I thought you'd write about the other night
and you'd turn it into some beautiful dream so that our memories could start to seem a little more pure…
as pure as the moonlight pouring over our bodies,
as pure as your breath on my neck.

sometimes I wish I couldn't sleep at night,
so I'd be a little more like you, my heart would be a bit more blue and my love, a bit more pure…
but for some bitter-sweet reason I sleep peacefully until dawn, and I rise with a smile, awake with a yawn. our intertwined arms unfortunately fading, and it's heart-breaking, but my heart is stronger now, and colder, like a stone;
so I guess now I'm a little like you.

she will cradle her head
in patchwork hands
and her
lips crack and out
spills words
explosively.

tears trace peculiar
tracks down
porcelain cheekbones
that jut out
much too harshly
under the dying stars.

cold moonbeams
dance over her hips
and
light upon
the desperation
in her eyes.

invisible bruises are painted
onto her
soul
and when she
smiles
you can almost see them.

a cigarette pressed to
dry cracking lips
will be all she wants
when she
is slowly
slipping.

she will never
breathe a word of
the betrayal
she felt
when her own body
failed.

and when her skin is
paper-white
you will press
trembling kisses to the
backs of her hands
and cry.

I don't know about you,
but I love watching the sunrise

washing my sheets
changing them, and watching the puppy
search for the old smell,
roll around in the new one

I adore seeing orange and blue
intertwine in the sky

I think it's funny,
listening to my mother scream
over fries, because I know I can
make her laugh again if I'm patient

I think hair is beautiful,
when it's wild and free
not held down by the millions of chemicals

I take in the moments when there is a hurricane
no one drives past my house during these times
so I lay in the road until I hear trees begin to crack
and sit under the carport, letting the rain brush me

I love spending all day,
writing quotes down in a notebook
reading poems and thinking
about inspiration, why they chose
the words they did

I love the bonfires on summer nights
because no matter how far you get from the fire,
you stay warm

I am grateful I can walk through the forest
jump over streams
and climb the trees

I admire the way smoothies taste
when you have a bad hangover
(or at any other time too)

I love to run until my feet turn red
because I love to watch the world
fly by me, and know that it is endless

I could probably list and list
go on forever
because I think they're all wonderful

these things are yours:
the leather sofas, paintings and mantlepiece chachkas
marked with pink post-it notes
that defined this houseload of secrets to outsiders

as I wrote glories for you in forced smiles garnishing
black and white stories for a world you craved
our home groaned beneath the weight

pink notes

they feel like garottes, the
crafty complaints to strangers
duly noted in a ledger somewhere...

I never noticed 'till now
that even our children have been plastered with them,
sorry little heads bobbing under their wires,
stiff armed puppets, like me
facing ruined toys or threatened death of a pet,
love served contingent like dessert after dinner

my powder blue lips were ever too meager to say anything

I suppose the sofa your cat peed
on is mine to sleep in,
though bleach wasn't enough to get her stink out
no chairs around my foldout dinner table

I never had a stack of blue paper to paste on furniture or people

my meager parts were abandoned by curbside at night:
clothing, computer, tools;
broken finger, blood-crusty nose,
bruised psyche;
memories of a mother and father;
old desk, contents drenched in murky wash water
treasures to be gathered in an Easter egg hunt
before morning

I'm *****, broken on the street
to live in the van again and *** in a cup

yet I elate in this paucity of things; it makes me lighter
I embrace its freedom
like when I used to sleep in park trees
to avoid river vermin, hungry
(yes, pate´ in Paris was divine - I ate the serving you’d have wasted )

or on train station benches with foul-smelling vagrants
you wouldn't understand that interaction …
this devil knows names, shared their bottles and pains
(the view of Prague’s rooftops from the castle veranda -
marvelous over glasses of wine and slivers of brie)

I learned hope is thin, frail skin, aetherial
my scars are hard, heavy, battle-earned wings that will never fly

as to things I do own:
love of self left after your half-portion spent;
poems scorned because
you never understood how they could be born without you

soon enough
we'll both be ashes or dust;
I’ll go in puffs
of swirling cigarette smoke and cheap bourbon
you under soil, I think
while words and our children
will both outlive the good sofa you sit on

I want them to be happy