I realized why it was
you were whispering
that I'd be okay--that night
half awake when i felt your
cold fingers like a sobering
thought on my hips,

you said maybe I just get mean...apparently
but i can only remember you in
the things you said at night
the things said in the dark

you're gonna be okay
There it was. The night I was sick.
sleeping in the crook of your shoulder
like I have for the past four months, and
i started to cry because I'd never heard
that from someone like you,
You're gonna be okay, you've been telling me.
apart from all the bitter *******
and the things we've fought endlessly
about you were still
telling me
i am gonna
be okay.

and  i woke from a dream
from something more real
nothing but the smell of your
cologne *you're breathing funny,
breathe with me brooke, in and out.


that's right. in and out.

you're gonna be okay.

i'm not sure--
you once said
i touched you
like i was seein'
a  l  l  o  f   i  t
you'd prolly
say I didn't, now
the way things are--
i was tracin' my freckles
the other day wonderin'
the same thing 'bout myself
'cause it sounds silly but I
remember the texture of
his cuticles and the whiskers
around his lips
but will anyone have seen
me
that
way before gettin',
before losing, before
goin, before

before

I've always fallen in love in autumn
always to fall apart early spring--
call me deciduous, the abscission just happens,
I've considered my winter coats, my shields,
the neat places I've tucked myself away

were we to overwinter?
to hibernate until further notice?
the titles were frightening, impending and
ominous, each one a textbook on subjects
we had no knowledge of, dark leatherback novels
featuring versions of ourselves we never meant
to be or never knew we could --

wrapped in sleeping bags and white down duvets
best during the winter becase we were both
raging fires, flames licking at eachothers doors
stopping short of our naked toes, put out by the
here and there snow, but sometimes
we were embers, pulsing stones of coal
settling, wishing, waiting, kissing wounds
breathing secrets over bruises--

but migration comes suddenly,
i've been in and out dormant for years
a sputtering volcano rumbling and groaning--

were we to overwinter?
I lost the dream woke with a start,
the caldera gave way and sunk in
terrified I'd take you with,
but travelers don't pause for eruptions
or make their way through magma --

and volcanos don't plead
   for them to
       stay
       were we to    
                overwinter?

I've always talked so much
but by default i am so quiet
i've justified to the ends, desperately
craving a higher truth, an understanding
to be read like a book, like a definition,
strove to be transparent and faintly beautiful --

but i am like red lipstick, dark and
upendingly alive, made of fifteen different
blue pantones and a single swatch of yellow, you
can't explain colors as much as I can continue
to explain myself and

honesty, honestly, is sometimes better titled,
better left to a word, a note, a song or
nothing
   at all.

pinky promise

we've forgotten our mortality
our impulse to smile at *blooms
we've stared at childhood photographs
and wondered why we look so angry

the art of fault and denial are synonymous
we've stopped speaking in hopes that silence really does
speak volumes,
our bodies could fell, cracked down like oak and our voices
remain like cocoons, papery whispers swathed in duff,
still breathlessly prating, foolish and juvenile.

which goes to say-- our thoughts
far procede the vessel, would last beyond our
deaths and ancestry--

i once spoke about anger being passed down
through the blood of irishmen - who long held the
propensity to bar fight and brawl
long standing feuds poured from mouth to mouth
downriver, across the gap, occasionally skipping a generation
the woes of our fathers are dead languages that we keep--
tongues we deliver on our own

we lash out and are our mothers
or laugh and see our fathers
never quite our own until burgeoning, and not even that --
not all of us bloom, some of us violently tear away
break the root and toss ourselves among the rocks
wilted but brilliantly colored  
       desperate to
                   learn how to speak.