i heard that women tend to
tell lies more often than men,
but when they to, it's to build
other people up, while men usually
lie to make themselves look better

so at midnight, when you said
that you loved me, and i told you
that i loved you too, which one
of us was really in the wrong?

You exist in a moment
when we sat on the edge of the concrete when it meets the lake
in the night at the end of Chicago.
Our legs were in the water seated on stone.
The lapping of the waves.
The lapping of the cars.
Warmed by the city light.
We were, you and I, in the darkness of the water.
Cracking our heels against the solid stone.

For me you exist in that middle space.
What I thought I was and what I could be.
So when I feel the fog against my legs at night as they pound heavy on the pavement
how can I not be sent back into a thought of your arms.
Alexander, My Great.

Before that, though,
how we sat in Michigan underneath summer stars.
Where we shared voices in a hushed darkness defied.
On the soft sand near the large rocks
watching the expanse between the lights
and the sweet invasion from Chicago’s night.

That expanse, I love
when it melted into your chest and the small stars became your birth marks.
I was born under you.
The stretches of black.
Your stretches of gold.
I still feel the trees behind us
and our friends on the beach and the beer in our hands
and the stars on your chest.

Subjectivity seems like a curse near the rocks in the water.
A name is a thing with stars on its chest
that melts Chicago with coursing waters.
If my truth is objective and you call it love
then my beauty becomes fact in that moment.
Every stone in broken sand we sat on.
The exact color of the fog.
Every lapping of the cars has meaning in it.
Or none of it does and I go back.

Leave the beaches and leave the moment.
Leave with me.
I no longer am satisfied with Michigan waters and Chicago stone.
I want the space we saw.
The blackness punctured by heaven
punctured by you.
I need the space or the planets contained in dark to be with you.
No mixtures, no negotiations, no more breaking waves.
I will sit with and feel the weight of your existence.
Just you.

Our pursuits are to express into the world,
to be able with steady heart and clear breath to say something to you.
I should block out the lapping of the cars and give something to you.
But I am always stuck in these moments with you.
Trapped in the cold of the cans and the silk of the sand.

I tried to wrap my fingers around the world once
  But like trying to have a finger in every cup of cupcake pan:
I couldn’t
I ended up with handfuls of soils and clouds swirling through my fingertips

So I decided to get a different goal
I would traced every star with my fingertips
Lying on my back in a field I saw them all
Making dot to dot pictures in the constellations spilled before me
Each star I traced had two more coming after it and the numbers never ended

Did you know some of the stars we see aren’t even still lit?
They burned out yet still their light travels too us from light years away
A lake I heard about in Montana has crystal clear waters
Though you can see the water’s floor it is still incredibly deep
The shallow look of seeing every pebble is simply an illusion
I wish the sky were like that
The stars could look closer, feel warmer, despite their distance

Maybe I only wish that because the thought of space makes me uncomfortable
I like to think that this is up
And that is down
but the world’s not flat
It’s quite sadly round

My night is day in another place,
on this earth
What time is it on mars, on pluto, on planets we don’t know about?
How small are we really in the grand spectrum of it all?

Because I assure you if you dropped a grain of sand into a bag of rice you could find it
If you tried and tried and tried
And looked at every grain of rice
We are here, we can be found in it all
But we have hid ourselves in blankets of space
And wrapped ourselves in other stars to make us hard to find

She slides over
the hot upholstery
of her mother's car,
this schoolgirl of fifteen
who loves humming & swaying
with the radio.
Her entry into womanhood
will be like all the other girls'—
a cigarette and a joke,
as she strides up with the rest
to a brick factory
where she'll sew rag rugs
from textile strips of kelly green,
bright red, aqua.

When she enters,
and the millgate closes,
final as a slap,
there'll be silence.
She'll see fifteen high windows
cemented over to cut out light.
Inside, a constant, deafening noise
and warm air smelling of oil,
the shifts continuing on ...
All day she'll guide cloth along a line
of whirring needles, her arms & shoulders
rocking back & forth
with the machines—
200 porch size rugs behind her
before she can stop
to reach up, like her mother,
and pick the lint
out of her hair.