this place is silence
roaring silence
helicopter blades chopping through
the whine of incoming mortars
silence deafening over the
shuffle of boots kicking gravel
barely holding together the grit
that covers the ground
the grit
that covers the toyota hiluxes
the radios the windows the lights
the beds
the grit that fills our mouths
as we whisper in the dark
rustling silence as we whisper
dark secrets
movements and code names and equipment and
just how long were those explosives buried
this place is blood
a decade's worth of
my brother's blood pouring
through the wadis in the desert in the dark
ten years of my brother's blood
dripping from our fingers
every death a stain on our fingertips
as if we pulled the trigger ourselves
a millennium of blood
dried on these mountains
the geography screaming secrets of its past
begging us to go

why is
the way your hands wrap around my name
the gentlest whisper
why is
the way my hand towel smells like your cologne
the cruelest heaven
why is
your absence, your space
the air where your chest should be

as i sat cross legged in my dorm room,
the dawn lazily waking,
hugging my solid metal wastebasket
emptying the contents of my bad decisions
into its yawning mouth
lurching forward with each violent reminder
of every feeble drowning
of every bitter memory
i realized

only squares have trashcans with holes in them.

blood is on this page
dripping deliberately from delicate fingertips
begging for a closer inspection than the cursory
begging for understanding
don't you know these words are flesh?
pressed from the ash of my bones

i taste
like smoke
like the seven hours i’ve spent
lying on my living room floor
awake
listening to traffic.

i smell
like smoke
like a pack a day in the heat and rain
inhaling something
intangible.

you are
fresh air
breathing hope into my lungs
lifting me off of the rental home brown
carpet

Unplug me, please.
I wish I had never moved into the 21st century.
Take away my TV, please.
I can't handle the ennui it brings.
Take away my phone, please.
I don't want to be reached.
Leave me a message, slipped under my front door.
Hand write me a letter and put it in my mailbox.
If it's important wait on my porch, I'll be home soon.
I want my news from the paper,
My correspondence face to face.
The world is already right outside my door,
Why do I need it at my fingertips?

There is change that is certain.
The earth slowly shifting,
The sky slowly shifting.
Seven billion universes
Rotating around each of us,
Each one of us an axis.
The recurring misalignment,
Collisions, and revisions of
Our orbiting bodies
Shape the illusion of stability
Hanging from our celestial ceiling.

I did not expect to come home
To an empty house,
My family's effects removed
Like the leftovers of an evicted tenant.
I am a stranger here,
In this room where I became a woman.
This room that exalted and imprisoned me
No longer offers solace.

Litter, that upon closer inspection
Reveals a mosaic of my childhood
Is spinning.
The pieces of my past
Are spinning
Out and away,
Gravitating towards a larger body.

The car I drove to a stranger's house
To get ****** instead of going
To dinner with my family
Now belongs to another.
The dresser that kept my underwear
In the top drawer
For twenty years
Discarded and lain in the gutter.
The walls which I painted
The most neon shade of green
In an act of adolescent rebellion
Are now covered over
In rental home white
To attract the widest audience
Of potential tenants.

The floor is slipping out from beneath me,
The ceiling lifting and floating away.
New additions to my orbital debris.

This place,
Disassembled.
Each part
Far more significant than the whole.
This house
Will never again be a home.
If I had stayed,
Would the gravity of my presence
Have been enough to keep it together?

Were any of these parts
Part of my universe in the first place?

I feel
Used up
Cleaned out
Thrown away
Cast aside
Discarded
Exploited
Exploited
Exploited
Like twenty-two years
Of making myself a beautiful person
Was only for others to grab at
And pilfer
At will.

I never knew my pleasure
Was at the whim of animals
Of worms and wolves and vultures.
I never knew I had to ask
Permission
To live my life unsoiled.
May I?
May I be loved?
May I be appreciated and accepted?
May I trust?
May I have sole ownership of my body?

Someone pillaged my temple.
It is now closed
For demolition
And subsequent reconstruction.
It will be rebuilt
With steel bars and security guards.
No longer do I love freely and unabashedly.
No longer do I trust others
Or myself.

I have sewn my own head
Back into place
To stick my neck out again.
I now wear the stitches
As a trophy
As a medal
As a warning
As a threat
That I will never let you befriend me
I will never let you touch me
I will never let you in
I will never let you close
I will never let you hurt me
I will never let you **** me
Again.

Hi
I'm 26
I have a really pretty face and thick legs
I've read all your books
And not that you'd care
You're dead
I don't want to *******
But I want you to know
That nothing makes me feel
Worse for someone
Than when they act
Like nothing's wrong
And I think
That's partially your fault.

Will this pass?
Will my feelings flicker and fade
Until they are
A dying star on the edge of the
Universe?
Only when time stops and the moon drops out of the sky
Or maybe if…
No. Never.
Love me forever
And I’ll love you to the end of the earth