that feeling when (your) finger tips clutch (my) bare skin
veiled in casual apathy
we watch the screen in silence
not knowing what to say

i don't know what went on
behind your flickering eyes
as for me, the moment of contact
sent jumpy tingles up my spine

unexpectedly
my mind reeled forward
to unspent nights in dance clubs or backyard barbecues;
the way your hands felt in mine when we leaned in
lips still intact--
unbroken

I was never looking into you
I was only pouring an image of myself onto your canvas
Of course I didn’t know
it was me looking into me
this was the mirage of my desire
always in the shape of a question mark
and you
a sweeping mystery
oozing something toeing the peculiar line between *** and titanium (cold, edgy, sharp - trembling
between pain and principle
like blazer and tie
or more like halfway-unbuttoned-shirt-and-slacks on-with-no-tie
(it was like you were making an effort!))

It was ***
but it also wasn’t ***
(I am empty
I am full)

I keep building up and up and up
all these images in my Mind
(which never shuts up)
(a never-ending narrative
She spins and spins and succumbs
only in those rare and passing circumstances)
constructing people like buildings
only the scaffolding is imaginary and when
the architecture folds in on itself
soulless
and my beloved figurines come toppling down on me
why do I still get so surprised
so stung
so lonely in that
hollow and distant way
(like your Mind is echoing
in on
Itself)?

My Mind is like quicksand
devouring streams of memory with ease
forever unsatisfied and craving more of the same
sharp edges and all
praying for a satiation in some distant future
She knows will never come

Only here
in this tiny universe
can I spell out anything resembling rationality
from the mess and junk and tangled tendrils of my Mind
Only here
can I extract bits and pieces of thoughts
and try to puzzle them together
until they make sense
until I can separate “Me” from “Reality"

And what doesn’t make sense
what I need to understand
is why I feel so beset
with this heavy magnetism that
overpowers me to the point of
paralysis
(with little to no room for breathing)
and why it was you
who pushed me into this feeling
and you
who is still pulling me along
far past the threshold of my resistance
and I am done
and it stings

We are renters
Living off leased land
Never land owners
Years of finances poured into revolving doors
and recycled down into intricate designs creeping beyond the
comprehension of the reasonable woman
(or man)

Why do we fear so much the need for one another?
Desperately flattening desire into hardened emotion
We can't even breathe properly anymore
Oozing smoke and conspiracies out of our pores;

anxiety became our lifeblood

My hands were shaking
Not as hard as yours, I'm sure

You almost lost everything and I
was forced to watch,
bearing silent witness to a
destruction not my own
but at which I felt at fault,
thus I digested it as my own

Who knows?

In my mind, I had lived fantasies of
something like this happening--
you, helpless, I hold fast to your life and then
salvaging you, just barely,
scaring us both out of life and then
falling back into something new--
dark, strange, and yet intimate

This has happened to me twice now (for real)
and neither time was nearly as glamorous as
I had played out in my mind

(I'm a stupid girl)

Both times I felt drained of a vital energy I couldn't
call back--ever

I became an echo
of me
and us?
we were skeletons of
the children we once were. Both times
robbed me---
of sleep, and years, and appetite.
robbed me---
of innocence, and soul, and
love
which always
bleeds out uncontrollably
in times like these
unclottable

and out with love
spreads guilt and shame

(I'm a jinx, I'm a cursed girl)

across the tar, filling the black empty
cracks with invaluable energy

Full of foreign weight
cargo stored too long
too far pushed down our throats
too removed

My hands were shaking
Not as hard or as long as yours
I'm sure

You are drinking yourself red-eyed and crumpled
on an unmade bed meanwhile I
am hating the world’s promiscuity and signing
autographs that serve no alternate purpose
subsequent to their ink-blotted conceptions and silently
my heart scratches and claws and penetrates
bone, muscle, and choked fat
to get to you

How will we know
when we’re no longer
young enough
to inconsequentially
rot our bodies
from the inside
out?

If I could
I would search for a space
impenetrable
by ants molecules and medium-sized atoms
that exists between
my pale finger tips and
your freckled
bare back moving
slowly up and down

If I could
I would be somewhere where nothing
is the tarnished byproduct of anything
where no one will remind anyone not to
clog their throats or minds or eyes
when they
shiver and choke on scarlet inkblots
and chug gasoline
and wipe away dirt stains
and drink each other’s shame
and form cuts on the soles of their feet
after rushing barefoot through beds of sharp stones
to reach other

Once, I bathed in anxiety,
soaking it all into my follicles and letting it slide
between my bones and through my muscles like ice water.
And I reeked.
Others couldn’t stand to be around me.
I became an inhuman symbol,
something robotic and unfeeling.

