as jokingly as I can but
with a still hold on seriousness in the
air I tell you, "I'm the best you'll ever have,"

and to reply
you whisper into my hair almost as if
I really was an answer to the prayers
that quickly passed beneath your eye lids while you slept,
“amen”

as simple as it sounds, I want to always remember the way you look at me under the dim awful lighting at my favorite sushi restaurant. and I want to remember the way your voice sounds when you call me a romantic as we fall asleep to Star Wars playing in the background.

It rained and rained

Until I was sure

Our hearts had spilled over

Into the night and I couldn’t

Keep my body off yours.

We looked at each others hands
and studied the lines
as if they would lead us somewhere.

They almost look identical,
my life line as long as yours.
The arches
and breaks in the
typography of our skin the same,
yet you do not know where I come
from and I
do not yet know you.

I'll always have
a romantic idea about you: an
idea that wakes me when the sun rises
and lures me to sleep knowing your
miles out of reach.

I'll always have that hopeless
swept up in a story sort of feeling remembering
how you looked at me.

Always with a smirk full of longing,
the tension between us tight enough
at any moment we were bound to
snap together in a passionate whirlwind.

I remember how a year ago
I was heartbroken over how
much I wanted you to want me.

Remembering the way you sleep
and for that brief night, how I felt
your arms like spider vines
tangling with my heart and my legs.

I've realized that I don't want this sadness
to be the biggest thing you've ever given me and
that the sun glows and burns with a heat
that reminds me of when I knew you
didn't see me as the one you were meant to be with.
My fingers felt hollow and it was a sadness that settled in between my
ribs and fingertips.
I felt heavy with the realization that learning about
this type of nostalgia comes
with getting over you.
I should have asked you to sing for me more,
and I should have held you more and kissed you
when I wanted.
I should have made you hold my hands because I am beginning to
forget what your hands felt like.
Your hands were my favorite part of you.
I've learned that a type of sadness comes
with riding in the car with other boys and
that being walked to my front door is something
you should have done.

We sleep in beds that aren’t ours
and use pillows formed to the shapes
of other people’s necks.

The curve of their bodies leave
shadows and memories. I feel
them seep into my skin as I sleep
and I wash them clean in the lake
in the dewy morning.

We make beds that aren’t ours
and rest in a sun that feels borrowed.
Blankets and linens smell clean,
but not like us. They are soft and worn
and cradle easily against our bodies.

We notice frames full of photographs
of people who aren’t our family.
Notes left on the fridge and drinking glasses
with fingerprints different from our own
kept in cabinets within our reach.

I eat fruit out of a bowl and wonder how
many others have tasted the iron of an old spoon
on their tongue.

At night, before the sun goes down
we ride bikes with broken seats that sit too low
and use a canoe that is dusty with another family’s story.

I imagine you buried
in deep pine.
Lowered into breathing earth.

Does regret expand into a lake
becoming a hole in your chest?
I reach in and all I find are evergreen branches.
Breathless lungs, we are embedded in you skin.

Your heart is a fist,
sand  gritty in my teeth and stones
are heavy in our bellies.

I hear your voice over the VCR,
turn away, turn away,

deep,
deep,
deep.

I imagine because
forgiveness needs the morning,
and you were gone with the night.

Gone as the sun came up and
we head whispers of you between
the covers.

turn away, turn away.

I know how to feel nothing small,
and you felt nothing.
We say goodbye in whispers,
and are reminded of you by soft fleshy parts of our hearts
and scratches on VCR tapes,

your voice an endless echo.
This is our past we are still learning.

We use the lighthouse to bring us home
resting on the shore of Lake Michigan
as a welcoming beacon,
from the gallery standing
on the hill I can see our lake.

When we leave we bury our hearts
deep in the stones,
far enough under the surface we reach water.
we breathe in lake air and
draw compasses on the side of the lighthouse.

Water so deep,
and so blue, matching the color
of all of the women’s eyes.
We are caught by the water’s attention,
and when we are pulled back

to our everyday life,
we know the lake rests
within us.

