I am living
and each moment is a reminder
of my fragile strength
and loving you in lengths,
uneven and lovely
all the same.
I want to read to you,
sing to you,
to scratch for you at the door.
I want to stick you to all the boards
in my kitchen,
to see through you
and into you like a breath.
I want to paint you in this moment
so I'll never forget
the lights on your hollows
and the teeth in your vowels.
But you are miles away,
living with a different name -
no longer named lover,
now just a friend.
I am greedy
waiting for our cycle to end -
when I can kiss you
on the mouth
and turn you inside out
once again.

I remember
the days out west,
dust on my clothes,
kept thinkin'
of that torn up shirt
you used to wear
and how you smiled
when we made love.
Or
was it making love? -
Maybe without the making of anything
to choke with my bare hands -
you know how I like
to hurt
the delicate intentions
you never speak of.

In time
I make it out of the arms
of my trailer park childhood
and into a resting silence.
In the desert
I am dripping blood
onto the things I own
from the inside of memories.
I grow older
and forget the bottoms of lakes.
I grow older
and forget the bottoms of lakes.
So,
I will move to the city
where I tell everyone
that I don't make company with ghosts;
that I haven't carved
photographs and heirlooms
from my spine when no one was looking.
How I never think about
your head on her pillow,
still.
My silence will rest on you,
gouge holes in the months
spent wandering through the east
with no mouth to speak.
I thought that you would
teach me how to speak,
my mouth to your ear
in such a tangled honesty.
But instead I sit dumb and dark,
waiting for you to reach me.

What a nice design -
her hips when she walks to me,
puts her hands under my shirt
like she misses me
when I’m gone.
Looking back on our time,
I suppose it was easier
to love her from behind -
******* to her favorite songs
(letting her string me along)
and leaving in the morning.
Pretending we’re like the beatniks
on our way to death,
stomachs unfed,
eyelashes on the bathroom sink.
I climb the ladder to her bed,
I build a place for myself in her head,
I paint her with pencils and she swallows my lead,
(I dreamt of this but I let her go
instead.)

something in me
stuck the day
you didn't come.
my eyes became machinery;
every sound caught
in my throat
and the silence
followed for weeks.
I smoked 14 cigarettes
in the car;
I burned at the thought
of stillness;
I was vulnerable to light;
I washed my body in the way
you said my name.

now I come
to the sound of leaving.
like the way a symphony sounds
to deaf ears,
I am unafraid of what
you will say to me.
we are different people now;
I am silent
and you are stillness;
we are tangled around
the sadness of each other.

I have been running
in between towns
waiting for your capture;
I am running
hoping to never be found.

The truth is
I stopped believing in you months ago
but the heartbeats that you lay
on your mattress are the most beautiful
sounds that I have ever heard -
so I wait for you to reach
for me through the dark,
I wait for the press between
your ******* and sigh into my own -
I dream that we will stop
doing what we’re told
and live in a land where
sadness is only a visitor
and I can love you until our tongues
are tired and our stomachs are fed.

I loved
you
when I didn’t know you
I loved you
when I didn’t
know of rotting
and aching
and how the summer
eventually leaves
but I fell
in love
with roads and stars
you crashed
out of my dreams
and she became
a refuge
haunting
filling the empty hallways
of places I knew
which were few
after you
but you
you
you
are crashing back
though I am
resistant
I want to sit
on porches
and dream with you
I want to take
your hand just
like old times
I want to
rewind
back to the fall
back to drinking
at the bar
If lonely
is a lifetime
then I’d wait
for a cool breeze
to take me
and when
it never happens
I’ll find the perfect
view
of the stars
from my waiting
and waiting
and waiting.

Only two hours here
in the city
and I am
writhing
at the hands of you
oh powerful
woman god
strange Phoenix
of whims
and love
and hate
I love you
in time
to the city.

Somewhere in northern New Mexico
a writer claims
that the first two weeks
after a long hiatus
are the hardest.
After all,
scratching the words of the Gods
on to a loose leaf paper
must be arduous for those
out of practice.

& when I think of your hands
nervous around a coffee cup
somewhere in Ridgewood, Queens,
I understand what it feels like
to grieve;
I know what it means to set aside
the most fragile things
like they aren't worth anything,
even when they are.