You look best in my lamp light. Your belly scar
rough underneath my fingertips as I jump the scratch
and attach myself to your hips, kiss your pelvic bone
until even my teeth can taste your sweetness. I can feel
black kettles and the burn from the ironing board crash of 1999.
When we’re wrestling in my duvet covers, the shadows
cast your memories up like a sanctuary projection. I see red race cars,
your brother jumping on the couch, fishing bait kept
in your back pocket. Your lips taste like liquor but I hear nursery rhymes
from when you were little, wobbly, an over-all dream
in the yard seen through the kitchen window. I know,
that you’ve dressed yourself in bad dreams
and broke yourself over footballs and houses of green paper,
but you look best in my lamp light when my hands
cram your face into my palms, your blush dripping
from you cheeks. Because I see the way
you burrow yourself into my chest when you think
I’ve gone to sleep, and I’ve seen the way your foot catches
on the edge of the woodwork right before you fall.

Disconnected by the root, wasting
our time between sheets instead
of between conversations You kept
yourself in backwards hats and vague
excuses to the questions I was asking.
I lit myself on fire, extinguished the flame
in the shower after we finished, cursing
at the droplets sliding down the curtain.
***** this! and ***** that after you ******* me
into the enjambment that was your free space—
your convenience. I fit only if you push, I matter
only if it’s after midnight and the world
outside your door and bed frame
doesn’t have to know. In the daylight,
I’m a ghost that you always see. I’m the ruby
spotted from the corner of your eyes, the shine
that hurts to look at, but no one can know.
Of course. No one can know the way your mouth
rests between sighs or how your eyes lock
into mine when your bruising the inside of my thighs.

I’m the extra beer in your back pocket.
I’m the ***** in the towel who’s promising
her better self that she won’t go again,
that she won’t allow herself to try to patch
the promise from too long ago. The relationship,
shattered early, that mended itself crooked,
that became a book thrown at the wall
and a sweet, dissipated call. I’m the secret solemnly kept
at night when you’re drunk and ugly and begging
for some beauty to curl up next to. I’m the last line
in the best country song, the whisper
you scream for when I’m gone.

Dear reader,


It won't be long before they electrocute the trees with candy colored Christmas lights. Soon everything will be gone: memories, glances, the year. Every thing will dissolve into nostalgia and our lives will become more patchwork and less hopeful. Soul-crushingly sweet our smiles will be, as we watch that disguised meteorite crash into our existence.

Her name was Reno. Her dad joked he named her so because she was the result of a gamble gone wrong.

I could see the stitching around her eyes start to falter, as tears slipped out like a young nineteen year-old girl, running out of the back of a double-wide. Away. Away from it all. Leaving her father, the mechanic who could only fix things with his hands. Running through a field as shimmering as her nails, touching the tall grass with her short fingers.

"I'm not trailer trash," she said, "I've just had it rough."

Reno could see things others couldn't see. Frequently she painted wrecked cars, and I asked why, to which she explained, "Some accidents are allowed to be beautiful."

I fell for her the way her jaw drops after one of my inappropriate jokes: quickly and with such joy.

She had the same answer to when I asked if she liked movies and if she missed her mom.

"Of course I do, Josh," she looked at me and smiled, "Hey buck, have you ever seen True Romance?"

A woman after my own heart.

We watched Christian Slater shoot Drexl, and, like a bullet to the chest, she placed her hand over my heart.

"My, oh my, are you sure that rib cage is big enough for that thing, Mr. Haines?"

She looked a little like Patricia Arquette, but identical to Michelle Williams.

"Are you aware that you look like Michelle Williams?"

Reno ran her hands up my legs, across my torso, and held her hands at my jaw,"Are you aware of how good of a person you are, John Mayer?"

"Ah, yeah. I've gotten that since high school."

She smiled, looked down and up at me,"No, the part about you being a good person? ...You're the drawing on my wall."

I didn't know what that meant.

"I had this drawing-so terrible-it was of the sunset on our hill in Welling Valley," she looked into me and down, while smiling,"Anyway, the sun would kiss the grass every evening, and one day I thought I'd draw it and keep it in my room. When every thing got ugly with my daddy's drinking, and when he beat me something awful, I wanted something to remind me that the light sometimes goes away but will always be back another day. You're my light, Josh. You're the next day after nineteen years of cussing and drinking."

We made love on my bed, as, through the window, the sun bathed our bodies. Her body was a sculpture and her voice was as soft as her lips. I was terrified.

Pulling her hair back, she stood at the foot of my bed, naked,"Are you scared of little ole' me? You look as white as a ghost."

"No, I've never felt so alive... You're so ******* beautiful."

Reno and I lain in bed while Parks and Rec played on the television. Her index and ******* walked across my chest and stopped as she asked, "Josh, have you ever been in love?"

I touched my fingers on hers, studying them with my eyes, and then I looked at her, "Yes, once."

"What was it like?"

I thought I'd feel pain but instead I smiled, "Fantastic, fleeting, and always a little out of reach."

She cooed, "I can't wait until I think I love you like nobody else."

"Me too."



Sincerely,


Joshua Haines

Desire is constant
It feeds, it breeds
Beneath the tough surface
Paying rapt attention to traces of chance

All the flowers were just about to bloom
When I was, for the first time, in a crowded room
Alone… With you

By the end of those two days
We were already in the flirting phase
Full of shy smiles and quiet jokes with you

Yeah you already had another girl
But that was just about to unfurl
All I had to do was wait to be with you

And I already had another guy
Who got me more than just a little high
But you convinced me, I’d be better with you

When she didn’t want to be there
You came running to me and let me hear
How she was just toying with you

Time and again, he went and let me down
He was just toying with me, but you were always around
Made me realize it was safer with you

Eventually things fell apart like we knew they would
And we gave voice to your unspoken question: if I could
Ever want to be with you

And that’s where it all began
We closed our eyes and just ran
With it, happy that I was finally with you

You put your arm around me, asked “is that okay?”
And I didn’t know what else to say
So I just stayed and watched movies with you

Flash back to the first week, in a room full of friends
But when your hand found mine, our conversation ends
Because, suddenly, I am alone with you

And it was conversations with our hands met
Between us, at sunset
In the parking lot with you

It was your hand in my pocket
My hand around the picture of us in my locket
Lying on the couch with you

It was dangerous
Rebellious
Sneaking around with you

It was sensational
Wonderful
Magical being with you

It was precious sand
Slipping our hands
A fragile era with you

We went from “you look wonderful tonight”
To three a.m. fights, staying up crying all night
On the phone with you

So now I’m bathed in the moonlight
Wide awake at midnight
Lying here, in the dark, without you

It’s one-hundred- and-ten, heat’s on high
I claim I’m alright, but it’s a lie
Because it’s so cold here without you

I know we weren’t made to last
Our foundation was made of glass
But it’s hard to think of me without you

The whirlwind of emotions brought us to life
Everything from passion to strife
I feel less alive without you

It was short lived, but it was all too real
To forget how you made me feel
I’ve never felt more alone than I do without you

Looking back on it now, I become distraught:
I think I was more in love with the thought
Of you than I was….
With you

Through the naked crest of your back
The dips above your clavicles
And the way I lunge at your jaw.

Through pale hands and swollen lips
And heavy eyes

It echoes

Resonates through thin air
And seeps into the cracks of the walls
The way it collides with your skin
And buries through the flesh

That moment, awakening, I got through
You know now how much I love you