Then, I reached the peak of hypocrisy--
rejected sparkling convention yet was
simultaneously enamored with it.
I binged on harsh words
aimed at diminishing my sense of self.
I was a frail,
98-pound girl
looking into the mirror
and seeing only excess.

Throughout, I was weighted with bruised limbs--
from being grabbed too hard and pounded too rough against the floor,
and broken down doors and cracked cellphones--
which my father threw violently against the wall.
I watched the glass shatter and end tables topple
down at my mother’s feet,
her eyes wide and glassy,
her face fallen.

Once, I stood naked in a sputtering shower
and slammed my fist
—twice—
into the face of the person I loved
the most, leaving him
with a haunted
eye.

Then, I picked a flower from the sky.

Throughout, I cried because my father left me,
while pretending I was only crying
about a sad song.

These days no longer belong to me,
but the voices are still there.
And the ache.
And the fear.

i am sick, mad, crazy
still in love with you
always thinking about not thinking about you
and whenever you incessantly creep in-
to my thoughts i scold myself
it's too late--
i haven't crossed his mind in ages

and i drive myself to tears at night lying awake,
feeling far too naked next to him
(who i can't stop comparing to you--
how mediocre he seems after you,
how everyone likely will be)
and i suffer in silence
from the dreadful
chill of lingering
hope
a hope
that maybe
you and I
just might...

it's like
how i can't forget
that summer afternoon when we were
sun-drunk and
bleary-eyed in your hammock and you
put your hand on my stomach and said,
one day, we'll have a baby in there
and i was stilled; i loved so profoundly then
i had thought,
one day
we could be magical

and every part of me hates how cliche this all sounds,
and how our stupid tragedy has turned me into a cliche
but it's true
every single day
my raw hungry love, still alive
looms over me,
plagues me,
decays me,
i try to push it away but
it lingers like a nightmare
that will not go away

i know we exploded, turned to
shattered glass,
smoky ash but
i still yearn to know why
and so every time
someone dies in the newspaper
or i read a line in a book that moves me
or our song
comes on the radio
or someone mentions your name
in passing, with painful casualty
or worse-- nauseating familiarity,
i feel a sharp pang, with every
accidental glimpse of a photograph
i still can't bring myself to throw away,
my heart sinks deeper down
into my stomach
and once more,
i am sure
i will never truly feel again
without you

sometimes i have the urge to stand on a
pedestal somewhere,
high and tall and proud,
in front of a
bustling crowd like
in the movies
and scream to the universe
i would still do anything
to be with you
and wait for you to run so fast towards me that we
crash and then you pull back, hold my face and say
shut up, i had you at hello, or something

i've tried so hard for so long not to feel any of this
to numb the breaking-away pain with
blue, white, green, orange pills and
sweet smoke
i've tried so hard to detach myself from the reality
of our tragedy
to avoid responsibility
for feeling anything at all

but my new year's resolution is to be clean
so now i am finally letting myself
feel
it
all
from my mind through
my cold meaningless fingertips
all the hurt

now i know
the darkest face of sadness
is regret

and i want you to know
that even though i pretended not to,
i heard you and
i'm trying to change
and that i hope one day you will actually
forgive me
for doing that awful thing i did to you
last spring
and that
i'm scared i will love you forever

but if there is a chance
you feel something too,
why have we wasted
so much time
not together?

Give me words
Until they mean nothing
Wrap me in their meaninglessness
Until I feel nothing

The only thing that's real
Is your energy

The way you walk with
Uneven footsteps and laugh
Too often at unsaid jokes
Shakes my core

I'm coming undone
Too much weight to carry

I am changed
People notice

Intelligence breeds anxiety
Or is it ignorance?
Which one overtakes me?

Which energy
chooses me?
Clings like a shadow to my back?
Claws and controls me?

Maybe I'll find what I'm looking for
In New Orleans' haunted
Purple gold walls
Streets slick with death
Drenched in a
Clownish haze,
Maybe I'll weep there,
Let it soak

I drank all your shame while I was
Sleeping
You left greasy fingerprints down
My back and they
Spread across my stomach like
Wildfire, my branches
Split like black veins cursed
Coursing with black blood
Evil
What voice speaks inside of me
Now?

She says I've lived in too many places
Too many energies have made love to me

Where is my identity?
Which voice do I know is mine?

An unsung chorus:
Bathe in salt, she says
Cleanse yourself in sunlight
Stay alone

So why am I so afraid to be alone?

