she described it as ice
in her chest
like
a lance that tightroped from
her chest to mine
fought over at the breakfast table
because her end was bigger than mine
or mine had more blood than hers
or she always got to look at my good side
and why couldn’t I look at her without laughing

mother always said it was a blessing
that two people were so close to each other
not through birth
but by journey
and life
and happenstance
two people that tasted grilled cheese the same way
that heard the same voices of joy
loss
despair
but always stuck to the roof of the mouth like peanut butter
and not the generic brand
no
the 10 dollar organic stuff

two people that couldn’t help but
crack jokes at the dinner table
when everyone else was talking about
death because
what is death without life?
she would ask
and everyone would go silent
and float up through the
limitless sky
while we stayed grounded in
the life that whiskey brings

sister
if you ever hear me calling
know that I’d give you the bigger half
every time and that
you may borrow my three-hole puncher
without asking
because
I love you
and love stitches time without holes
and moments without the train station goodbye
and the rocks
well
they will always be rippling the stream so you
can go whitewater rafting and I can write poems
about how you fell in and found
a fleck of gold

I was flying home from Denver
and the man next to me ordered 3 double vodkas
slipping the stewardess a hundred bucks
by the end of the flight he was asking me
to come home with him
he had a sheepskin bed throw
that would keep us perfectly warm
this chill winter night
I refused
called him a drunk freak
and giggled when he stumbled down the escalator
and split a **** in his forehead
that cracked like
like Easter
smothered in chocolate frosting

you went sledding
with the kids
while I filed the paperwork
and cried

I used to be your lady boy
shining in green pit-bar light
as you kissed me like
the kids were with my mother
stuck at the bottom of the
treehouse slide in a pile
in mud
laughing
when

in reality they were
just budding inside of you
fertilized with apple liquor
and the perfume smoking
from my chest as you
unbuttoned the first few
revealing the scar left by
my brother's first pocket knife

the skin of my young years
the skin I am wearing now
cut by these ******* papers as
you freeze
tearlessly
in a pom pom hat
teaching our babies how to make
the perfect snowball

I walk through campus wearing
black leggings and those faded, leather
boots. I’m even wearing an
infinity scarf I bought full price at
Anthropologie and a pair of tiger-striped
cat eye sunglasses. ****, I look good.

On top of it, I’m smoking a Parliament
menthol, my red-lined lips whipping
smoke into the dead air, creating
a grey cloud that some would call cancerous and
others, ****.

But no one notices me, and, candidly, I
am okay with that because I notice me, and
I am a big red dance button that demands to
be pushed. So, I push myself and
groove down the brown brick road all the way
to classroom 114 in the science building.

I may have gotten into the
stupidest argument of my life

it was about men painting their
nails
yes
men painting their nails

I want to paint my nails a
deep burgundy
because
well
I feel like I really don’t need
a reason

she said
it would turn my nails
yellow

I said
I don’t give a
****

she said
men don’t wear
nail polish

I said
I don’t give a
****

she said
she didn’t have any
nail polish

I said
*******
I’ll go buy my own
then

when I walked
to the front door
with my car keys
she stamped her
feet and said
FINE!

and she walked upstairs
to her bathroom
where she kept all the
polish

I reemphasized myself again
this time straightening my back
to become as tall as possible
to intimidate and deliver the
words like heat seeking missiles
aimed for earth’s ever-beating
heart and before I could begin
I heard a baby giggle
this made me giggle
and the whole bowlful of crowd
laughed along with us as I let
the doves flutter out of
my hat

you in quail feathers means
that your red is my red
and the way that you taste pizza
is the way that I taste it

our
homogeneous brains
hard mother
hard father
the states we were raised in

melt running through
area 41 where the nefarious
Rolando implanted
our splitting
branches

qualia
what it means for you
to have mental states
pure consciousness
perceiving you there
in the corner

your toenails still painted
purple