The evergreens protect us from
the sun, glowing warm.
Our skin is tired.

Our mouths are weary
from talking,
saying the same lies over
until they tumble back over themselves.

Our limbs restless, kicking in the water
at the end of dock,
creating an endless wake.
Watching our towels dry in the night breeze,
and hoping they will be dry enough in the morning.

Long ago we were driven into the
lake by a raging forest fire.
Swimming until we thought we’d choke,
we drowned,
our bodies became islands.

Inlets of moss and forest, sand touched
by ***** feet and berry vines eaten bare,
we cry.

The bluffs our witnesses to all
the yelling and crying,
to all the tears that fell like
lightning bugs in the night.

Glowing softly
when we’d look off the balcony of the house.
The lake reeds wrapping around my ankles,
we search for Petoskey stones hidden
in the sand.

The berries stained our
teeth, our fingers,
our bed linens
coated in color.
Were we ever pure,
I cried and my tears were plum.

Our hair laid damp in the foggy
morning orchard air.
The nursery cats greeted us,
and their blue eyes were round enough
to be the blueberries that hung on the fragile vines.

Fragile limbs, bruises left the color
of raspberries and blackberries.
Bruises not visible on suntanned skin,
but the vessels were broken
under the surface.

These kinds of wounds don’t heal quickly, she cooed.
I remember being disappointed in myself for picking the
berries that were still green, that weren’t quite ripe.

Goosebumps scour my skin,
From the shock of the coolness of the lake.
The air damp and heavy,
The moon lights the moss in water too deep
I cannot touch my toes at the bottom,
And I cannot reach my hands back to shore.

I look up to the sky,
Never have I been so wrapped in light and darkness
Simultaneously, that I  
Feel the splotches of light in my eyes
Lock with the stars.

They know a past I am learning,
The beating in our chests has come from them,
The love they have seen, they brought for us.

Earlier, in the car on our way home we were cradled between the lake
And the row of glass houses.
Their windows open and lamps turned on, and I watch the silhouettes of families
At dining room tables littered with plates of leftover dessert
And undone puzzles,
I watch children sitting on floor and laughing,
And I think,
Do they have secrets as thick as ours?
Do they have ghosts with names and voices?

We glide on the smooth concrete,
Flying in the night along the shore as a heron does
In the day
And I can feel the past rising up out of the
Lake,
Beautifully haunting and dark.

I think I will always be
haunted by you.
You'll become a silhouette that will
only exist in the few moments
right before and after sleep.

Your eyes change colors
like a kaleidoscope of twilights.
I hope you remember me even when the
sun shines, when summer solstice arrives.

You were the realest thing I felt in
my bones. You were
the awakener of my limbs.
Goosebumps laid out like a trail
on my skin.

I know what you look like when you sleep,
I know how the ribbons of memory weave in
and out of your eye lids closed, dreaming,
shaking from the weight of the night.

I remember
         What color the starts were
When I first met him.
        
Daylight is now grey
The color of the sky is muted.
His hands, mouth
         The color of cigarette smoke.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I know he’ll look just like you.”

His eyes mudpools,
Just like the ones my mother used to tell me
         My nightmares came up from.
She hangs laundry on the line.

Mudpools.

I imagined the baby growing inside me.
Breaking out of one of the coconut husks from the
Palm trees that grew beneath our terrace.

We were sitting at the plastic, white, stained,
Set of patio furniture that mother spills her wine on, and
My brother stains with paint.

I watch the mudpools widen as he puts out his cigarette on the edge of the plastic,
Searing a perfect
Circle.

I trace my finger on the flower shape,
Cut out in the back of his chair.
Seagulls sing to him in the morning.

I hear hymns in the sea gulls cries,
And I am brought back to when I was a child,
And I watched a woman in church singing praises while she
Held her swollen belly.

Life spilling out of her.
I drowned in mudpools.

I enter at the periwinkle in her neck,
There are no distinct lines,
Only sadness,  

She just is,
Tangled in the web of feeling
Like she belongs to someone,

And liking that,
Yet, she wants to be her own
Person.

