You leave me stranded like years made up of moments and vacuum hickeys and Asian milk toast mean nothing.

Train tracks remain on my timeline like a seam opening the spine of an old diary with nothing written over and over inside.

You say we will be playing scrabble on the floor of your living room someday when we are old, just as your mother does next to us with her friends listening to Adele as we plot out our lives together on a collage atop your dining room table.

You hurt me

We are dinosaurs
Strutting for the fist time in glory down seventh avenue as people wonder who we are and we think of fun to be had with friends to be met.
Park ***** spread out before us paved yellow with fly paper.

Holding my heart in your hands as it is broken for the first time, i cry but know you will be there to turn those tears to glue for our friendship until you are not.

Years made up of your boyfriends that come and go and come and go and I miss you. And I want to strut down seventh avenue with you by my side feeling powerful and new again.

I want to feel fresh running down a beach of asphalt and trash; the whole world ahead gilded with possibility, and eternity resting gently on the horizon of city smoke and traffic lights. And I feel old now. But I suppose we always did.

I miss you

I still remember **** bought from boys with blonde hair and loving blue eyes hidden in camera cases, and smoked under thick trees that kept us safe from the turning of the earth. Elevators lifting us up to the 35th floor ticking like time bombs on days occupied by truth or dare marked red upon truancy calendars our parents would never find.

Why did you get so old? mature. I remember once together we vowed to remain silly and young and do all we could to smother the sound of the ticking clock removing our innocence,  silencing our songs, and slowly turning us into those who we were made by.

My sister is grown. Where are you now?

Beautiful the world looked from a Brooklyn balcony at 16, the skyline smiles with the mirage of possibility and smirks with a wicked knowledge of things to come and years to pass. Would I go back to that balcony now, and stay there with you forever.



If I needed you would you come

I would like to run my five fingertips
all over your carnal curves and contours
in every crevice, crack and concavity
in the vast canyons of your brilliant mind
dive into the ocean of your subconscious
delve into the deep valleys of your psyche
spelunking in the caves of your desires
uncover the ancient arcane secrets
hidden in the space behind your vibrant eyes
let us lay among the old oaks and laugh
arm in arm, soul in soul, floating upon
velvet sunsets on sweetest summer days
until the oceans dry, the ground cracks, and
the sun dies, I will never leave your side.

Once, I was happy.
I was a poet, and I was full of love.
I laughed at the sun, who shown no brighter than me.

I had a hand to hold:
a fragile glass piano hand, but she was mine to hold.
Though she did not shatter, she slipped out of my hands.

Now her fragile glass piano hands run through hair not my own.
Her gaze falls on not my face, but the
faces of others.

I curse at the sun, who mocks my sufferable misery.
My writing dwindled, my drinking amplified,
and I became a drunken poet.

The children throw stones at me,
the lovers weep for me.
The mothers pray their babies will never become me.

Perhaps one day her fragile glass piano hand will slip back in place with me,
but until then,
a drunken poet remains.

some winter mornings
last through the spring,
sweeping in between wind chimes
and dusting over windowsills,
until our bodies are numb
and our minds are racing
i don't feel pain in the winter time,
pain feels me,
all curled up in the fetal position
with fuzzy socks
and war paint
at the edge of my sheets
december never stings,
it burns.
a softer,
quieter,
gentler
kind of agony
that whispers tauntingly
through the shower curtains
at 5 am and says
"why did you bother getting out of bed?"
oh and how that cold, cutting voice
gets stuck inside your head...
at least until spring takes
it's last cool breath

From wretched ancient under-dark it spills
Aerosolized hatred, malice and strife
Indiscriminate in who it kills
The southern wind, enemy of all life.
Malevolent sirocco, seething with wrath,
Melting metal, human flesh, skin and bone
Painful is death for all trapped in its path.
For what great sin will this wind atone?
Eleventh plague, locked away by god,
Grisly screams for mercy choked off by gust
Nothing dares to grow were this wind has trod.
All who smell the wretched scent turn to dust.
Movements silent, striking without warning
Lucky are those who live until morning.

I haven't
figured out
how my
heart
is still
beating
after this
time. And
I'm not okay
but I'm able to
breathe a little
bit easier this
week and
god that
must
count
for
something.