I’ve ordered and carried my steaming cup of brown to my table to ignore the falling snow beyond the walls of this box.
My clothes are wrong, my hair as well.
I just cut it, and everyone knows which mistakes I made.
A man sneezes and the song changes.
Better not make eye contact with anyone; I am not in their league, here at the muddy spoon cafe.
Chewing so loudly in the de-creeping silence,
these safe, polite, quiet ones.
I am the creep here. I am different.
My thighs are tense.
Hunching over the paper, arms tense and clutching  a gnarled red pen--
It’s probably self-indulgent to even sign my name.
Someone’s shuffling cards.
I almost forgot.
The awkwardness I’m filled with breathes out a short sigh when I realize
--my part’s over.
“Do you know Sanskrit? Do you know what that is?”
A woman asks another.
I want to choke on the pretension
The tenseness, I adjust my leg to relieve pressure on my ankle.
Why can’t I just enjoy the snow? That’s all I really came here for-- well, and the coffee.
I hear a woman cough with an unaffected tenor, which would convey her gender to an interested party but to me carries no intonation.
I wonder if the girl I recognize from class thinks I’m following her.
I came here for coffee, sweetheart!
Is it yet too hot for me to dare a drink?
I can see it, the steam, rising out of the corner of my eye.
I haven’t looked away from my hand in twenty minutes.
“Who am I?” they may be asking myself for me.
I don’t have a clue.
They can think about that problem
for themselves
while they’re lonely
in their forties.
I’m lonely now and I hope not to live
that long.
Here, we pretend not to see each other’s faces
in the gleaming presence of steaming cups.
“I don’t want to wonder about that.”
I realize there’s nothing I even deem worth writing down.

I had never seen the truth turning into a graveyard
until it passed through my tombstone teeth to
sit in your ear like a ghost

These aren't sweet nothings
my sweet nothing

And you deserve much more than  the devil
living inside of my cheeks

This is the way truth sets us free

The same way a suckerpunch leaves us winded

I imagine that is how our souls leave us

But you try and explain that to a nurse
who is busy checking your mouth to be sure
you've taken all your medication

You know how you're supposed to live like you are going to die tomorrow
I say
How 'bout six months from tomorrow?

I really have tried everythin
including ******* down the backwash of a sunday baptism

It only tasted like fear

The kind of fear I don't need right now

We bought a casket

Plotted a plot

I got a tattoo of an expiration date on the bottom of my foot

No day or month
just this year

And you've been brave
saying
You are saving your tears for when I am not here anymore

And I honestly never saw how the truth could turn into a graveyard

Til we both started talking to each other

Like ghosts whispering all the things we never got to say in life

No matter how you look at it
I tell her
*The truth always feels like it's arrived too late

When I was young
I had a body made of rubber
And elastic bands
That mother tightened
So I would sit up straight
But she grew slack with age.

When I was young
I was pliant
I had too many ballons in my ears
So mother pulled them, but I disappeared-
Tucking my head into my collar
And my hands into my armpits
To escape.

I was reminded of this yesterday,
Driving by one of those street advertisements
Car dealerships, Verizon wireless
Where they communicate to get your attention
Balloons growing
To the dance of wind inside an empty sleeve.

This sleep does not suit me,
this sleep without youth.

Heavy lids and heavy lies the body but
my mind takes shape reminiscent of
waves and the mermaid fins, dreams of
glittering beaches to wake up sweating
mid-winter.

Why is it that I putter and sink into crevices deep, still?
Why is it that I cannot share the moon? Her piercing
brilliance has endured eons alone, and
I feel a comrade in her shivering ripples.

This sleep, my darling,
I will not allow it.

the other night
   after you were kidnapped
              I ran
lost behind in the shadow of taxi
                    cabs parked at green lights
jumping statues and sleeping smiles
               until my heart's wheezing kept time with
cellophane yellows, reds and
                                   popped like a bubble, still
not suppressing any bit of you, only
                        anxious to learn more about what
lights your fires and soaks your skin
                  desperate to discover whether
jumping into rain-showers curls your lips upward
           in half-melted lazy warmth that
I might drown in you and
     be happy