I was sitting next to you on a ledge
overlooking the Hudson River
and the orange sun seemed to stare at us
as it fell, like it knew something
sad and terrible was about to happen
maybe a joke was being played on us

in the back of a dimly-lit Japanese restaurant
we cowered behind white makeshift walls
and sipped crystal blue sake, and you whispered something
and I smelled you and the smell was strong
like crushed feathers
and dead roses
such a lovely fragrance
and my heart swelled in its wake

and then a snapshot
and a white fist
and a heaviness
and a fleeting thought I’m too ashamed to disclose
and soon, you
were in between me
and your rough voice was crying
it was crying dangerous things
and then I watched you
drive your hands through worn walls

and now you are cracking
and I am weeping and I am running
through beams of lights and buzzing highways
and I am watching your hulking form disappear behind
a metal barrier, and my eyes roll back
to the orange sun that stared at us
as it swept beneath the same river
you are about to plunge in

Her eyes, your solemn witness
are so unlike mine

I am untamed!
a loose humanoid chained
in gold
always spinning
under high beams
like it's no big deal

(while you reside
in your mind)

but why
can't I dream too?
I wanted you
to stay
you energized me

(every contact
left me broken yet intact)

Hallelujah!
You're outside!
Traced your face
in refracted light
Stand-still silhouette
Crop her
out
Fill the void
with blackened foil
while she makes nasty
public announcements
(and loves the attention
creating irrelevant banquets
and barbecues)

This was never my war
so hold fast to us
or crawl or
meet me at the door--
Wherever the blame feels
a little less
and confess
I was the one
you were looking for

what will happen
to the rooms I filled with clothes and books
and shoes and plans and bodies?
And where will I keep
my unchecked desire for love
within the folds of this fierce
barren
town?

go anywhere but to the movies.
show up to a party,
sip ***** in the kitchen,
at midnight let lips rest for an instant
                           --then draw back.

the boy in biology class
has wild curly hair
                           --be careful.

when lips brush against cheeks
                           --tremble.
when pale timid fingers trace spines
                            --sway.

never stray too far from home.
never sacrifice anything
but once
make a journey.
turn away from civilization.

shake the sweaty hand of a bald, tan man
wearing sunglasses,

claw through the huddled masses,
yearning to breathe free,

step out
onto the cool gray platform.
feel awkward in your brown leather
jacket amongst black windbreakers,
lean back against the rumbling doors,
search drawn,
blank faces for reactions.
find nothing.

exit on the wrong end, the far end.

do not to walk on the left side of the street
-- that’s where the bad **** happens.

do not to look anyone in the eye.

do not think.

if you must think, think only
about lips and brown eyes and star-shaped sunglasses.

look around and realize
that this elevator's button don’t light up anymore,
and the number thirteen has been scratched out by someone’s keys.

let your footsteps echo against tile floors.

let your eyes catch,
briefly.

and inhale deeply
because you like the smell of his deodorant,

just this once.

Warm moist
Thigh dark meat lingers
Like a cowboy's drawl
In your cochlea

You are a fox, she said.
I looked down and saw that indeed, I was.

Your hair is pretty and red, she said.
I looked behind me and noticed that indeed
The red from my hair was dripping down my bare back
And sliding down my shoulders and forming
Pools of vivid red beside us.

Suddenly everyone wanted to touch my hair
But I began to cry and said stop.

Fay found a frog.
It was green and bumpy and shined rainbow in the sun.
It was actually a toad.
I cried because I thought it might die
And if it died the world would most definitely be over.

I held it and I felt its heart beating in my hands
And I thought there could never be a more beautiful precious thing
Ever
In the entire world
Again.
The heart was beating louder and faster and I couldn’t take it
Until I began to cry again.
Fay came and the frog disappeared.

My heart felt heavy.
My mind went “Hm.”
It went “What should I do now?”

I should eat a cherry, I guess.
So I did.
I ate a cherry.
I didn’t feel satisfied, so I ate another.

Meanwhile Melinda,
My golden haired friend,
and I couldn’t talk because of my purple shirt.
She said, I can’t talk to you while you are wearing that purple shirt.
And I said, Do you want me to take it off then?
And she said, You look like a grape.

And when I laughed I couldn’t stop
and I couldn’t stop stop stop
until I was crying again with my head in my hands.

Then my heart felt heavy again so
I went outside and looked at some trees.
The sun was hot and my arms were getting tired.
But I wanted to get burned.

At nightfall I went upstairs and looked in the mirror.
Makeup dripped down my face and I wanted it off.
I began to scrub.

