the breath from your bare sleeping chest in the early morning
turns hot and humid rushing
fertility like fog into the grottos of my rib cage,
vapor condensing into my bone marrow—
I'll till the soil when I wake up,
when you touch my skin I'll
flood,
spurting green leaves out of ***** tissue
it feels
full,
lung cavities erupting into steamy jungles,
vines snaking in and out of flesh,
your bursting garden, I'll
hang terracotta planters
from every pillar of my soul
I hear the silence from your body—
when you draw blood from my lip with your teeth I
taste your indifference
and dirt,
tangles of wet leaves in my
throat— torn up petals
of jasmine and trumpets on my tongue,
roses turned black, and I
feel the collapse of my skeleton, apocalyptic—
my eyes sting and
you're asleep
in the grey dawn
May 5
May 5, 2026 at 9:16 AM UTC
it is just like her to perform on dingy stages in messy brown bangs and Blundstones,
in Minnesota,
Lucy--
draped in thick organic fabrics of accidental colors like she
had been painting, or as if
clothes had just assembled themselves out of
materials of the forest -- yellows, browns, wood and burlap,
with a voice like the Reverend Mother surging out of her
pinched little grin, she'd
sing just the same if no one were there--
folk ballads conjuring the ancestral spirits in the walls,
every muscle in her body crying,
and I knew when I saw the trees on Sheridan hug her back I'd lose you to Lucy--
I could only imagine the way you worshipped her on your dorm bed, inhaling the moonlight soaked into her skin, loving her was like living in the oil-lamp-lit gazebo in the Sound of Music,
all dark romantic blues, locusts and flute melodies,
steam hovering on the grass from the rain, she
broke your heart, and eventually,
there were no more piano practice rooms or 2am milkshakes,
in the mirror now I'm 24 years old,
retinas etched with SI unit markings and a head full of bolted joint equations,
music shoved sloppily in the corner, and
I don't remember the last time I saw you,
or Lucy, for that matter--
I'm no longer afraid that she and I are as much the same as daffodils and iron, still
that blurry picture you took of her gingham blue dress will
always fill my bloodstream with the Sound of Music
May 2
May 2, 2026 at 6:16 PM UTC
your charcoal shampoo makes my hair fall out in the shower,
strands knotting up in my fingers and catching themselves in nets over the angles of my joints and I
don't know whose fault that makes things--
yours for the shampoo or mine for using it, knowing how
delicately my hair is attached, knowing I'd
trade all of it for the surging
feeling of your lips on the nape of my neck--
wet and salty and warm like
a hurricane, like a flood-- I'll
worship you like a god of the ocean, the way
you rush into me like the tide pinning me to the wall has me
dripping with lust forgetting the God who's watching, how
could it be wrong? to want him and
the storm his body does to me? you
created me with skin that burns dry but
hair that tears out in the shower, all at once I'm
in love and overwhelmed, with shame piling up like
garbage at the shore
Mar 23
Mar 23, 2026 at 10:46 PM UTC
like scrambled eggs, my dad called
my teenage brain upon finding me wrung out
and knotted up on the bathroom tile,
and it wasn't funny,
then,
imagining my love and hormones like yellow runny yolk
dripping all over, foaming up in the nooks
of my ceramic skull,
gurgling behind my eye sockets--
and oh what it took to wipe down the walls,
how many cups of raspberry tea alone in the windowsill,
how many fingers frostbitten writing letters to deities out in the cold, how many times I've heard
promises out of mouths I wouldn't recognize anymore,
what it took to depollute myself--
and how sweet it is now to kiss you in the parking lot and
feel my blood evaporate into helium,
to wake up in the morning to your hands on my face,
surprised every day by how clearly I can see you
Mar 3
Mar 3, 2026 at 12:33 AM UTC
how vulnerable it is to want you,
to hold as if grasping at a moonbeam the muscle memory
of your smile forming against my cheek, your
breath on my skin-- those
moments in the dark,
if I could cup the wind in my open palms,
I'd
spinform it into twisting willow trees to
show you how helpless I am in yours,
if I could draw your kisses into vessels that
hold their shape in clay I'd
fill them with the rain I've saved over
years and
darling, how raw it is, like the velvet button eye at the center of a rose I feel rubbed dry,
knowing that my face is so quick to flush pink,
how easily I'd bloom open if you touched me,
how foolishly I'll run around the streets of valencia all night collecting moonlight and wind in my coat pockets
Nov 22, 2025
Nov 22, 2025 at 2:45 AM UTC
mary queen of strawberry-flavored gasoline,
angry at the morning and the dark and the day not even started,
cursing as if it were part of breathing,
white smoke like time and ghosts escaping in tendrils through the gaps in your teeth after spitting your damnations into the cold—