I think I’ve hurt myself

The shadow of her,
Hollowed out eyes,
Black smudge for a mouth.

Grey lace filled with grace,
Covers the lower half of her breast,
Messy black hair,

She’s turned away,
The line from her jaw,
To cheek, to neck, to shoulder,
Gone.

I need fresh air

Magenta veins over her breast,
So light you’d never see.
She drapes herself over the bed.

She is troubled by the loss,
By the heaviness in the air,
It’s humid, and about to rain.

Her body is curvy,
She’s broken up into colors,
Her love is coming to a tragic, slow, close.

*Without you I’d die.

Haunt me,
I feel your arms like strong
vines wrapping around my
clouded judgement.

Look at me
when I am speaking to you.
You're only a shadow now, and
I am a hard shell.

Both broken, both consumed
by silence.
I am swallowed whole
by one night.

I was so close to you.
I felt the blood moving in your veins,
and the steady rhythm of your breathing.
Pretending for so long, we caved.
You may call it weakness, I call it strength.

You are a silent shadow now,
eyes that won't hold my gaze for even moment,
And,
we may be strangers for the rest of our days,
but I will not forget how you held me
when you slept and how
I cried in the morning when I left,
dawn and bitter truth rising with the sun.

Chewing on the words
You said to me,
I feel the sliver of your
Finger print between my teeth.

Temptation is first sour, then sweet.

Too ripe with emotion,
I'm bleeding out,
The crimson found in
The final seconds right before
The sun cowers away,
Is what I've found in my heart.

It's an envious flirtation,
Clouds looming,
Grandma always said when the
Breeze blew the leaves over,
And you saw their backsides,
You knew is was going to rain.

Drizzle only can last so long,
Before the clouds finally decide to
Dry up or
Pour.

Cloudy
Your inky spine tangled
Wrapped like a spider web
Around my restless limbs.

I kiss dew from
The muddle we've made.
You taste softer than I imagined.

The sun shone longer
On this day.
The summer solstice.

An orange dream following me
Up the stairs and through
Closed creaky doors.

Hanging by a thread
The daze of morning
Catches me.

I nibble on your
Thumbs, quickly
Turning from starlight to dusk.

I stumble home
By a map of milking
Morning stars.

Your hazel eyes glowing
Like a constellation between
Sleep filled lids.

Eyes closed. Chest pounding.
First cautiously, one step, two steps.
Courage has found me.
Recklessly charging into the night.
The rush, plunging into
Dreams and nightmares alike.

I'm lost in the cosmos.
My memory bleeding
Into stain glass and into
The freckles dancing on my shoulders.
I am fearless.
I am invincible.

Does it always feel this way,
This complete and mesmerizing
trance. Your skin against mine,
Racing through the every corner
Of doubt I've ever had.
But a dream is just a dream.

Ink blot tests,
I see you in the rings on trees
Cut down after years of shade.
You glimmer in Orion's Belt, and through the
Infinite rings of Saturn.
I long to kiss you.

Grounded. Headed in the clouds.
The supernova, mind flooded,
Bright lights and love.
I see the stars shimmer in
The twinkle when you gaze into me.
Peering into my heart,  deeper.
Despite these rockets, we are Earthbound.

Fresh soil brings me back into sync
With the horizon.
I throw skipping stone across the river
Until the color of your eyes is grey
And mute.
I am living, all the while trying to forget you,
And I wonder how this came to be.

Eyes open. The universe, beautiful
Creation, created the space between us.
Reaching out to lost causes
The void opens up,  swallows us.
The light from that first night
Consumed by black holes,
Of failed expectations.

Mercury and Venus at my back,
I chew at my fingernails making
Them into crescent moons.
I am trying to love, moving forward,
Pushing open the white picket gate,
And stepping out of the front yard.

I submit to gravity.
World's slide past me.
Leaps of faith bound by
Arbitrary promises. Illusions.
Perhaps the light of a time
Long before, empty truths presented
My dilemma, I could as I had before.
One step. Two steps.
Dive into the marvel. Drifting endlessly
Into you.

