To his Best Friend

You can tell him how incredibly annoying
it is that he makes love with his socks on,
and you can tell him that no matter
how many country songs he plays
the jeep will still be broken and the sun
will still go down at five o’clock
despite the garage lights and the cans of Miller.

Tell him I really didn’t notice him when he walked in,
and tell him that maybe I’ll be over to the party Saturday,
or that he walks pigeon-toed and that’s why
he ***** at walking on the curbs.

You can tell him anything you want to, just
don’t tell him that I love the way he holds a spoon
like a shovel or how his hair sticks up in the front
outside his hood in the mornings, or that his pants
don’t fit his waist that dips in from his belly,
soft, skin warm from my body lying on top of his,
and don’t tell him

that the more backwards we bend the more forwards
I fall. Don’t tell him that sometimes I make the bed
just so I can stay longer, please,
don’t tell him that the way he looks in a towel
with water dripping from his bottom lip
makes me want to crawl back into bed, rattle
his bones, and **** the kisses with my teeth
as I dig myself deeper into this infrastructure,
this balance, between hating what I’ve done,
and loving someone
who’s never going to think you’re enough.

Don’t tell him that I’ve strung together our moments
like a necklace and that I wear that burden
on my chest, hoping, between prayers
that I find a way to breathe. Don’t tell him
that I’ve broken over him. Don’t tell him

that sometimes my double-takes are triple
and sometimes I cry in the bathroom
and sometimes—
just please (save me*) please don’t tell him.

You better kiss me,
your mouth parted and lips
wrecking into the vagabond breath
that escapes from the center of what
I've been talking, and talking, and talking about
all the while you're trying to just shut me up.
So you better kiss me, kiss me
with your hands below my hips
pushing the skin from my bones
and pulling the sins from my mouth
just to spread them on our bodies.
We collide, half-inspired and arching
my back with your hands cupping the dimples
above my tailbone, jumping over my vertebrates,
reaching for my neck to press yourself, harder,
into me. Lights out, sheets to the end of the bed,
I sigh into your ears, XO. Again, and again, and again
gently until I'm bruised and ripened, soft,
pulsing on the verge, releasing our glow
crashing into you, kiss me, kiss me
you better kiss me.

I do not know where your hands rest
when you speak.

but your knees are rounded
smoothing river rock and once I stared
at them in a wine-hazed fire,
and I called them beautiful but you
seemed afraid so I stopped that.

you have a perfect nose.

I am skittish in your focus
   , rolled and shaken,
   hazy when you laugh and ask
   for more, I cannot be sure
   that you mean it.
where do your eyes sit when you
ask questions, where do your
ears go to answer?

we talked so long, I think.

you mad ,but you magic
there no lie in your fire
as much as I can, I do mean it.

even if we were only close once,
with that glass tree hidden on
bull street, (you sang into the bottles;
it sounded hopeless and I loved it)
                 even if we were only close when you
                 kicked the candles across the room
                 with all the glass clanging
                 with us laughing our all out, throat roaring
                 even if that was it,
                 I would wake up again on your couch
knowing how your face may look perfect in the
softer morning-haze, with your foot cooling from
the cover, I would drive home in the sun, barely
awake; I would do this all again.

Have you ever been described as a problem?
Like you are a pesky lil' fly buzzin' around the world?
I have been.
Has your people ever been described as a problem?
Like you are a pesky lil' mosquito biting for fun?
Mine has been.

"The Palestinian Problem," they say.
Like we created it. Like we wanted it.
Like we don't realize that we go everyday
everyday, with the rest of the world
wanting to stomp us like bugs.
We know.
We are that pesky pest problem.

So they call in the pest control,
the we-don't-need-you-control.
and we were poisoned,
and we are dying.
and everyday i watch as,
my culture becomes extinct
and everyday i watch as,
the world walks by giving
zero *****. because
**we are that pesky pest problem.

Love,
stop filling the backs of
my eyes with your pressures
rubbing tiny orbs with
backlit diamond roughings,
your face is the roof of
an opened shrine.
      cut me with your writ
      slide the s through every word
      until the tips of your arms
      are dragging the grounds with
      a weight of water-colored birds.

I wished you a thorough
processing into particle,
small and simple to dismiss,
if only to save the last
dusting breath that kept us both
unshaken.

make a face in the shape
of someone you love to hate,
take away all your mirrors,
there is nothing they show that will help you.

open up.
that heart is more a key
than a gavel, our heads
are so full of locks.

show them your broken fingers.
how you cry when there are
friends in the next room,
sing if the dance music mocks you.  

I hope you are happy
when I breathe,
and even after.

as a child
I wander my young eyes
over hills in the greening
back roads
my love is the sun
how it shone

with the river around me
a breeze through these broken
fence posts,
the water, my home
how it grows, how it grows

like a hope told in silence
the sky is an opening breath
to my hazy goodbyes
and the love I have tucked
in your chest
in your hands
in your eyes.

will you say from the forest
"I kept all your
night cries and hid them in the moss
mixed your heartbeat with bird calls
and named your life a draw"?
or will I still find home
a blue shard in my arm
torn loose like a tooth from
the sand?