Tile walled tear drops
And shower suicide thoughts
The humidity makes it
Hard to breathe
Or maybe that's sadness
And her hard hands slowly
Claiming me as her own
Again.
A lone soul has never felt
This suffocating

You ask me my thoughts,
but how do I tell you I've been considering all the different things I can break to create critical scars on beautiful veins ever since you took my favorite blade?
You remember when we drank strawberry milk out of wine glasses?
Or that time we walked in the rain,
slowing instead of speeding up because
rain doesn't wash anything away
not skin or scars or secrets
and how do I tell you that I don't love you,
and that I really wanted to run that day?
But instead I stare into ocean eyes, smile, and just tell you
I'm lost

Skeletal limbs,
Collapsed sky, illumine--there's
Beauty in breakdown

I came across a BMW 528i today -- same make and model as yours, same rusty maroon clunk ******* you drove so proud. Could’ve been yours, with its cracked leather and yellow stuffing vomiting from seat to the floor, steering wheel worn from your callouses. High school football team kind of callouses, country boy livin' kind of callouses. Inverted smile, dimpled chin, kind brown eyes kind of callouses. Take a girl like me on a 4-wheeler and make her scream middle of a Sunday kind of callouses. Raise in surprise as headlights blind you in Charleston kind of callouses. Lay limp with pavement shot through your skull and bone shards in your leg kind of callouses. Some drunk kid driver says just some ****** drunk kid crossing the street, came out of ****** nowhere. You were some drunk kid, but you had the right of way, and how couldn’t he see you? You brought the light wherever you went, drunk kid, and now you're ICU comatose-kid, and thousands of us are thinking about you back home. Drunk kid, high school football star kind of kid, just out for a drink kind of kid. Likes his cars like his women – flashy, look past the maintenance kind of kid. But your girl’s back home projectile vomiting yellow body stuffing through leather ****** lips, and your 528i is somebody else’s, and they didn’t appreciate it like you did, kid. It's just sittin’ in the street, and you’re just lost. Some kind of hospital kid.

bodies familiar in the hues
of a dying day
in the shadows, in the shade
blacks and grays,
indigos and jades

whispers muted in the last
gasps of light
our language,
words knit into the night
our vision, monochromatic --
your breaths,
the moon,
my static

i'm drowning in tempranillo tears,
drenching my veins in
hard rock and **** wine,
trying to get the
taste of you
out of my mouth

I want to bid farewell to the friends in Madrid I never met

The men and women and youths who slept next to me in the hostel I never visited
To the comfort I found when those strangers knit me into the patchwork quilt of their souls
And there, I slid into place.

I want to thank the cook for making the paellas that never touched my tongue
The bartender for mixing the sangria that they but never I drank  

I want to bid farewell to the man who taught me to tango as if I’d been there

I want to wave to the tourists with their cameras shielded against Spain’s loud sun, because they, in a way, could have been me but I, never them.

I want to send a letter to my brother and his wife

Tell them their house in Memphis was beautiful though I’ve never seen it
I want to engrave in pen the memories I never made, describing Tennessee’s fifth season in the flavors of barbeque and blues and bourbon.

I want to write an author’s acknowledgment to embed in the book I’ll never publish
Thanking the editor I’ll never meet, the agent I never begged to take me on

Instead, I give thanks to a kind husband and a house that jails me.
I give love to the kids I didn’t want but who are very real.
I make way for the family vacations to Disney World.
I push and pull a fighting Madrid into her timeout corner,
where her sun doesn’t blind us.

If only Madrid could know the way I love them,
which is enough to sacrifice my dreams for theirs,
then maybe she wouldn’t beat against the cage of my soul
where a family of four silhouettes shield themselves from her sunny streets
and sparkling nights,
with raised hands saying,
"It’s too loud for us here."

He played to the rhythm of the rain,
a glass of blood red pinot noir at his feet,
an acoustic guitar balanced on his knee –
crooning the sounds of an
aching heart.
The acoustic paused its epitaph,  
letting the patter of rain on an
aluminum roof
fill in the sounds where his friend
should have been.
He glanced at the empty wicker chair beside him
and wondered –
despite their ranging conversations
from music to Hell –  
why they never discussed what one would do
without the other.

I am desperate –  
     for all the effortless things

just so my blood has a chance to
     sing for something
          again

but out of all the open air that
     has kissed my skin
          and all the people who
                were lucky to love me

the only easement I knew
     was you
           and before, during, after

well,
     I was never enough for myself –
          not once, not ever

so I find myself
     aching for the effortlessness
          but not aching for you in the way
       I used to

I can’t find it – my effortlessness –
     without you
          because I believe they
               are one in the same

so I wander –
     a drifting soul –
          from progression to progression

congratulations

you seem so happy

I am so proud

all these tangible things –
     they will never bring me the
          easement I knew from only you

We sat with a pair of burgers between us,
the Purdue game muted on the big screen.
We talked about high school and
Friday night football and
health insurance and
what it feels like to get hit by a car --
our first date, just five years removed.

You have abstract works painted like satin
in your skin
like scars
in your skin
like memories
like nightmares
like “I wish I would have’s…”

I tease you gently;
you beg me not to work so much
You frown at your plate
swirl your fries in ketchup and
in this, I see fragments of the old you.