I have so many things I need interventions for.
Like not taking enough showers,
Definitely.

Q called me an eccentric genius yesterday.
What a label. It might be my favorite one yet.
Better than ****,
Said R.

My life is a disaster.
It’s perfect.
No one knows me.
I have friends.
They don’t know me either.
I don’t know them.
They are strangers.
I love them all.
But I can’t help them.
I can barely help myself.

Sometimes I just want to stop breathing, but it’s too much effort to hold my breath.
Sometimes I just want to scream at the sky, but I don’t want it to scream back at me.

And don’t try to tell me that dogs aren’t people.
Of course dogs are people.
They are more like people than we are.
We are not people.
I am not a person.

I am a little bit of a person, a sliver of a person.
I am a mug, maybe. Fill me up with caffeinated beverage.
Brown sludgy liquid. Let’s all pretend we like it.
It makes it easier to accept that
We don’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

What if we stayed there just,
Forever?
What if we lied on our backs,
Pressed ourselves between our
Sheets like people-paninis
And waited and waited
Till we starved half to death?

It would be the new crazy
Weight-loss miracle diet
And everyone would suddenly want to come over
And take pictures of us but
We’d too proud and dignified
To allow them to publish the pictures in magazines.

Only we wouldn’t be able to stop them
Because we are technically considered public figures
Which in this country means
People are allowed to take pictures of you
And make up stories about you
And print them on sheets of paper
And hand them out all over the world
And then people read them and think
That the words on the paper are little bits of you,
That they are true.

And the funny thing is they are,
But we try to pretend we’re not.

We all do it.
We all say we aren’t things.
We’re not judgmental.
We’re not mean.
We’re not worried about superficial aspects of our faces and bodies.
We’re not going to go on a diet.
We’re not going to stop smoking and drinking and hacking all over the place.
We’re not.

We’re independent beings.
We are women!
Men!
Androgynous beasts!

People get so angry about things. It’s hilarious.
Things that are
so
so
so
so
small.
Like the color of a shoelace.
The time on your watch.
Countries with arbitrarily sketched borders.

Why not just erase them?
Who would care?
Certainly not me.
I think
We should all be more sexually active with one another,
Or without one another, and that
We should all start wearing helmets.

A single digital phrase
makes me throb, makes me warm,
raw-
hungry,
inarticulable:
the hunger, the thirst, the clawing through
his hair push him against
the door
with
force.
There was a glistening in the room,
a hard glaze
puncturing every moment
like a swift knife, brute
yet gentle the way
the stinging sharp
cold blade feels
against the seal
of
skin.

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 people accuse me of
being emotional or
oversensitive,
of playing the victim,
it invalidates me,
and then I feel small
and then furious tears brim my
emotional,
oversensitive,
victimized eyes

But as I'm trying to explain this
to you over cold chicken wings,
I go glassy and red with shame
because your words just put a cap
on my emotional allowance
and suddenly I see you
as just another dead end,
a road that leads
to an unlived life.

Are you a man or a prop, and am I
a fly from a web--
detaching, leaving weak limbs behind
in its grasp?
or am I the lone spider--
she who disorients
then releases
just before
venom hits
vein?

I rediscovered you under my bathroom rug
I was rendered artistically silent
Blindly fighting
Fierce winds of consciousness and
Eternal sadness that
Tastes like ***** bathwater

Now I’m glowing
Aloft and permeated
The ***** dishes are right where we left them,
unfortunately
And you’ve gone and
Stolen all of my rosemary linens and
Devoured them
One by one
Plus –
I’ve overcooked the Dali Llama
Oh when will love’s agony end?

Don’t harden your eyes at me
Or lock me in the back of a limousine
I shall pour
liquid charcoal
methodically
into
your
moonlight
eyes

There are certain things you shouldn’t ever think too much about
Math for instance
Math,
Death,
and the reason you decide to get naked with someone

I know what I want:
It
You
This
Us

Hands pushing
heartbeats pumping
syllables into temples
leaning in
to your liveliness
hooked on
your sleeping bell,
there we are:

Sitting in a smoky attic
creaking in uncertainty
Teasing out vibrations
invading our airspaces,
I'm explaining to you
the legal differences
Between licensees
And invitees but neither of
Us remember why,
there we are:

Climbing back down to earth
You disappear first:
A wordless fixture cloaked in blackness.
I blindly step forward to follow you
But the wood caves and I come
crashing through
the ceiling
feeling
nothing

But you
Entrenched
in your magic haze,
Suddenly snapping
forward poised to
Envelop me just
before
I shatter.

