clean counters
clean floors
dogs
homemade pies
plants
flamingos
privacy and respect
dishes that don't match
a radio in every room
coffee in the morning
iced tea from a spigot
handmade afghans
fresh linen smell
quiet

and how
could i
possibly forget
you?

it wasn't until years too late
that the oceans once painting
your skin into a weepy
vacation canvas finally
dried and made their salty
descent down your throat.

i hope that one day
you find your mind wandering
back to some sunbleached
air conditioned antique shop
a cool and dim refuge of
kitschy proportions

and i hope one day you can finally
appreciate an afternoon that
may or may not have held
your greenesque day of peace

(by greenesque i mean that
not only was it green but
it also held whispers of the last
chapter in your favorite book
the part where all the pieces fall in place
and nobody is happy with the outcome)

you're just a bundle of
nerves and memories
the kind that keep you up at night
and your hair uneven lengths
the kind that flash before your eyes
through grainy old photographs
and pictures engraved so deep
inside a screen you question
whether or not they
ever even happened.

there are gravel roads
somewhere out there
that smell like home and
kind cold water in a july drought

and i sincerely hope
that you someday find
one of those state-parkish
leafy hollow spring hills
settled deep somewhere
inside your heart

and i hope that someday
you drive all alone for an hour
park on the side of the road and
watch the woods for no reason
except to listen to every love song you
ever knew in your youth
and i hope that your breathing stays steady
and your eyes stay dry and starkissed.

i would cross my fingers
shut my eyes and tie my
esophagus in a knot if i knew
my wishes could grant you peace

and i hope that when you're older
your beachside sunburns and
deep fried fatigue are washed away
by all the seasons of upstate mountain air.

we had been mopping
the kitchen floor all day
and the dirt never
stopped coming back

and earlier we had sprayed
the entire front porch
down with the garden hose
and now it was still wet
which made it feel as if
it had recently rained when in fact
the grass was a crunchy
brown carpet of regrets.

the night before we had
drunk orange smoothies
laced with lime and something
aged sleek and dark

(i think it must have been
the reason we couldn't
sleep that night
lay awake in my parents bed
and i told you why i
wouldn't go swimming
until the sun rose
the dog barked
the birds screamed
their morning songs
and my body stopped its
nightly spasms of fear.)

and the next evening
we put on a miranda lambert song
(the one we drank to
in your mother's van last winter)
sat on the wet
porch swing
and cracked open
our first beers

they were
really bad
i gagged
because it tasted
like carbonated
banana bread with
too much stale
baking soda
and we poured half of them
into the flower beds

the next morning
was sunday
and we had milk and muffins
in the kitchen with
simon and garfunkel
then went back out to the porch
drank iced coffee in the
eleven o'clock sunlight
and you said
"if this were a normal sunday
i would have been up at six
at church by eight
and done teaching my first
sunday school class by ten."

(is beer as much
of an acquired taste
as coffee is?
because i can't ever
remember not liking it
i used to think it was
bitter but i always
liked it anyway.)

i didn't say anything
because i didn't want to
say what was on the tip
of my tongue
that this kind of sunday
had become my normalcy
and our variety of saturday night
no longer felt like underage
drinking and more like
the way i was meant to be.

i have this nasty
habit of leaving
day-old sweat
in my pores
and scraping out
years of
hair follicles in
mere minutes.

have you ever gotten
to thinking about
inadequacy?
or the way a
thursday morning is
so busy but you
just feel
fogged over?

not breathing is
really gross
meaning i must be
exceptionally disgusting

and i cried when
i told you about
the fresh scars
and you gave me a
hug like i needed and
i rubbed the back of
my neck where the
humidity clung.

you see i feel
guilty keeping secrets
but even more
guilty when you worry
because nobody
should worry about me

it's not
worth it.

i'm seventeen
days clean now
seventeen
days closer to

closer
closer

**** it hurts
to be a failure

once in awhile i think too hard
about the graduation parties
inserted into forced friendships
and i wonder if any of my
darkest moments had
been felt by the other girls, too.

there are dark moments
that stand out to me
too bright on the
canvass of life.

i was seven years old
and some boys shouted at me
and told me that my pink bicycle
(obtained secondhand from some
nice church family)
was actually theirs
(it wasn't but i can
still see the scene in my mind
and don't know why it still
bothers me sometimes.)

i was a little older
and somebody was slamming doors
running up and down stairs
and i was sitting on my assistant
pastor's couch with some
eighth-grade girls i didn't know
who were crying their eyes out
and i was feeling very bitter and afraid.

somebody was screaming
****** threats and my heart
was pushed into my throat like
pony beads between marbles
inside paisley print just like that
necklace from that one funeral

was it papa's funeral?
i can't even remember.

all i knew was that
there had been a car accident
and i knew that just hours before
he had won one of
barb's stuffed giraffes in a raffle
and christmas had been coming up
i think i cried in the shower
but i know i sat in the living room
stared at the wall and jared said
"you could go downstairs and
talk to somebody"
i didn't.

that was the first christmas
that ever felt truly wrong.

i have never felt so
alone as i sat cross-legged on
a hospital bed in the blue
paper scrubs they put you in
when they think you're a loaded gun
and listened to the world run by
tears barely dried and pen
scratching away

i never would have ended up there
if i had known how to manipulate
the system like i do now
but i wasn't smart enough to know
that saying you have
suicidal thoughts is as
good as saying you've got a plan and
a knife in your back pocket.

