phase one:
the crowds part for him, and something
inside you does too; followed by your lips,
followed by your thighs. you utter his name
in your empty apartment just to feel its
weight on your tongue. he scares you.

phase two:
he still scares you but you've moved things
around to make room for the fear. you give
it a bed. you give it his name. you feed it.
you realize all at once that you could love
him, and you are breathless with relief that
you don't. but you could, just like you could
hit the gas instead of the brakes and plunge
into a ravine. on the road and then in the
river just that fast.

phase three:
you're in the river. you wonder if you were
ever really on the road. you think maybe you
can live like this, just like you thought you could
breathe underwater when you were four or so.
exhaling is fine, it's easy, but on inhale you flood
your lungs. he isn't what you needed, he is the
water choking you, but it's not his fault you don't
have gills. it isn't his fault you hit the gas instead
of the brakes.

i know how this will end.
i will sneak into your apartment
before the cops arrive. i will take
one of your shirts from the hamper,
your blanket off the bed, and sleep
wrapped up in both every night
until i remember how to
dream without you.

first: the i’ll-follow-you-anywhere kind of new love. the swell of promise, of possibility; the beginning of a long walk through a dark town that you've never visited, the moment of accepting all you don't know, disregarding the unknown variables, and wanting to give it a shot anyway.  

compare to: i’ve followed you everywhere, and now i know how you sleep and what your blood looks like; i know you and i love you anyway.

flies in my honey,
ants in my bed.
the crucifix is crying:
jesus wants down.

my first clear conviction
since i found jesus in louisiana:
i will not die. i will not let you **** me.

to apologize would be a bruise to your
pride, but  i love you emerges from a
tangle of teeth and wire, and for another
night i stay.

i have watched the tectonic plates of your
personality shake and shift under the shadows
of your eyes for seven years now.

you are the child in a perpetual state of rebirth,
and i am the mother who weeps and mourns
and breaks dishes like a poltergeist.

i want to drink a bottle of cough syrup,
i want to chase spirits into traffic,
i want to throw myself to the wolves.

i can't shake the feeling
of being watched, even
in the dark lonely space
of my kitchen.

i've taken to wedging a
knife between my
mattress and box-spring.

keep me suspended in that dark water fear:
that moment before assessing an injury,
where everything is unknown and dire
and hopeful all at once.

i've spent many nights
waiting out storms, folded
away in my bathtub—

on the night that bullets
shredded through our
drywall, we held each
other there.

it reminded me of wind
and summer sirens and
the arms of my mother.

floods dredge up old
bodies from the brazos.

spring is the season that
gives the river gentle
permission to release
its dead.

they found a human
torso in a garbage bag.
they found a father and
son washed up on the
banks.

you opened me up
like a cold case file: hoping to find
something that all the guys before
you missed; hoping to make connections
with fingers following color coded string,
tracing who i've become back to who
i used to be.

you made our bed an
interrogation room, took notes in the
hollow of my throat, the crease of my
thigh, the underside of my wrist.

to your credit,
you never quit. but in the end you
had to be taken off the case; all your
hard work reduced to footnotes for
the next fresh set of eyes.

thinking that an
i love you
after hurting me
is the same as an
apology is abusive
husband logic.

i will never close my mouth
to your table scrap i love you's.

you only keep me around for
that leashed dog loyalty:

like a mutt at your feet, all that
matters is that you don't kick me.

you taught me that
there is more than one way
to apologize in spanish, and
that meaning is often lost in
translation.

it sets my mind to wonder
which parts of you have been
willfully tucked away, like money
in our mattress, and what is
just lost in translation.

bipolar, brass knuckle baby,
pretty eyed prince of el paso:
i've listened to you weep in
spanglish

and i would wade through that
river of dead women just to feel
closer your grandmother, that
oval faced polaroid girl who knew
her birthright and had the grip
strength to take it.

i've wrestled
with this burning
coin for a decade
now;

held over candlelight
by grandmothers and
teenage charlatans alike,
****** into the soft tissue
of my naive mouth.

find someone who adores you,
[OR]
find someone you adore.

such irony and tragedy
in the context of love:
the age old lament of one
without the other.

your logic is that of which
elegies are written from.

i'm spitting it out, but let
the scar tissue remain.

your chest was heavy with the need to leave;
your head sick with the things you hadn't seen.

but you're glad you stayed, even if it was just to see
everything that you've ever loved laid to waste,
slow and ugly.

no city can unravel you like that population sign
of eight hundred and thirty-nine.

SCARY SOUTHSIDE
SWEETHEART.