It was dark but I could see you better.

Maybe neither of us are explained away
by stereotypes,
our identities
mired in contradictions
more like intricate mirrors
than we could have ever imagined.

And all
You worried about
Was me
And all
I worried about
Was how
you were going to explain that hole
in the ceiling
to your mom.

Thank you for being nocturnal with me;
for kissing me on the cheek
with your grizzly jaw,
for letting the silence between us speak
for itself.

Thank you for dreaming
of Greece
and music festivals
and road trips,
and for carrying my friends across the busy streets
and for laughing about it;
for holding me in that perfect way
that makes me feel safe
and loved.

Thank you for letting me bounce around enlivened with energy
and never asking me to slow down;
for never complaining when I wander away;
for staying;
for treading softly and living free.

Thank you for astronautical mornings, sweltering afternoons spread out in rainbow grass,
and for smoky nights;
thank you for being the last one on the dance floor with me.

Thank you for horses grazing on the beach,
and for log cabin jacuzzi hazes,
and for unfalteringly
hoping;
for huddling in a tent in soft white sand;
for believing in me.

Dear friend, you feel like home to me,
so let's keep chasing
dogs through the streets and trekking through sewage tunnels and
watching hours fly away from us like a swarm of gulls on a Mediterranean beach.

You know me:
a fickle girl, afraid
to commit or admit or abstain,
yet all the same,
thank you
for being my
friend.

the stuff that makes me loud while
the mind whispers softly, reminding
me not to speak
about the pain

the stuff that makes the eyes' luster dim
around the edges
(but we're always
evolving
behind
the eyes)

the stuff that makes us fitted
or whole or pierced
or shed or Other
or perpetually looking down
at our own interactions

the stuff that makes me hypothesize
you across the table
as fitted and whole or maybe
you are broken and barricaded

either way
I want to know you
and
your
warmth,
and
your drift
in the attention span
(can't count to five
seconds without
changing
activity constantly drifting
in and
out
of
life),
and
your electricity, and
vulnerability,
and
your ease in
knowing me differently
than I'm used to,
and
your affection concealed
with halfhearted punches,
and
your inability to Be
without fully Being

the stuff that glides
warm and
burns
down
the
throat

It’s not just pain,
it’s hotter,
brighter,
more compelling.
It's heartbreak-love,
the kind that tears you apart inside
and yet awakens you
to the silenced realities to which
most are blind.

It is a pull, a lock that
hooks inside of another
person drawing
them to you
indefinitely.
You feel like a magnet
at all times,
crushed when he looks at you
with those sad, terrified eyes
which beg for hope.
You are crushed for him,
crushed for his pain.
Always wanting
to keep him
close to you, to give him
the warmth you
somehow know
he needs.

No one will hurt you here,
you want him to know.
You’re safe with me, I will protect you.
You want him to be happy,
more than you care
about your own happiness:
that’s heartbreak love.

And it's always the loners,
the lost souls,
the obscured escapees,
the ones with the shaded expressions and watering, orb-like eyes,
the ones with the smiles that don’t quite touch light into the face,
the kind that drains life out of you,
yet leaves you needing more.

He’s my boy,
that’s how you see it,
how you experience it.
He’s yours,
and you would do anything
to protect your child.

i feel like an alien in my own skin
scratching through flesh trying to get back to myself
echoes of my youth ringing in my ears, clawing to get me
back to the way i was before
all the scruffy chins scratched up
my face, making me red and raw and exposed,
before hands meant electricity to me,
before i lingered for anyone other than
a ******* stuffed animal, and
before lips meant excitement and awkwardness and
even *******. i'll just
sleep all day to forget who i am and
remember who i was,
if she's still out there
somewhere.

you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer. All poreless and bright
and insinuating sweetness. Filled me up
with your secret eruption then shut me down
with your sleek silver tongue. Lava barricaded my eardrums,
enhancing my blood, fire in your eyes.
I was a plum, stealing forth
in the wake of your Augustine heat. My tender skin
gave way to your deft touch.

But then I bit down,
tasted the flesh beneath your glossy sheen
and oh how it betrays you!
So yellow and unripe, so taut with newness,
still clinging to the brightness of dawn,
spring-frozen with fear of the darkness
of my nectar.

Today I woke up with a magnet
in my pitted stomach. Echoes of
cold metal scour my throat. That love-
-less twang in the aortal penumbras--hope,
a refuge swallowed by the ephemeral night.
I always knew
you were too much like a nectarine
in early summer.

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.

