM UTC
my name is an expletive on your lips tonight
as your nails dig their way into the grooves of my shoulderblades
you scratch them apart
and i feel like you’re freeing wings out of my back
wings that had long been stapled inside
by crucifix nails that were bent and meant to crush
the natural curve of my body against yours
i am aching to touch you
with a certainty of faith that could move mountains
so tonight i will tuck your name under my tongue
and recite a litany of whispers
that i love you
i love you
i love
you
your name is the only prayer i need to say tonight
Jan 29, 2018
Jan 29, 2018 at 5:15 AM UTC
she says
i want to read you like a book
pour your words over me like honey
and drown in their sweetness
i whisper
i’m sorry but i am not a happy story
my poems are often like trauma surgery
and i write words to close these wounds
with barbed wire stitches
she replies
i want to read everything you wrote
point out which scars pair with which poem
and tell me the story of how your flesh
was rent, shred and healed by time
show me how the edges of the tear
reached for each other and made you
whole again
Jan 26, 2018
Jan 26, 2018 at 11:56 PM UTC
One night, I awoke on a beach, lonely but not alone.
She sat by the shore and I crept beside her.
And when she opened her mouth to speak,
an ocean swept me away.
She showed her abandoned sandcastles, lost underwater
as long-forgotten relics to represent impermanence.
I showed her the treasure chests I’d buried in the hope
of giving them to a lonely traveler who had moved on.
We rolled back our sleeves to reveal the fish hook scars on our skin —
caught only to be thrown back into the sea.
By the time morning came, I reached out to touch her
only to find myself lonely
and alone after all.
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 11:51 PM UTC
she has a tattoo
the next boy who sees her naked
will see that ink on her skin
and might wonder about the story behind it
but i wonder if he’ll ask about the poems
i whispered into her neck, where i used my teeth
as a substitute for braille
i wonder if he’ll recognize the lullabies i wrote on her back,
one slow lazy letter at a time to put her to sleep
in the cradle of my arms
i wonder if he’ll realize that the road signs
with which she directs him around her body
were carved by me — my mark on her history
i was the first cartographer of her skin
redefining the borders of her preferences
fine-turning the limits of her begging
exploring until i had finished more than a thousand revisions of her topography
i wonder if she remembers any of that after all
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 4:03 AM UTC
there is a language
that has no words
and when it's quiet
i learn its vocabulary with you
there's a structure without tense
in the way we lose ourselves in time
the present quickly becomes past
so what's the use in saying things like
what was, what is, what will be--
we are and we will and our heartbeats
are loud enough to drown out the clock
there's a statement without sound
and a destined kind of dialogue
between your hands and mine
because we shape hopes and fears
born out of our old battle scars--
but intertwined, our hands lose spaces
and suddenly, there's no distance
between your lips and mine
there's a message without medium
and we don't understand
how communication transcends
how nothing is verbalized
lingua francas aside, we are
speaking in this silence
there is a language
that has no words
though it might have a name
i think i'll call it love.
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 8:23 PM UTC
my fingers slip out of yours
and wander the crests
of your knuckles
for the _nth time
and i apologize for the spillage
of words from my mouth
whenever our eyes meet
because i built a faulty dam
of sarcasm and forced humor
that just gives way every time
you look at me like that
the pad of my thumb has memorized
the curves of your left hand
and i'm sure you noticed how
my hand curves around your wrist
in silence, in pleas
and i want you to stay
i want you to stay:
where the crook of my shoulder
has forgotten its first form,
where my arms encircle air
that held you moments before,
where my heart wants you around
because with you, it's being heard
i want to apologize for my sweaty palms
because they're not used to handling treasures--
i would have trained them sooner
had i known i was going to meet you.
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 11:20 AM UTC
When the day is over, we crawl back into our spaces.
While others wrap themselves in sheets to ward off the cold,
you swaddle me until I am blue, and black, and you
I am the color of you.
(which is a strange thing to say
since people don't have colors--
then why do you?)
You are the shade of dead lilies strewn
like lovers over a grave. No you, you are
the hue of the dawn that peels itself from
the arms of the earth that stretch across
everything
just to hand the world to the sky.
But your color is different tonight.
I recognize the color of aphids trapped
on windblown dandelions. I could count
the wisps of a dazed summer that wandered
to sleep in the nebula of your hair. And your hands
have grown into flowers, and you give them to me
and I
don't know how to water your hands.
So I pull you in by the stumps of your arms
and whisper
"I want the rest of you."
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 10:38 AM UTC
at night, i strip you until you're naked
peeling the layers of day's dust off you
sometimes your touch replies to mine
like when you shiver against the sponge
but on most days, you just lie there
blank eyes staring, sometimes waiting
for the ceiling to cave in on your body
pressed tight against the heat of my skin
and a part of me is hoping you're listening
for my heartbeat in this strange silence
that somehow you're scared of losing me
through your inner fog and nightmares
but when your fingers wind around mine
there are slow vines on the trellis of my arm
it's a lot like suffocating in a forest of you
where your scent overpowers and i am lost
knowing my roots are bound too tight
around the surface soil of your sins
and i know that pulling myself loose
would only break you all over again.
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 1:47 PM UTC
I read her skin like my favorite novel
memorizing the lines and passages of time
and tracing her character outlines
until we hit the ******
-- they call it the apex of emotion
I call it the pinnacle of her arch
because her back becomes broken dialogue
monologues reduced to gasps
while the innermost character struggles are flung
wide open, until a million errors spill out
punctuation out the window
grammar's gone through the door
my name becomes an expletive
I read her skin like my favorite novel
-- there's something different every time
Jun 25, 2013
Jun 25, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC