From salt bath she rose,
Pure white towel her raiment,
Babe in swaddling clothes.

you smiled warmly and laced your fingers in mine

we laughed lightly and i felt as if i were floating

everything was perfectly sculpted together like a fairy tale ending

and when i was at work

i found myself aimlessly scribbling your name over and over in the corners of my notebook

but after

the smiles faded and you eventually let go of my hand

there were no laughs, just hollow stares and a thousand weights pushing me down

everything fell apart like the end of a horror film

and when i was at work

i stared blankly at the paper before me

because the scribbles had eventually tiptoed their way off of the paper and out of my mind.

he threw dirt into the crevices of my mind

making it a horrid, wretched place

but you came along

and planted flowers.

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

in the story, a newborn is placed in a mailbox.  we know of no harm and the story itself is very casual.  an angel tells us the job of an angel is to fly in front of the master when the master is ****.  we try to hang on every word.  the mailbox is the only mailbox in heaven.  our questions turn our stomachs.  some of us become hormonal and some of us identify pedophiles by future rote.  we head home in a pack.  a siren behind us wails a moment before being joined.

And so, all that is left is a whisper,
a shadow,
an imprint of you.
Fleeting, yet vivid
as scars left over
from battle.

You may no longer shape
my mind,
my thoughts,
my heart...
but you are still here.

though escape may be found
in the summer air,
pressing down on my blushing
cheeks,
there is no escape at night.
You come in sudden
waves of passion, the ghost
of a memory pressing
down on my skin, feverish
and trembling, urgent in
it's hunger.

It's hunger for you.

And I wonder,
is it the same for you?
Do I still hold a place,
a part,
a piece of your flesh,
of my own?
I wonder,
and I hope that I do.

I hope that sometimes
the ghost of me
haunts you.
Not in vengeance,
there was never a need for that,
but in heat.
That at times your memory touches you,
in your vulnerability,
and so,
I do too.

We don’t want the good guy. I mean we do, we like the idea of him, but not actually him. We want the one who is going to rip our heart out and eat it in front of us.
We want to cry and hate ourselves. Hate our bodies for wanting him, our hearts for going back and our minds for rationalizing it all. We want him because at some point we were taught it was okay; either by our father, brother, uncle, the media, by peers or him.
We were called prudes, old maids and told to lower our standards and give in.
Who were we to think we’d find a man to treat us like that, like a queen? After all he was our king...And so we go along passing up the boring boys for the exciting men. We trade in the picket fence and 2 kids for sleepless nights wondering what it was that we did wrong. Why can’t he love us, the way we love him? But I’m a sucker for punishment and on to the next one.

Our last connection with the mythic.
My mother remembers the day as a girl
she jumped across a little spruce
that now overtops the sandstone house
where still she lives; her face delights
at the thought of her years translated
into wood so tall, into so mighty
a peer of the birds and the wind.

Too, the old farmer still stout of step
treads through the orchard he has outlasted
but for some hollow-trunked much-lopped
apples and Bartlett pears. The dogwood
planted to mark my birth flowers each April,
a soundless explosion. We tell its story
time after time: the drizzling day,
the fragile sapling that had to be staked.

At the back of our acre here, my wife and I,
freshly moved in, freshly together,
transplanted two hemlocks that guarded our door
gloomily, green gnomes a meter high.
One died, gray as sagebrush next spring.
The other lives on and some day will dominate
this view no longer mine, its great
lazy feathery hemlock limbs down-drooping,
its tent-shaped caverns resinous and deep.
Then may I return, an old man, a trespasser,
and remember and marvel to see
our small deed, that hurried day,
so amplified, like a story through layers of air
told over and over, spreading.

Why can you not see,
that this is such a curse?
I know that you fear death
But this is so much worse.

Raining. Broke. Cold.
Browsing Craigslist jobs.
"Experienced Window Washer Needed"?
****; underqualified.
Rain is unsympathetic.
Shouldn't expect different.
Rain has washed a lot of windows.