i think my arms were still
bleeding under my sleeves
when you looked me in the
eye and slapped me in the face.

literally
i mean that you
literally
hit me in the face
oh but mom
was ******.

i still think about that sometimes
while we're at the dinner table
all eating together and i'll move
my chair over two inches
because you're right next to me
and i know that it only
ever happened once and you
would never do it again but then
again it seems safer closer
to the wall
and sometimes when you're
standing by the cupboard
i walk all the way around the
stove to avoid getting too close.

i was fifteen years old
and crumpled on the bathroom floor
probably had something to do
with exhaustion and blood loss
i was seventeen years old
passed out the wrong way on my bed
brand-new laptop facedown on the floor
a byproduct of the education system

(seventeen year olds should not
have to experience going into a store
and spending the last of their
birthday money on shapewear so
they can feel almost okay about
their body at the dance
but that's just a footnote or a deep
gray addition to my blackest moments)

i remember that time a couple
months ago when you threw
me into a relaxing bath and i was
afraid you'd see my legs

and i was afraid of who
i kept finding myself to be
on sunday mornings at ten
when i was still at home
lying in bed and listening to
ambient instrumental music

(ripping myself away
is the worst feeling
i think i've ever felt
especially when the
questions start coming
sealed signed and delivered.)

hanging on by a thread
watching all the worst parts
of my memories flash over
and over again late at night
when the music hits that tiny
little crack above my heart.

but i've been thinking about
being a failure and wondering
if every girl has had her own
bathroom floor moment

and does the
difference lie in
how late at night she
lets it keep her awake?

summer
makes me sick.

"we're going to
sarah's church
this sunday"
you said.

"you're
going to sarah's
church this sunday"
i said.

and you gave
me that fishy
look you've been
giving me every
saturday night
for the last month
"why don't you
want to go to church?"

well i have my reasons
tucked up with abstracted
pushpin waves on
bible class corkboards
and poked into the corners
of empty white rooms
where abrasive carpet wore
my feet into odd patterns

sitting on my splintered
windowsill and listening to
things i wasn't invited to
something with singing and all i
really recall was sawing off warts
with a pocketknife while i listened

those early days
before the roof was
fixed were when the
trouble started.

"because
i'm not."

that's not much
of an explanation
but neither is
the truth
which by the way
i didn't mention

i didn't mention the
way i felt last night
when i looked at
year old photo effects
or the hitch in my chest
the last time i listened
to dan's cds
the way i ***** shut my eyes
and try to keep breathing
every time you drive by
what used to be woods or
someone else's welcome sign

"i like this song"
you said in the car
and i felt the bloodied swallow
of mismarked communion wine
like my first taste of hate
so many years gone now
surging down my
closed and slit throat

tim mcgraw was wrong
don't go to church because
your mama says to
don't go to church because
anybody says to
it won't get you into heaven
but it might get you
anxiety and a hospital bill.

(maybe i'm so critical
of christians because
christians were
critical of me
but hey that's just
a random thought)

and i don't talk about
how when i see the faces
of strangers that i
memorized between
the lost references of
out-of-context verses
all i see are reflections
of white words i typed
into their irises
i typed too fast.

and i was just too
tired to say that
large-scale screens
drive me over the edge
too tired to imply
once more that i
have turned into a
college-student statistic

one who has
more behind her
motives than
pure apathy.

so having thought all this
i repeated myself
"you're going to
sarah's church this week"
and wished you could
understand my reasons.

i wish i could turn
you into a liquid
something
softer than water
stronger than coffee
sweeter than lemonade
more sincere
than blood

i would bathe in it
watch it stain my skin
and stick under my nails
as it washed away my fears

i would water all my
houseplants with it
they would grow to the ceiling
turning sunset colors

i would drink it
the same way i drink
the summer rain when
it blows onto the porch

i would use it as an
all-purpose cleaner
acidic as vinegar and so
much better at polishing counters

if only
i could turn you
into a liquid
maybe i wouldn't
be quite so
dehydrated this summer

or maybe i would
just be slowly
poisoning myself
from the inside out.

i can watch the
clock on your
dashboard
turning
backwards
the hands going
the wrong direction
it's rare to find a
analogue timepiece
in a car nowadays
even rarer to find one
that goes in retrograde.

and all i can think
about is that i'm not
happy but i'm more
settled inside

isn't it sad
to be living only
in hopes of your
expiration date?

yes
yes it is.

i'm missing last winter
just a little
how safe it felt to be
your shotgun rider
with that perfect and slightly
annoying thirty minute mashup

fifteen minutes there
fifteen minutes back
anxious to leave
anxious to get home
to get into another van
one that wasn't stifled

i was your
shotgun rider
for monday afternoons
and drives to craft fairs
the ball and our own
educational funeral.

(can we petition
to rename
graduations to
educational funerals?)

i miss the old days
when mondays were happy
not anxious
or empty

thinking back on it
we spent too much time
in the back corner booth
of the doughnut shop chain
up on the east hill outside of town
and the coffee wasn't even good

i wish we had just gone to the
grocery store and
got some of that perfect
creamline milk you never shake.

i don't remember
the day i looked
on the label of the
jug and read the date

and it very clearly
was stamped with an
expiration of next
september

but when i tasted it
it had all gone sour
and i wondered how
painful it could be
to throw milk
out early

so i'm leaving it
in the fridge
until autumn
rolls around

just thinking
about how sad
it is to be living
with the hope of dying

but don't people do
the exact same thing?