I can't trace the crown of my indifference towards you (or anyone else) to a definitive source.
Whether you are strung to me or I to you,
our union imports
several interpretations.

You might be like fishing wire:
binding limbs, constricting movement;
if I deviate, I suffer your sharp cut of resistance.

Maybe you're yarn: soft, nurturing; but again, any move that falls outside the lines of your predicated design--any undue tightening or loose end--results in chaos.

Or perhaps you are the hand that draws the line:
you, the invisible puppeteer
who governs my every wayward glance
or dishonest act at the whim of your object, your desire;
one string leads to the
magnetism of your cologne
and another, the heat
of your knees in fitted jeans
against mine.
If it be that,
then, my indifference would serve as my aide,
a final desperate cling to autonomy.

But what if we were both cast
in the same web, rendered useless
through entanglement, would we
claw towards each other, content
though the silk grows thick
with every reach?
Would we tear our way to liberty?
Or if we were to find that thing-
the source-
and cut all ties,
would magnetism wind us up again?

If I unravel, what would you do?
If you unravel, would I leave you
in a pile at my feet?
Would I cast dead strings aside
and embrace the freshness-
raw and bleeding but alive-
beneath the rage?

When you’re thirty, you’re supposed to know
things already. You’re supposed to have
your **** together. A wife, maybe
even a kid. But this man still felt
like a boy. Shrugging life away
with cigarettes stealthily
torn from the box,
afternoon breaks
whistling through the
scabby throat, weeping silently
into his cigarette, smiling empty through
the golden tint of a pitcher of beer. Sadness sat
in his eyes and it never seemed to go away. The sadness
made him look younger, more innocent. He thought no one noticed.

But someone did.

The finality and profundity
with which you broke me
has hardened me;
I feel now I have nothing to fear.

Except I'm encased in a glass jar;
An invisible boundary neatly capping
how much I can let myself feel.

And the rims of this glass jar
are curved and heavy.

Dear Prodigy,
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of parking lots or jeans with **** stains on knees
and my face caked in dirt) and
I never wanted your face to ****** the earth brown.
I never wanted Cracked Bone against Rough Stone.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

Dear Prodigy,
I’m sorry I talked to the boy with
black eyeliner for fifteen minutes while you were
on the train to nowhere. Our eyes were bleeding
out of our ears and we couldn’t stop wanting to
understand everything.
There was blood in our head and our hands
blood in your eyes
vapor in our lungs
and the transparent sun was making
my arms fragile and boneless.
I’ll never forget falling asleep clad in ripped black stockings
on your unmade bed.
Do you remember when we tried to swallow everything?

Dear Prodigy,
I dreamt last night that the whites of your eyes had been
dulled by the Indefatigable Reality of Time.
I confess my eyes take photographs
(of floating bodies and tight crisp jeans and my face caked in makeup).
I confess that my eyelids cracked open to receive light.
I kissed you but barely felt it
and there was scattered glass at our feet. The gleaming shards soaked up the silence.
My heart was sold.
I even star-dusted my eyes for you.

in a picture trapped at the center of my iris
you are a beautiful cataclysmic disruption,
come
closer to me, brown eyes
set in a porcelain face
for these feelings cling unto us
like sacred dreams
i know i’m simply me
but please let’s leave
a blackbird will dream
us into life and the sun
will smile hard at us and
our house will be made
of violets

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.

Is a werewolf locked
Inside of a heartbeat drum
A perpetual dance
Of unapologetic freedom
A tribal chant
A lick at your neck
An endless fiesta
Whistling through the window
Fat rolls of color, urging forth
Fires on the roofs
Embers burning bright
No lanes
Speeding and rushing
Murals of eternities painted on the city's cheeks
Abandonment of muscular restraint
Grains of salt on the rim
Limes, avocados, salsa verde, picante, roja
Burns in your esophagus
Corners of the mouth ablaze
***** warm air
Rushing in
Burns your eyes
Peculiar washroom smell
In irrelevant spaces
Plumbing creaks overhead
Christmas lights on terrace tops
Glass eyes seeing all
Swollen night
Bodies in heat and dark, all hands and sweat and breath
Give a hug to a toothless stranger
Who shows his gums as he swings from pole to pole
In front of the grand cathedral
Toll the bell
Fingers dipping in and out of everything
Hot street meat and browned corn
Put a gummy bear on top
Coat yourself in orange powder
Cha chi di dum *** *** ***
Let's go

Happiness is not something you seek.
It's not a location or another person.
It's not latent or inactive or waiting for discovery.
It's already there, your invisible garment.
It's a choice you make daily--a perspective
through which you decide to see your life.

