I once knew a girl her
Name was Liez she did not
Have hair fingernails cartilage
She had the nicest smile.
When Liez smiled it was as rare as
Feeling the last raindrop of a storm
Remembering the last time your father
Hoisted you up to sit on his shoulders the
Last time you could sit with your legs Indian-style
With your feet on top.
When Liez died no one made a sound but they
All cried and I did too.

Those of us who were born cartographers
In the modern age, have been doomed from the start.
Our white spaces have been filled and shaded,
Sketched-over and even rent.
Not even a half-inch by half-inch square
Was left to us, and I suspect that
Were we to find a time machine,
Fittied with a working Flux Capacitor,
You would find us all in the midst of the heart of darkness,
armed with pencils and stencils and pregnant maps.

I have nightmares
In which I do the same thing over and over.
My love affair with the regular does not extend
To monotony.

I have said “I forgive you” 490 times.
You asked me if I knew I was a dumb ****. One.
You told me it was my fault he left. Seven.
The numbers are lost on me after that
But they follow, illogically, a logical progression
Like the patterns formed by the spaces in-between
Words, trickling down past what is happening.
The plot is unknown, at times even random,
but the spaces are most certainly predetermined.
At 490, the count resets to zero.

All of the tables, even the biggest one,
(which is meant for handicapped customers,
which is why I moved two hours ago),
are fitted with one chair at this hour.
I am ******* at dried ice with a straw
Because I do not want to leave a tip for a third drink
I am listening to Stupidity Tries because its easier not to change the song
I am forcing myself to look out the window instead of at the man reading the Dan Brown book,
the barista smiling at received texts under the counter,
the woman in the red evening dress who has been here almost as long as I have,
who has now taken her shoes off
who is forcing herself not to look out the window.

Everyone in Starbucks at night is alone,
Save laptops and tale-telling textbooks
From spilt coffee left by adolescents hours ago.

This snow, this snow, this consumption.
It is a sinister tabula rasa, a second flood
More permanent.

So it follows that this is when I feel the safest;
Yes, I cannot leave my house, but
Neither can the unwelcome enter.

It has become easier to count the hours
Than the number of days, because those, my friend
Those are easily limitless.

I am not
I am not
I am not
I am not
I am not ready for the next phase of life
In which my resentments will need to be justified
And yes, sometimes I put in all the effort I can going in
the wrong direction.
I am not quite ready to accept that there will always be
Someone better because by jove, if my storybooks and
TV shows have taught me anything, it is that everyone
Is different (and with a limited number of capable people
in the world in any given age, one of them HAS to be
better than everyone).
I don’t know if I can handle maturity and responsibility
And yes, not all adults do, but those are the least desirable kind.
I don’t think I will ever be able to comprehend or
accept the fact that from here on out, everything
Every single thing will be different than what it has been before.
I can’t go back to being a child playing, blissfully unawares, on a playground
I will only continue to grow, and never
Be the me that I used to be.

Everything that you dream about in those playground days
Becomes less tantalizing the closer it comes to reality.
I will never live in my parent’s house (in this way) again
I will never feel the way I do when I roam Rockville again
I will never walk through the halls of my high school the way I do now
Never have the same schedule, the same comfort
Again. My worry I suppose is not with the void itself—
More of a concern that it will not be
filled with anything as pure or delightful or
Lovely as youth.

I found a crumbling ladies’ fan beneath my dresser
It does not belong to me
The edge is very sharp, I could use it to
Cut your wrist and cool myself with
Whatever is in your veins.
It would not look like blood
I feel like you are full of chilled soup
It’s a wonder that you are not yet crumbling or
Underneath my dresser.

I love the fireworks
less for the supersonic rumblings,
more for the growl in the back of my stomach as
The sky seems so dark when it is lit
Like that, with sparks like crayons.
From where we are, the boom is delayed.

On a Saturday Morning in late February
it made sense not to let the grey skies
hinder our plans.

