The night we got drunk and told each other secrets
Wasn't a good night
But it was a reading poetry night
A looking up poetry on your iphone and reading out loud night
Our favorite verses
Leonard cohen, andrea gibson
We're very different for best friends
But typical, a boy and a girl
Stealing liquor from the grocery store
In my purse, under your shirt
Secrets
A few drinks and you're crying, telling me
People only see your looks
And I think you're superficial, get some real problems
Until you tell me
About how he held you down and tried to choke you
In the middle of the night
Another drink and I'm holding you saying I'm so glad they called the cops
So glad you're here now
So glad we're best friends
So glad we've bonded over shared
Awful secrets
Another drink and you're telling me not to feel self conscious of my scars
That even though they reveal to everyone
The worst thing I've ever done to myself,
And they show this without my consent to anyone who might look
That they are a part of me not to be ashamed of
And you have another drink and say you don't think worse of me
Not anymore.
And we have another drink and look up another poem
Read it out loud until the words are too slurred and we're laughing
Like the worst things that ever happened to us
Are only parts of us
And they can be remembered without falling apart
And forgotten without losing everything
And we have another drink.

Do not say the first thing first
Or the last thing last
Do not read the book in order
Do not order yourself not to cry
Take the unordinary and claim it extraordinary
Take the take the fabric and rip it until the holes are wider
Than the holes in your circumstance
Or the holes in your heart

Put down the gun and bandage the wound
That was made without firing a shot
Do not shoot the extraordinary thing
Pick it up and tuck it lovingly in your pocket
Or in your brassiere
Sew the heart up without anesthesia
Wind thread around it tightly
And say out loud the last words you would ever say
Under ordinary circumstance
Do not start at the beginning
Do not rip the book and cry over the pages

Bandage the book
Put down the wound
Read the gun
Claim the heart
Sew the pocket
Wind the rip
Fire the cry
Tuck the words
Shoot the thing

Loving you is like loving water
So much a part of everyday life
So hard to hold on to
I'm so thirsty.
Loving you is like loving the wind
I don't know which way it blows
Or where it might lead my sails
You don't know either, and you refuse to use
The instruments of navigation.
Loving you is like loving an astronomer
Who stares at things so far away
And knows the alignment of the stars but not
How much I need you
You can't remember how to love anything up close.

I ripped off my arms so I wouldn't be able to touch
But I still felt the softness of breath and the cold of the wind
And I felt you on my lips
I ripped out my tongue so I wouldn't want to kiss you anymore
But the ache was still there
I felt you in my heart
I ripped out my heart through my ribs, and broke them
So I wouldn't feel the boom boom boom boom under my left breast
But the ****** hollow chamber echoed in remembrance
You are everywhere in me
I tried to end it all so I wouldn't know pain anymore
But this phantom body still feels it all
Wrap your arms around yourself
Run your tongue over your red gums and feel
The chambers of your heart in your chest
Boom boom boom boom

the person who laughed yesterday
is the person who wanted to die today.
and as hard as I try
love will not leave this body.
it will not rise like steam from my skin
as from a teacup in the kitchen.
nor will it exit as sweat
that forms on my back
as I hold someone else in the dark
and gasp for air.
love will not leave in an exhalation
in a breathe that contains your name
and it will not leave in a plume of smoke
blown out through parted lips.
love will not leave this body
in a laugh drawn out on rare occasions
when I forget you for a moment
or in tears drawn out of your memory
when I remember.
love will not leave
this body
as hard as I try.

the way I say softly to myself that 'I miss you'
which I know
is just a whimper into the void
that statistically you are not likely to hear.
I miss you like the sofa misses the softness of our bodies pressed against it
like the lonely astronomer misses the visible path of a meteoroid when it fades from the blackness and a trail of nothing but the glowing memory of burning elements is left behind, a wake for all that seemed to be living but was only a projection, a fossilization in the air, untouchable in the distance, not making sense
like the tv misses our eyes giving it a glance when, occasionally, we looked away from each other
like the everyday visuals of the world miss the added vibrancy of an altered mind
I miss you like my body misses drugs that make things tolerable
I miss us together making the world tolerable without trying.
I miss us like the bats miss the night sky when they sleep crowded in the day-caves, huddled and waiting
Only unlike the night you will not come to me again

All the little colors
Exploding from cardboard eggshells on the pavement,
stained with ash
Burning

Look around
Get inside of me
All the fragile heartstrings
Snapping over colored organs
Bleeding little colors