I ask if you’re going to church tomorrow,
and you reflect the question
like it’s a challenge
like belief is always shaped with doubt
like even when there’s faith, voices still waiver.

There are still tiny fractures
in your bones
in your voice
in our memories.

There are still raindrops in your eyes
when we talk about high school and
Friday night football and
health insurance and
what it feels like to get hit by a car.

There are still scars in your skin
in your mind
in my heart --
Our first date, just five years removed

the smell of iron,
and spreading blood
across my palm
let me tell you my own future
from the ****** hand prints on
bathroom tile and
the taste of beer and *****
that still lingers.

the door slams,
you heave me into your arms
and we sit on toilet porcelain,
this is me in my most honest hour--
the warmth of skin on your neck
mixing with the warmth of the blood on my palm,
and I can't tell which I want more now.
you're not dying tonight
but if this is what dying gets me,
let me fade away in your arms.
listen to the sound of heartbreak
as my facade shatters like glass,
and I sob against your velvet skin.

soft words, gentle hands,
as you clean my blood
when all I can say is don't
your voice--deep and sure
I can still hear it
just like I can still taste the blood
from my own veins.

now I am left with a nasty scar
that tells the story
of our friendship
let me read you my own future
from these blood-free palm lines,
and I still can't see you in it.

I want you to inhale me
smoke my soul
and burn whatever you find left
that you may stumble across
along the way

You loved me like the
seasons and winter seems to
be where you’ve left me.

I can't find the strength
to call you back--I'm weathered
from the way you fade

i accidentally threw my toothbrush away last night and had to use the spare i’ve been saving for you
my eyeglasses had a water droplet on them and i couldn’t see straight it wasn’t because i was drunk
or sad
or angry
it was the water droplet blurring everything and bringing an end to fine edges and clarity answers

in the end it is kindness that undoes me
my dog brings me toys when i'm sad or sick and nudges them into my elbow like some knock-off substitution for benadryl or lexapro
i still have sand in my eyes from the desert you drug me through
it isn’t because i haven’t slept  
or am hungover
or dehydrated
i swear it's the sand like diamonds

whenever i'm in the throes of a panic attack i wear the shirt my mom bought me because it makes me feel safe
the day after you i ask her if i'm allowed to tell her when i'm hungover or when i've made a mistake
but i can't because when you moved over me and my body responded
it wasn’t my mom's shirt anymore.
it was yours

Like a dove's mournful cry
echoing across fresh dew,

Like a shadowy silhouette
against a steady sunset,

Like the way I marry my
coffee and cream,

Like the way a book's pages
flutter between my fingers

You are --

A burst of spring,
A given hand,
A warm embrace,
History in the making,

Yet perhaps,
Like a jolt of blue lightning
striking across my midnight sky,

You are ephemeral
in your ties to me

Your eyes are lit low,
at dusk, like liquid gold.
There’s heavy silence,
your words come slow.

But, can you just hold on?
let’s wait until the dawn,
let sunlight touch your promise.
What if this goes all wrong?

Your fingertips play my spine,
you swear things will be fine.
I turn into you,
already, you feel like mine.

Your arms protect me,
your eyes, they set me free,
your lips promise forever,
Don’t you ever leave.

Learn to lead from the rear,
a constant silhouette
against a steady sunset.
But back here,
there’s so much to fear,
and too much to feel.
So I sit, scared of the silence.

What if we as women quit the
“what if’s” and “but when’s” and “except he’s”
and left him the first time we felt a rock drop in our bellies?

I whipped the trash bag into its receptacle today,
worthlessness disguised as anger, and
reapplied my make up three times because
being late is the same as saying you don’t want me

Or I’m not good enough to race against the type of woman
you’re used to.

I think of the ways I used to shame myself when this happened before, when a boy I loved didn’t mind enough
to love me back the same way,
or at all,
but this time, I don’t reach for a blade
I sip a drink -- a daughter takes after her father.

I use essential oils with scents of
emotions I pray to feel --
scents like “uplifting” and “serene” and “relax”

Is there an essential oil the flavor of “*******”?
Because that seems to be the only way I feel lately –
roiling and ready for a fight,
jaw clenched tight
against the taste of your name.

i know every corner in this place --
from house-made mocha
the pastel pastries and
speckled mugs

to the weight of the space you take
behind the counter

your fingers brush mine
steam on styrofoam
and a smile so soft --
all espresso eyes and smooth jazz
the grind of the beans and your laugh:
my soundtrack

it's the coffee bringing me to this place,
it's the caffeine that makes me shake,
it can't be your brown eyes
keeping me awake

october 6, 2018
was a day for wearing white,
supposed to be his bride
instead, I’m alone
in a new home,
watching an Indian summer go by –
robin’s egg skies, and
emerald hills

i wish it was raining instead

october sixth was supposed to be
navy and cream,
stargazer lilies, and a
backyard wedding in
southern indiana woods
where leaves the color of blood,
wept with all our loved ones
paving the way of our future

a prologue: dates to the theater,
foamy beer,
sticky dance floors,
loud words and hate,
a home together, destined to fall
and the secrets stuck
like dust

sometimes, the devil hides behind the shadows of love

now, i wake up alone,
in my new home
to the songs of doves,
the morning is for mourning,
i like to think they’re singing for me

i cradle the mug in my hands,
listen to the birds
and the words,
a song i wrote and sing to myself,

the chorus, it goes like this:
“you’re safe now”