We set out for the most mundane reasons:
dry cleaning, one gallon of milk,
two new bars of soap.

Driving down 108, there were no other cars,
and there were no other radios,
and there were no other breaths.

Neither hurried nor harried, the raindrops
made me smile, and the swimming clouds
made you drive slower, so we hushed the engine.

Wind cold against my face, the water was still
and I could smell the earth and
It was the first day.

Pistachio, when I first learned your name
It was long and reminded me of nothing—
The always-full ice cream bucket,
My third grade class and asking if your namesake
Came from a tree or a bush.

For the first time, the viewfinder fails to lose your years—  
It kisses collapsed jowls, coaxes wire from your scalp,
Lauds that torn ear (which I swear is lower than before).

Each time you turn your head, my disgust at your denouement
Bows to disgust at my revulsion.
(By the time I finish my Flux Capacitor it will be too late and
You are already paying for my lethargy.)

Cactus coughs clamber out of your throat.
I close my eyes and you sigh and
I breathe in, involuntarily.
Words coarsen my throat and you and I and even our resident quarks know that you will die.

For sale:
One complete pulmonary system
Heart, only good for parts.
Bloodless, lifeless, scarred on the left side
Email with bids and for photographs.

Gravity, friction, and weight have given up the ghost.
The allies have fallen, the battle fields lie thick with carpets
Of bandages and uniforms.
All that remains is truth, and even that is of an indescribable timbre
Undiscovered between uncut pages.

Everything is done
All that I have tried to say
Voiced, unvoiced, crumples.
This place, inconsequential
Hangs above me by a thread.

With nothing to do
I went exploring.
The James house is stately, old- I think of it
when I read Walcott.
Disjecta membra.

There is nothing so sinister
as Mr. Tumnus behind any of its doors
(what is literature for if not allusions?),
but there are enough doors
to keep a stranger busy for hours.
Days, even.

And that is what I had been doing during my midyear cool mornings and stifling afternoons.

Coming home to find that you had changed all the hinges
Was worse than losing a limb.
For six years, the sound of your door creaking
Open at three AM signaled me to
Pretend to be asleep, to hang up the phone or
Close the book and squeeze my eyes shut.
I knew if my sister left her room, I knew
When my mother was cooking dinner.
Now the silence is a personal affront, the opposite of ma,
this is the terrible discomfort of not knowing who is coming or going.

When my sister was away, hearing her
Door squeak open on occasion made me
Feel as though she still resided here
Her ties have finally been severed, and she
Hasn’t even finished undergrad yet. This is akin
To replacing all of our larynxes with computers.

When we open our mouths, pale blue text
Boxes with rounded edges and sans-serif phrases
Float out and hover noiselessly.

Yellowing, myopic, cataract-studded eyes
Focused on my face, as if to forever imprint
Each crevice, each line, each dip and undulation
Into a sharp mind obscured by cloudy retinas.

Slow pains sparkle like tin pans most nights
Most nights when we sleep on our sides and our wrists
Yours; mine; I cannot tell without more pause but
All the same they are inescapable yet effervescent.

[If Faulkner uses abject one more time I will...]

There are troubles with this tongue and this teeth
And I cannot express them now but in time
In time, all the mistakes will be crossed out.

I like you so much that I hate you;
I cannot tell the difference between “butterflies in my stomach” and “I am about to throw up.”

I want to learn new things with you.
Carrying loads of books in our arms down the street when we’re too broke for the bus.
be with me.

I want to die with you,
Buried under rubble, hands clasped, sharing the same pocket of air till we can no longer breath it.

First, the pink lace shirt
chuckles at his drum beats then
taps out her own. So
Bold, no glance is stolen. Eyes
rounder than globes, royal blue.

You Virago of new morning
Aphrodite of the last minutes afternoon
You escape from the hood
Rising as only a waver in the air,
It is impossible to tell when you have gone.
I can only hope that you have come into me.
Selah.