I couldn't keep you
because how can you
hold onto the incoming tide.
the moon pulled you back
and you obeyed her call
I knit pieces of you into me
thinking that, like a puzzle,
if I fit all the scraps together
you'd become whole
but broken you stayed
listening to the voices
stuck hard behind your ears
rubbing alcohol into your skin
hoping your ***** past could
filter through me and come out clean
but because I'm covered in holes
everything falls through

including you

She came in like morning fog softly and quietly. covering her footsteps and obscuring my view Going 80 down an unlit road and into a wall of fog I turn off my headlights and I lose myself in her. I could see the city peak like mountains over her nudging the city awake One bee One capillary One lonely ghost at a time. We move unable to see our hands but thinking someone somebody someone somebody has to be holding them

I looked up from the ghetto
And I saw a little plastic American flag hanging out the window,
And a blue pinwheel softly spinning,
And down at my feet a hoard of pigeons gathered round a chicken leg
And I wonder if they’re aware
That they’re eating a bird

you are a lot and a little
a bucket and a teaspoon
too much and not enough
you are old pajama pants and a silk ballgown
a pencil and a pen
you tie me up while loosening my knots
staged a coup and while I kept power
you are a bear and a butterfly
you are the static on the radio and the sound of a doorbell
you are a poem and a punchline
a paragraph and a word
a novel and a syllable that hold the same amount of meaning
you are stale crackers midnight and breakfast served all day
you are the laughter on the other side of a wall
but you are a lot and a little
a bucket and a teaspoon
too much and not enough
you are a bear and a butterfly

in the open waiting room
at a federal prison
a boy and his father
play a game of airplane

at the airport
a woman is making a final call
but whoever she's calling
doesn't pick up
so she tucks it away
and boards the plane anyway

the sterile emergency room is where
an older sister tries to help
the younger sister make up
the math homework
she didn't do but her teacher
will berate her for

between the slow down
and change of direction
exists a moment in time, in space
in which you aren't going anywhere

we can worry
about what it
means in words
later