her smell—
clean, unobtrusive and vaguely pleasant—
chemically-produced lemons.

I’m not offended by it
but I wouldn’t wear it.
I wouldn’t even use it
as an air freshener.

It would probably give me a headache after a while;
if it were any stronger,
any more vibrant and yellow,
then I’ll bet that even just one whiff
would send dizzying
tinglies into
my
brain.

for love in other
people to forget
our own
emptiness.

The end was a hurt, a low throbbing of the temples, a panic in the chest.
The end was a purple circle, an eye sunken in more deeply into its socket than the day before.
The end was an end; the end was “The End.”
The end was a notebook underneath a mattress we lifted up to pull the sheets over them, beige and freshly cleaned and still smelling faintly of detergent.
The end was when the words scribbled in slanting, harsh ink entered into my mind, into my soul, burned itself into my face.
The end was when I looked back up at him, and in my face, he saw something had changed.
The end was when he pushed me against the wall in a dark corner, glow lights like floating heads in the darkness around us, when I felt the heat of his chest, the controlled strength of his hands pressed against my hips.
The end was a feeling.
The end was his roommate’s 21st birthday celebration at a club in downtown Atlanta, when we looked out over the balcony at the sprawling city waiting below us, waiting for us, alive. When we talked about our futures, our careers. I was to be an English professor – he, a corporate lawyer, a politician, a businessman, anything lucrative. I would do what I love, he would create our life with the profits gleaned from a more conventional career path.
The end was when he left for Prague, or when I left for Spain, when we stopped speaking on the phone every day, when the connection fell flat and disintegrated.
The end was when I socked him in the face.
The end was when I read the words that spelled her name, the girl before me, and how he had missed her---was it when we had been falling in love?
The end was when I learned he described my body not as beautiful but “full figured” – for these were the truth, the contents of the mind.

In theory, the end in our story was written
before we had even begun.

Beauty Queen
Miss Q
Thinking of you
;-)
:-)
...
?

Post-apocalyptic characters flash white
against a twilight screen
Tiny, shiny meanings begging for responses
But I won't feed
these visions of nothingness

Since when did I become
bound to this ubiquitous pretense,
since when did I become
cast into these tiny webs roping me inextricably closer
to the "you" I just met yesterday and
since when did we become
like spineless eels
caught dumbfounded
in these fishing lines
of textonomy?

This ain't swag
and if it is,
then your swag
makes me want to regurgitate
la salsa verde y los tamales de pollo
all over your smooth and crisp
white shoes

Can't someone untie me from these social knots?
I want to go back to ink-blots,
conscriptions, Polaroid photographs,
X's and
abandoned
I's

When I think of those nights we spent together,
damp with sweat on your unmade bed,
I shudder in disgust.
You are a stranger to me,
as is the person I was when I was with you.

I’m not sure why you’ve come here.
I am staring at the patterns on the ceiling.
You ask me what I’m looking at.
I feel irrationally angry
and I snap at you to just shut up
because I know you don’t see what I see.

Suddenly I feel heavier.
I turn to face the vents on the wall to my left.
The menacing sharp horizontal lines droop down slightly at both ends.
I don’t like the way they are looking at me.

You are nineteen,
and I am watching you deteriorate.
Your eyes are a shadowed mockery
of themselves.

I tell you,
There is fire in my head.
My hands are turning to ice,
and that pinecone is green and furry.
I think it lives.
But you don't believe me.

And we walk among speeding cars,
trying to figure out how to cross streets and how to
close spaces that never stay glued shut
like silver elevators stuck.

It used to be that your heart
beat so hard against my back
that I couldn’t sleep,
but I didn’t mind.
I liked the way the scruff of your chin felt
against my shoulder blades.

And I’m sorry for all those times I kissed you and never meant it.
And I’m sorry for all those times I did.

So why is my shadow lying there on wet grass
if I’ve already left and gone home?

These things have a way of coming back to me—in ruinous circles—finding me where I left them… in dusty basements and creaky porches… in faded streets and quiet bedrooms.

The reality of the past is always etched into the present—rattling impatiently inside of my brain—and histories are tangled up inside of me.

Histories of:
Small blue, hope-infused amphetamines to flatten my voice and keep the screams from falling out,
Thick, heavy dope to muck up my lungs and ear canals and all the basic doors of my perception,
Cold yellow wine that frosts up the glass, to take me to a summer barbeque at my uncles’ in Puerto Rico.

But you are a knot in my chest that feels good to unravel.
So listen.
Listen.
The world is playing for us.
The world is playing us.
And the world is just playing.
Over and over again every morning;
every morning it plays over.

Like a silent black-and-white film:
the sunlight from the window hits me square in the face,
warmth trickles down inside of me like gold,
filling cracks and empty spaces.
I ride the train downtown to your house and crawl into your bed.
I am in a phone booth,
pressing the cold black receiver tightly to my ear,
twirling the silver cord in my hand,
bitter words stuck to the back of my throat like scabs.
My imperceptible tears seep into the little black holes in the receiver,
and I wait
for them to reach you.

We are in transit,
but we never meet in the middle.
Every morning.

Listen to my bones.