Sometimes when I'm by myself
I like to think about you
(really it's most of the time I'm not a very good liar).

I guess you smell pretty good
and I like the way your hair feels in my fingers
(I want to bottle your smell and keep you close to me).

My favorite place to fall asleep is with you
between my arms on the couch
(if it were possible I would never leave that spot).

When you laugh I get kind of happy because
your laugh is cute and then you're smiling
(the happiness radiated through your smile and laughter is contagious).

Your hands are soft and sweet looking
and your lips are pretty much the same way
(I want to stay with our hands and our lips intertwined).

Other girls don't compare to you because
you're smart and funny and pretty
(the eyes of my heart are blind to everyone but you).

I think you're very sweet and cute and smart and fun and
maybe I sort of like you kind of
(I am madly and hopelessly in love with everything about you).

it goes like this,
i said.
the singer finds the quiet one.
they run through sprinklers and
hold their breath under tunnels
and roll the windows down when
their favorite songs come on.
they drink midnight coffee
at diners meant for the old
and alone, and make pictures
across the table with packets
of sugar. together they decide
that the best word is petrichor,
the smell of dirt after it rains,
and when the lights come on
at christmastime they sit in
the trees and watch greens
and reds throw patterns
across their skin.
all of it is perfect
and none of it makes sense.

you said but what about
the singer? you said
what about her songs?

Always I am
waiting
waiting
waiting
for the right time
to tell you all the
words I have stored
behind my teeth
and in the pockets
of all my sweaters.
It's just that I'm so
sure the sun speaks
out of your mouth,
that you will be the
only person who will
swallow my sentences
immediately after I've
said them so they
don't have time to
float away into
outer space where
Pluto and all of my
other lost loves are
orbiting. My
greatest fear is that
you'll stop holding
me like my hands
are made of the
Milky Way and
instead like the
love I'm capable of
giving you is simply
measured with the
spoon I use to stir
my peppermint tea.
I have stumbled
tripped
tumbled
into the atmosphere
of your smile, been
dragged under by the
waves of your breath
on my neck in the
earliest hours of
the morning. I ask
only that you keep
loving my arms that
aren't strong, keep
watching me like I
taught the sky how
to make rain
(because I'll never
stop watching you
that way.)

Borne into a frenzy
of sleepless black nights
that coil and surround me,
where chimeras and serpents
glide like paint,
in the sea that separates
the mind and the horizon.

I flail and sputter,
treading naught
but black water.
Just leave me here for awhile.

all I wanted
was to cover
my stains
and now I’m painting my whole house
red
help me
my closest friends
are 200 miles away

I can’t write this poem right now
not like this

I am in the trees
they are still mostly green
but leaves fall when the wind blows
I am not getting colder
I just have a lot going on right now
and I’m trying to shed
some of this fall fabric
and let my forest floor
weave it into a carpet
but you can’t pull all the dead leaves off
it’s better to just let them drop

in the heart of winter
there will still be
stragglers
holding on through autumn winds
and January snows
to crumble in the spring
my lips touch the soft
clean soles of your feet
and my fears dissolve
like fog in the morning

I can’t write this poem right now
no
not like this

I found you.
Among the dust and water that makes up each one of us, I found you in all of your uniquity.
For a lifetime I loved you without knowing it.
And then I met you,
knowing immediately it was you I had loved all along.
Eventually life, pride, ambition took me away from you
to worlds where people sit strangely, eat strangely,
even walk strangely and sleep strangely.
But strangely enough, we were all the same.
And we laughed at this realization.
I took you with me.
We walked along the Bosphorus drinking pomegranate juice,
listening to the drums and strings and rhythmic Ottoman voices that caused our souls to ache.
We tasted sand, brought in on the wind from that barren desert rich in so little but greed.
We visited cities in jungles, where local fare made us thankful for our many hours spent cooking, and perfecting the flavors that help define us.
I took you with me, my love.
You helped me don my suits and tie my ties and kissed me as I held you close before another day's harangue.
But in your mind, you were never there.
And you made me see:
A world separated us. And so I moved it.

The sea stretches tight on a slight, white horizon
unflurried by waves, by the clean, boneache moon.
The water rests awhile, passing slowly through the ribs of continents,
its deep, deep chest booming with the cries of extinct fish.

I am not dead, though the salt has lifted me out
and away, its sting green-silver like a safety razor edge.
It rubs away chromosomes, the earliest layers of skin
and remakes me pale and raw as a baby’s spleen.

The land abandons me. The last little fishing vessel
returns to its village, bearing upon its sun-slick floor
the heft of my cells, my tiny stillborn children.
I know I’ll never be a mother;

the salinity of my blood has risen steadily
these past million years;
it itches against my arteries
and calcifies in the deeper pockets of my lungs.

I tower over grassroots, vivid as a corpuscle,
drinking from the local well and dreaming of lysis.