Thus happiness is perpetually within reach.
You could be zoneless, drenched in darkness,
hollow-bellied, devoid of material,
the traces of your footsteps long-faded,
and yet,
you could still be
radiant.

Every morning plays over like a silent black-and-white film.
You wake up and somehow you’ve forgotten how to speak.
Your throat feels raw and congested from the disuse of night.
The sunlight strikes your eyelids,
affecting an obliterating blindness,
forcing them apart,
drawing you from the velvety embrace of a dream.

Your feet sink into dirt-smudged sneakers;
they drag across tiles and floors and grains of cement,
across blackened splotches of gum tacked to the streets,
pressing them ever deeper into earth,
into tar.

A young woman in a fitted red pea coat stands near you,
leaning against the steel column by the edge of the tracks.
She is tiny,
her olive skin stretches tight across her bulging cheekbones,
her eyes are pools of grey,
her shoulder-length hair is the color of molasses.

It happens slowly:
the woman in the red pea coat leans further over the ledge,
tilting her head to the side,
searching for life in the roaring darkness.

It happens briefly:
a low rumble beneath your feet,
a glint of light,
a yellow-white rectangle splays across the tracks.
It widens and expands,
oppressing you,
swallowing the woman in the red pea coat,
as she looks up and stares back at the brightness.

The train does not strike her –
it consumes her,
it ***** her up like a vacuum through its sharp metal teeth,
and she vanishes,
or she becomes a refractory beam of light,
or she explodes.

A screech hovers above the crowd,
shrill, high and clear – the rawness of terror.

You cannot help it – you peer into the gap
between the platform and the subway,
absorbing the darkness.

You wonder what moment, precisely,
her life left her body,
or her flailing limbs surrendered to their inevitable consumption.

The paper bag she had been carrying survives,
strayed on the platform,
an afterthought.

she's not perfection
she's big lips and eyes and sometimes people thin theirs at her in skepticism and dislike because of how she moves and smirks but
she's not perfection
she's awkward inside and self-deprecating
she's always afraid she's not quite right, off-kilter, buried far too deeply in her own misperceptions
she's not clean
she's tried every dangerous experiment offered to her, and
sometimes she feels like she's given too much of herself away,
because she wasn't sure what was important
enough to keep.

she's far from perfection, she's tainted
and she feels
a deeper emptiness than anyone could guess,
even though she will take the time
to heat her hair in perfect curls
and pick out the outfit that fits just right so that no one notices
the hurt inside and if she layers on the makeup to look natural so her eyes don't look so tired, she'll look brighter and smarter and less fazed and then maybe she'll appear to be closer to
the perfection that she's not,
cause she's a wounded deer, vulnerable and broken apart
and longing for the happy family she never had
trying to create her own reality
amongst all this vast and amazing
chaos....
aren't we all?

I know we haven’t talked in a while. Not since
I recognized the decisive crack of your voice
like a crinkling plastic gum wrapper
and I let the phone fall. That was
five years ago and I don’t know where you are now.
But I’m writing this
because I can’t stop writing
about you and your shapes and your smells and you
and white powder and you and religion
and religious books neatly stacked and you and every piece of you
and a rickety black tram bursting forth in the darkness and you
and pockets of light that sometimes shine through in cocoons or at elegant dinners
and you and aftershave and blood and muddy river water and you
and flowers in porcelain vases and couches encased in plastic and you
and I am endlessly backtracking to silent violations
and black midnights riddled with hunger and confusion and
I don’t know maybe some other time
and it’s like our hands and wrists are bound together as though bandaged
and the whites of my eyes are permanently reddened by an
invisible fire’s breath
or the glow of your face
and even now everything won’t stop shaking
and I just stare
at my hands
and tiles
and patterns in carpets
and I keep staring and staring forever
only at things that won’t move away from me
like inanimate objects but
I’ll leave you here
with a letter I’ll never mail
because I’m no longer the quivering little girl
beneath you
and I’ll get ****** up again and think
this is freedom, isn’t it?
churning sweetness and liberality into my
empty stomach?
but then why does my mouth still
taste like metal?

the body shook uncontrollably,
the road dropped out from underneath us,
streaming cracks of frightened light,
steel grey sky, the high-line
illuminated by a faint breath of heat
the dark shame had me full in its fist,
dead light simmering now on a fallen rock
lift the lifeless face.

the planet waited but no one rang,
the heart stopped curtly,
stuck in the pain,
I waited for no one, so no one came

I feel it like a twist in my spine: momentary paralysis, a choke on the truth
I declare I'm better than this! your lies, your blatant deceit.