As I stare into into the milkiness
Of sunrise I am astonished at the fast
The only words I can fathom are,
"Do you love me?"

We're almost
Too sweet
We're rotten.

We're almost
Too ripe
We're bleeding

We're almost
Too swollen
We're no longer

Whole.

The blood in your veins
haunts me,
I don't know how to turn you away.

Inky comfort
I get lost in your eyes,
Worried there will come a day

When I will not be able to
walk out in time.
Haunted.

You become fantasy,
Following me through the
Raindrops that trickle into my dreams.

Your softer than you seem.
As I roll over in bed, and awaken
To empty sheets,

Infinitely torn between wanting you,
And pushing you aside,
I put out my cigarette in the ashtray,

Before I
Smolder,
Into nothing.

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order’s tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I’ll be with you
But it will be a different “kind”
I’ll be holding all the tickets
And you’ll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I’m breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind?

I know what you look like when you sleep
curls tucked behind your thick ear lobes.

I mouth a lullaby to myself,
never once making a sound.

I see your eye lids flutter
Are you dreaming?

The sheets will imprint your smell,
the way you curl your knuckles to your chest.

I want to put your hand against me,
Your deep breathing seems comfortable.

When did you know you loved me?
I am your best kept secret.

We’re sailing on a cloud of
Fog, dense grey
A sleek bullet speeding

His town has four stop lights,
And school closings due to fog
In the late spring.

In the mornings when we wake
Tangled up, drool stains on the edges of
His smile, I hear the dog next door bark,

And watch the sun slowly pierce
Through the thickness of the sky.
His big hands, full of sleep find my eyes,

And slowly graze my eyelashes,
The sun slowly hums in morning groans into
Each of my pores.

Even in the heat of summer, we drive with the wind
Whipping around us,
So loud that even our voices cannot break through.

I am welcomed by a woman in the garden,
Mascara running down her eye and staining her dress of silk

She invites me in too early,
And asks me to only stay briefly

I can’t remember anything but irises blooming in her eyes
Plucking the whole heads off of white petal, yellow eye daisies

If I close my eyes I can hear the train whistle radiating through my nerves
The whipping of my ceiling fan above my head

The click of the front door locking
Mile markers painted by poppy pollen

Take me home when the poppies bloom
And the prickliness of their stems is soft

Red brick matching the stain of pollen
I long for her all year round

Rust matches the color of popsicles in the summer.
Staining my tongue dark,
I get lost in the stain glass reflections of sun beams dancing across
My bed sheets.
Winter, a dingy moth, a jealous creature.
I long for eternal sun.
Why did I only love you in the summer?

I am nostalgic for a time when all I needed was to dream.
I call upon the wretched and joyful,
Angels with torn and battered wings.

I am nostalgic for the sun room in your house,
With the big grey couches that swallowed us whole.
I am reminded of how much of a shared passion between two is a game.
You taking, and me giving, you walking away.  

I am an ode to Merlot sunrises,
When it is early enough I catch the moon kissing the sun.
I swim underground between tree roots looking for
The reasons you need.
Oak, Birch, Maple.
I try to summon the words to prove to you that I can only
Hold my breath so long.

Catch me.
I am falling into pine cone traps and thistle memories.
I am reminded of mornings when I walked home four,
Twilight hours are filled with ghosts of us.

I am burning from the inside out.
Bonfire love, you are a dangerous spectacle.
I walk over your bed and tickle you into blue embers.

Apple seeds
Twirling between my teeth
I reach out
And dig my brittle nails into
Tender skin
You feel as thin as a ghost, I say
The flesh of the apple green
Stuck between my teeth

I don’t remember you hating me
I don’t remember you loving me
We live like a shadow
Grey elastic stretching to mold into
Crisp cool sheets on the bed

I cut my hair
Long locks floating
To the floor
I waved down at them as
They fell
Fall
Falling
Away

Hitting the honeycomb hexagon tile
Look the past is swimming around me
Buzzing past my ears
Bees resting in the honeycomb on the floor

*buzzzzz, buzzzz
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The stars look like the
Blooming irises in eyes
The moon has become my favorite entity in the sky

Memories of how I enjoyed walking
Under the ageless evergreens
All tall, emerald majesty your
Pine needles crunching under my feet

Take a breath in the open air of spring
Buds on the trees show change fragrant in the air
They hold the promise of fresh new things

My mind buzzing in a kaleidoscope of hexagonal memories.
I am reminded of when I was a child
My mother and I would drive for a hour deep into the
Evergreen woods to a small cabin,
Where an old man lived.