LAZY SPLIT
LIPPED KISSES OVER A
MOUNTAIN DEW AND
A POWDERED DONUT
DINNER FOR TWO.

he will never not enjoy this:
dark eyes that feel as though they can lance through skin and blood and bone, all the way down into the cancers of his thoughts; warm breath on his cheek; fingertips scrabbling over his collarbone to bunch his shirt into a tight fist; the dizzying crack of his skull on drywall.

she has a way of making small things feel significant:

the way she taped her moving boxes together,
double stripped: she doesn't know if the first one
will hold; her white lighter superstition; the way her
skin was quick to bruise, even when you were gentle;
her broken teeth, the lost fillings you ran your tongue
over like your tires on her pockmarked street the first
and last times (and all the times in between) that you
drove to that bad side of town, where shoes swung
from power lines and women wept over the sticky red
bodies of sons and husbands and fathers but only spoke
in hushed, shamed spanish about their own blood loss.

in the end, there's nothing too significant about it: she has
trust issues that extend to duct tape and lighters; she bruises
like a peach; she has bad teeth because she was too poor to fix
them; her love dried up like the brazos in the texas summer.

it's a bottomless pit of both
pride and tiresome duty,
knowing that you are the
glue keeping a family together.

[WENDIGO]**

SHE WILL KISS THE MONSTER YOU HAVE BECOME— SLIDE HER TONGUE INTO THE THICKETS OF YOUR MOUTH, HEEDLESS TO THE INEVITABILITY OF CUTTING HER STRAWBERRY LIPS ON THE SERRATED BLADES OF YOU TEETH. SHE IS SUMMER AND YOU ARE THE SNOWCONE SHE ***** DRY.

BOY OF DRY LEAVES AND DEAD GIRLS: YOU STILL TASTE GOOD WITH HER BLOOD ON YOUR CHIN.

I WILL FIND THE MEN WHO HURT YOU AND I WILL TEAR THEM APART: I WILL SATE THE DEPTHS OF THE STILL SEA'S STARVING
BELLY WITH THEIR BROKEN BODIES.

**** WITH MY FAMILY AND YOU WILL
KNOW THE TASTE OF YOUR BLOOD.
IT WILL BE THE LAST THING YOU TASTE.

ONE: STAY PRESENT

TWO: DON'T WASTE VALUABLE TIME BEING ANGRY

THREE: THE FEELING OF NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH IS HEAVIER THAN GRIEF

I HEARD SOMEONE SAY
THAT BRUISED KNUCKLES
WILL ALWAYS LOOK BAD
WHILE HOLDING A
CHAMPAGNE FLUTE;

I WONDER THEN HOW YOURS
CAN LOOK THIS GOOD
WHILE HOLDING MY WAIST.

i didn't learn
the lessons you
taught me until
you were already
gone.

i write more
about       boys   with
names      my      mind
scrabbles to remember
than   i  do  about  the
women    who    broke
their    backs   to   cast
my    bones   in   steel
and   teach   me    that
i  am  no  fragile thing

and i don't know what
that says about me.

he is saltwater
breeze and blood
on your teeth:

he is the last word
spoken and the first
punch thrown.

he is the same tide
that would just as soon
kiss the shores of your back
as he would drag you
beneath the surface.

he is the no swimming
sign always ignored.

simple touches
make my nerve
ends crackle like
fallen powerlines
and remind me
that my body is
a hazard sign.

▲
i think
you only loved me
◀ because you thought ▶
i'd never love you
back.
▼

sometimes,
i think i could
be good for you:

press hot water bottles
to your aching jaw and
kiss the feeling back into
your sedated lips

pin myself beneath
the weight of your
medicated gaze and
tune my ears to
your slur.

he says
he doesn't know
who i am half the time,
but he calls me baby
like he's mine.

i want to
tuck songs
behind your
ear like loose
hair because
it's the only
way i can
tell you
how i
feel.

i can't have a drink just to relax:
not anymore, not after you.
when thoughts of
you take root,
i better be
door-frame
gripping
drunk,
even if
it's 10
in the afternoon.

when they drilled
into bone and sutured
my gums shut, i didn't think
about how the antiseptic didn't go that deep:
all i thought about was that
my face is just blood,
tired muscle,
and bone.

in a real shy voice
that you never use
you asked me if i still
felt like i used to.

and i'm so sick
of all the ******* between us,
so i told you point blank, yes.
i'm not getting
any better.

doubling the dosage
of anxiety medication
that isn't prescribed to me:
but it doesn't bother me
because it should be.

i'm putting together a mixtape,
a lot like the ones you used to make for me.
and i'm working hard, choosing all the right songs:
ones that encompass our history, your leaving,
and every bitter thing we've been through.
as if it'll make a difference.
as if it'll bring you back.
as if i want you back
in the first place.