blue eyes steel-scrubbed grey and
blonde hair ashen and threadbare, body
consumed like a stick weld electrode—
you’d scorch your throat with ***** before opening your eyes, as penance from the God you don’t believe in for
the things you let happen to you,
on your knees in the kitchen with his daughter, your daughter in your belly—
and you wake up fighting,
renewing every vile threat and vendetta, and
full of fire still, mary, let me hold it
in my open palms, burn my young innocent flesh,
you are far too full of ash turning your organs black far too quickly—
even calloused all over and
covered in fading tattoos and maps of open wounds,
you’re beautiful
the way weathered stones are,
smile at me mary, let me touch you,
let me take it from you
Oct 13, 2025
Oct 13, 2025 at 8:37 AM UTC
I picked up the shards on the kitchen floor so quickly and
vacuumed the last remains glinting
at me from the hardwood so swiftly like if I worked fast enough I
might make negative time, like maybe when I finish my eyes might not even see the crash, I won't remember there are no longer
8 glasses in the cabinet I'll forget the feeling of my
shoulder knocking into the dooframe reflex-opening my
right hand like an arcade claw machine I could
almost grab it suspended midair like locking
eyes not breathing like catching
you like a butterfly like a
song I loved so sorely I wanted it to resonate my skull like a
giant hollowed tuning fork, knocking on your
dorm room door just to smell the smell of your things your navy
bedsheets your hair wax your striped socks your towels, lying
with you on beanbags, hearing my
heartbeat in my ears feeling it hot in my temples and pretending I
didn't
like when you left if I could
dismiss your magnetism pulling me as if I were a
violinist awash in floodlights on wooden concert stages beading sweat on my forehead from the gorgeous aching
weight of a symphony -- if I called it ordinary,
called it
gravity instead and I
split this universe in half spilling blood in the quantum reaction
and grew 6 years older and emotionally not at all,
if I got
undressed for everyone but you and sit alone in cars and
control rooms and office chairs and volleyball courts and
couches in an apartment I pay for, feeling nothing,
I won't
remember the shards like constellations on the floor and that now there are
7 glasses in the cabinet
Sep 9, 2025
Sep 9, 2025 at 12:54 AM UTC
how will I ever forget now that there are 7 glasses in the cabinet
there are 7 glasses in the cabinet
there used to be 8 and now there are
7 glasses in the
cabinet
I turned off the light in the bathroom and my
elbow hit the doorframe and I can
see it in the air
my
elbow hit the doorframe and the muscles in my fingers released like an arcade claw machine I can
see it in the air
7 glasses in the cabinet
I thought about the hardwood and pictured
in the air I pictured that it might bounce off the hardwood I can
see it in the air on the
hardwood bouncing off the hardwood in
thousands of pieces like a messy kind of crash
so
fast I could almost just
see it in the air again just
pick it up from bouncing off the hardwood almost
like it didn't happen like there are still 8
glasses in the cabinet and maybe if I
blink again instead of thousands of shards on the kitchen floor
there will be
8 glasses in the cabinet
Sep 9, 2025
Sep 9, 2025 at 12:05 AM UTC
and I am a little girl at the dining room table again, with warm light
listening to locusts through the window, sitting
wide-eyed, swallowed up in a chair for hours while my father told
stories that would make his work friends erupt in their
bellowing alto-toned laughter and rattle the china in our tiny cabinets,
piecing together jargon and proud that my mother would let me
sit in the conference room instead of
bussing the table and washing dishes with the women so I
grew up sharpening my jawline with metal files and
tucking clay into the concavities above my hips, willing
it to harden into a squared angular body like a brick wall, like
a body for a suit and a stainless steel-linked watch for the left wrist who sat at the heads of dining room tables,
and with lungs full of spite and longing I cut my hair and
learned to explain actuator mechanisms and chemical rocket propulsion and sit in conference rooms in my scuffed-up steel-toed boots with
folded arms and witty curses about process control that make everyone laugh and I
can't help but notice how much more delicate my fingers are than everyone in the room and wonder whether my bone structure might have
negative safety margins for the functions I am
attempting by being there, but I find that it's
too late to cry for someone to touch your waist and kiss
your cheekbones whispering that you look like Aphrodite with your flowing hair and fill you with what you need because
what "woman" is left of one who casted her womb full of
cement to prove that she is man enough to sit at the table?
Sep 6, 2025
Sep 6, 2025 at 11:56 PM UTC