He harvested honey.
The beekeeper man.
I never went inside with her when she would go to buy
A jar.
The car riding idle, shaking while I wait,
I hear the hum of a thousand bees in the distance.

I imagine the hexagonal honeycomb
Home to hundreds of bees
All working simultaneously to bring me
But a single drop of paradise.

When my mother returned to the car she would hand me a Ball mason jar
Full of the stickiness of my desires.
The label slightly gluey from the beekeeper’s hands closing the jar.
I can feel the warmness of the honey seeping onto my lap.

The inkiness of honey dripping
Down my wrist.
Sweet, savory,
The flavor thick in my mouth
Each drop of amber seeping into each
Taste bud.

I always noticed the picture of this face,
An older man smiling.
A full grey beard and mustache.
There on the label he became alive to me,
A picture of the bee keeper’s head attached to the body of a bee.

Thistle of a flower
I will put your skin in my mouth
Your skin, soft and smooth
Silky like a spider web.
I will eat the flower before you bloom
Your skin, soft petals that feel like
The skin behind a lover’s ear and down their neck

Your rose bud manner,
Splotchy, matching the violet color of your veins
That run down my mother’s legs
More vibrant and noticeable with age.

The greener parts of you,
Soft and strong like fresh leather,
Are harder
But can be pulled open.
You’re earthy, the smell
Of dirt on my fingers makes me long for fresh
Moving air in my lungs.

The pores of your skin almost instantly
Browning once air brushes your skin.

You’re softer deep down at your yellowed heart.

I don’t want to be the only wildflower growing
in the concrete, that simple lonesome white flower.
Loneliness runs fragile fingertips through my hair,
stroking my scalp gently,
caressing me into something I did not know I wanted.

my child hands enveloping themselves as lightly as I could
white petals fell into my open hand,
crushed,
they wither, browned, decayed.
They age, tainted by inevitability of getting older.

Learning how desire works,
I watched candles with short wicks burn out and not down,
the wax a painful reminder on my fingertips.
Sometimes relationships,
sometimes intimacy scorches and doesn’t slowly burn.

I remember now, that before I learned to love,
My childlike innocence watched the morning glories
grow over and twist around the chain link fence that separated
my yard and our neighbors.
Its rust almost too rough to cut through the fragile petals.
Trumpets of glory flowering in the early light of day
spiraling, growing on our trash cans.
They just longed to be touched,
to be admired for all that they were.

1
Mommy and Daddy and their friends have been drinking wine again
Their breath now sweet to smell
So I don’t mind as much.
Kevin and I take turns being pushed in the giant yellow swing.
My little legs dangle out the bottom
I am five years old.

2
The swing rests on an ancient looking tree
It stretches its strong oak arms up until I can no longer see
I am pushed in the swing, higher and higher
My laughing, loud, booming
Innocent

3
The cold air sweeps through my little lungs
I am hurled up into the moon
Finger tips not nearly long enough to reach her
she kisses me on each cheek
With her soft, glowing lips.

4
I am riding in the car with you now
Sunroof open, the autumn air whipping through my hair
As we ride with all windows down
And the sunroof open.
Go up into the sky you say to me
Let the stars hold you, and the night be a friend
I push myself up onto the dashboard with that same strength that I pushed with
In that yellow swing some fifteen years ago
The cold air wraps all around me
I am flying back into the moon and she greets me with a crooked smile
This is refreshing as the air belts through my lungs
Stinging every inch of me until I am numb.

5
When did I lose my innocence?