I tried to smudge your name out of the
playbill of my life, but I couldn't. Somehow,
I'd convinced everyone around me, and even myself,
at some points, that you were nothing but a mere what-if

in my life of absolutes, and I didn't miss you.
Of course, day in and day out, words and lines for unwritten poems
would submerge my thoughts deep in murky, unfiltered tubs of
darkness, and I'd find myself haunted by your existence.

I tried to get over you, but I'm a poet, and the fact
of the matter is that poets don't get over much of anything. So
I'm sorry for this facade that I've so grudgingly constructed,
but I've never been too good at saying goodbye...

..or sorry, for that matter.

the tree was gone but its shade remained.  he told her the war had a humble middle.  they bathed together in a mattress on top of the shade.  they agreed to avoid the uselessness of their youth by forgiving animals.  she had been a writer.  he would be a bed of one nail.

life outside is either an ice cream truck or a skeletal dog.  both give the boy claim to name them his early snow.  life inside is a tape measure.  there are three spaces he can free in a hurry for not just any xerox machine heaven doesn’t need.  when his mother gets taller she will open a cupboard and in it she will find the spotless knowledge he’s yet to get sick on.  she will find one plate missing.  presently, the moon is no lie and the white men move under god and god is the view from here.  in a secret the boy calls closet he has stashed a bag of basketballs that become fish when his sister gets a mouth on her.

she is a location
policed
by a trauma
that never
returns.

that’s a mouthful
on a first
date
but she is far
from photographing

roadkill.

still, she hears
it said
in sister
and in health…

she starts with a boy
who becomes a clown
getting
his pilot’s
license
on borrowed
time

and she loves
god is your
airstrip.

she knows it
by number
the single
highway
truck
that doesn’t
come.

her father is just
as she imagines-

a man
not making
siren
sounds
pulled over
by the man
who is.

an owl
with an owlish
disease
***** with
a bat

as an altogether
different
angel

swallows
her mother
like a sword.

hell has lost her mind

but tries again
its troubled
flashlight.

There will come a day
When you think of me
And think about what was us
And you'll think,
"I sure dodged a bullet"
The day you think that,
Is the day I put one
Through my brain

I don't care where
Or how,
Or when,
Nor what,
Nor why
The question to me is who
The only variable of my first kiss
I care about is that the lips I kiss belong to you