Abigail slides the glass door shut.
As beads of water percolate off her body
and land on the faux stone tile,
the smell of chlorine from her swim
and the smell of coffee from my brewing *** blend.
My uncle, Abigail's father, and my mother
are seated at the sticky, spilt soda kitchen table beside me.
"Go get ready for dinner," my mother's brother says, sending
Abigail's bikini'd frame through doorway and around the bend.
The brew idles, and I'm all porcelain and sugar substitute for a moment,
then back by my uncle and mother.

"Abigail has gotten so thin," my mother says.

"Is she eating?" my mother asks.

"I know it's tough for girls her age. When they're looking to marry," my mother says.
I want to bash the smoking cup into her face.

My uncle says she's been training for a marathon.
My neurons get tidy and taper off.
So, it's out of the kitchen and into an empty living room
to park my *** on an empty piano bench.
I set the coffee on top, and press eight of my fingers down
on black keys.
I hear toes-to-heels, toes-to-heels.
I gaze over my shoulder.
Now, Abigail's in a black, black dress. Mid-thigh.
In her left hand,
red ****-me-shoes with a heel that could turn a curious man blind;
in her right hand,
black pantyhose and cherry lipgloss.
"You should have swam," Abigail delivers with hushed precision,
like she'd been reciting the line throughout the duration of her swim.

Abigail has long brunette hair,
and it's sticking to her neck.
Deep permanent dimples frame her lips.
She's a nurse in Waco.
Each time I see her, I think about
Bukowski's 103-pound "Texan".
It makes me rash, violent, a heady monstrosity,
and trembling sick.

"I forgot my trunks."

"That's no excuse."

I would respond, but she's sliding the hose up her leg.

In the living room.

While my uncle talks a second mortgage around the bend.

Her right leg crosses her left,
an overpass and an interstate.
My forehead overheats in a flash,
and I feel like she's staring back at me.
When my leering eyes shift from
her toes to her eyes, the pupils beckon:

"All roads lead to me."

you're playing piano
notice naught but your psalm
as i drink my soy milk
trace your name in my palm.

you're stumbling through chords
i'm stumbling through feelings
it's my quiet reward
the delight of revealing

scripting my secrets
growing more bold
things i've far yet to tell you
things i've already told.

I want to be the crayon you choose.

You're staring at me- is it flecks of her irises?
Pixel fragments of your- your broken girl
singing in a car fatuous teenaged maddening
your beautiful agony one?

Her colours ran so deep, ocean, lightning,
I'm snared in pastel drapes, twisting, biting.

Does the bruised heart still beat
in your chest? Or in hers?
Is it that I have her poise when I walk?
Your ears- strain for her timbre when I talk?

When you hold me the tightest are you grasping at shards
of another doomed crossing of stars?
Is your future wrapped away
sterilized in gauze?

I've got a leaky rowboat to carry you
from a hurricane of nowhere.

I never want you to live up to her.

Don't you see? Don't you see?
How could I
-how could I possibly-
be brave enough
To let you love her and love her
with my little wolf heart?
Until your soul is spent
until she's torn you apart.

I -burn- to know your reckless, your passion,
in a home it can at last belong.

I howl to keep you, little fox
your heart starting fires safe in my den,
to let old love out.
To let new love in.

*what am I doing wrong?

When she turned her gaze upon me,
I was a mote of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight
I was huge and beautiful
and bright.

I laughed and danced
and shone.

And when she turned away,
a cloud moved across the sun
and I was extinguished.