But she exists: giant lips and hair and pale eyes against ravishing olive skin;
A vision of exoticism.
Yes she exists: undeniably, in photographs and in the world and probably in your hands and in your mouth and in your bed
and she probably breathes in the same spices and sweat I too succumbed to,
She exists.
And you lied.
And you owed me nothing, as people never really owe each other anything.

And these pangs
Feel all too sickeningly familiar;
this time I promise myself
not to turn the other cheek,
not to ignore hard evidence, which condemns and reveals the harshest morning-after light
but my eyelids betray me; my mind is set to rewind, it can't get past
your soft mouth or your smooth chest or your voice saying "if you steal my heart, you can tell his father...." or your piercing eyes that felt like danger and freedom and wanderlust intertwined and
I know
putting you on paper is just further validation and permanence
both of which
I seek to avoid.

But I need to speak this pain because it's still moving
inside of me;
How can you, perhaps one step beyond a total stranger, gut and roast me like this? Ripping open wounds from years past,
as if all that scar tissue never
formed in the first place?

I am in the throes
of a force beyond
my cognizance though
we haven't known
each other long
me siento que
I've already met you
in a different life

como un destino
binds us together
tan poderoso
these ropes of desire
so raw and primitive
they ache me, like
you felt so
inevitable to me y
a veces it seems
we are only vaguely
aware of what we
surrender to so unquestionably

emociones tan surreales
como sueños
washing over me
gently until they are more
than they were
when they were born
more than dreams
estás fisicamente
taking over me

and yet it does not feel scary ni
como un sacrificio
it does not feel like I am any less
of a Self

for I am más de mi when I'm contigo
I am whole and
renewed,
I feel Found,
porque me encontraste,
al final
I am home

I wish this
is always what we could be
pero me siento que
fueras tan precioso que
I can't possibly be allowed
to keep you forever

so in preeminent defense I think
no puede ser
this cannot be
so sacred a gift?
not meant for me

I need you to tell me
Everything will be
Okay
?

There was a fence, it was
white, it lined the road, the road was
made of stones, the air was
always hot and sticky, holding moisture
the sun felt dry and prickly
on your skin, the grass was stiff and long, like straw, extending
into an invisible backdrop.
The sky was vast, wrapping around the farmlands, the trees,
the quiet grass, the yellow and
white and pink houses with frayed wooden doors. Peach and
violet clouds splayed magnificently
across this sky at sunset like smears of paint. Trucks and cars
bumped down this narrow,
hidden path as the days trickled into
nights.

One you peered at and collected data on
in the confines of your tantrum
journal
You with your diamond eyes
Looking at me through
a purple looking glass window
haze and wondering
about me
It was a distant curiosity
Removed
Detached from itself
and from me and from all the loose
and heavy vessels
that connected us

If we become thick
and syrupy with love,
we'll suffocate
and my utmost
thunderous roars
shall be muted
by the honey glaze

I'd rather crawl
on callous palms
through wilted flower-beds
caked in dirt
and wait and look
out and up into
cauliflower clouds
and create
my own extraordinary visions
of what It All should look like--

drowning and throbbing
and motionless forms in my mind
savage
silent wanderings
devilish and perverse

and I'll add them to the list
of things I'll never do
while in the background
through an anonymous window
"I" make love
to "you"

I came to the rocky shores of Greece
To stand amid the rows of stark white houses
To find your face in a mirage that spreads across
These seamless gray skies

And even though you are gone
I felt you
In the pin ****** of sand on my soles
I felt your heart
Breathing deep beneath the earth
I heard the crash
Of your head against hot metal and
I tried to stop the blood but
It seeped between the cracks
In my fingers and I shuddered
And plunged
Into the icy green foam
And my thoughts converged like clouds

I have oft wondered
Why we clutch
The calloused hands that strike us

And why our blushing cheeks lend such
Easy passageways for
Graceless tears

i barely know you
i know more about nap experiences than i know about you
i know you have a brain
i know eyelids carry all the gravity in the world sometimes
i know everyone has body parts that have been in places they should not have been
i know everyone has forgotten about time for a while
i know you the way i know about time
i know it lingers in the back of your mind while it waits for you to think of it
i know about ironic sunshine
how it stings those days you can barely open your eyes
i know this isn't the right way to live but
i know that it isn't wrong either
i know it's uncomfortable to remember things you aren't sure whether the other person remembers
i know there were moments you felt closeness without having verbal confirmation of it even though the avoidance of your eyes deeply
mystifies me