The man at  the gas station
Regarded me suspiciously
When I asked if he was 24/7
im not loitering I just don't know
Where else to go
And he brings two milk crates from the
Back and stacks them in the corner
Between the case of donuts and
Oreos

Cautiously mops the tile and
Asks if I want something to drink--
I must look positively pathetic and demure
Dressed in all my flowers and points
Dusty jeans and soft black hair

Girls like me don't do this, I think.
If I am a girl like me, if this isn't what
Girls like that do, I wouldn't know
I've lost and found a lot of that lately
Off and on strong, on and on weak

trey is yelling at me from the backseat
but I've tuned him out, his tan hands
are chalky and skinny, I've stopped with
specifics, with millennial lingo, I tell him
if you don't
shut up I'll
pop you one

girls like me
i guess.

Everytime I caught
A glimpse of the rafters
I saw you leaning over
The matte black railings
With a red solo cup
Lanky arms folded
Staring down across
The floor,
But then it wasn't
Just you in the corner
You were in between every
stool, in your many forms
And I wondered if this
Is what it was--what it
Was when people say
They've seen a ghost
But you are so very
alive.

there was once a spider in
my bathroom who wove
a thin globe around itself
for who knows what reason--

I've felt it slide over me,
a thick film, it happens
the way something suddenly
becomes a scar, you're there
for every moment that it
is red and puckered but
one day you find that
your body has taken
aim and fixed itself.

i imagine this is how
people go blind, like
someone has etched filigree
over my lungs and now I
breathe a little easier--
but something has gone
missing, i've always seen
my thoughts as people
and she is no different,
swaddled and taken away

i don't think there is a word
for the process, just the faint
inclination that some things
never existed, or did in another
year, another place, i've always
found myself here,
healed over, maybe
the single tremolo
wavering over my
shoulders, wet out
of a monsoon
usually
box elder leaves
like schools of minnows
diving and plunging

me.

there.

quietly, in the mornings
with only your fingers
shades tilted in, the lapis
dawn that barely makes
it through, door ajar
studied, an open book quiz
unmentionables, spoken in
water drops
melted butter
shower steam
vanilla
milk
cinnamon.

before the sun
before breakfast
before the earth opens up like it does
take it with a grain of salt, with an ounce of optimism
the glass ain't even here, we have lakes
we have amber canopies, other hands that shield
lovers that reach for us mid-dream, us
they reach for us in sleep induced affection,
they may as well be reaching across continents
who knows how far away they dream,
fingers sliding across cello strings
they make beautiful music while
they are here, traveling limbos to find us
but we're here in the morning, in the quiet morning.



how to eat honeycomb.

we purge with ***
cut each other with
deserves and things
we know will hurt,

perform venesection
with our mouths, divide
and conquer with teeth
tear in instead of heal

wield our mistrust
because walls are dignified
no castle ever withstood a siege
without bloodletting.

we barricade ourselves
in because that is safe
but sometimes we need
to bleed, sometimes
I need to

bleed.

have all those anniversaries
saved in my phone, did saturday pass without regard?
and did you listen to merle to commemorate his death--

still in the habit of sharing the burden,
and it's all just a joke, i try to save
people from every possible pain
even in their absence

finally know why he had
a playlist called whiskey
'cause now I have one too

but if you care to know
I'm alright, still the same
me but the light still shines
in the kitchen and the dandelions
have taken over the yard,
planted lavender and spread
seeds out across Elm
the girls at work
asked why I keep the gold
things that are his
and all i could do was
pause and say
*'cause i'm drillin
for answers

I have always thought of home to be a place
have described myself within a myriad of
different protagonists, herbs and flaccid analogies
i have been birds nesting in rafters, wolves
and nothing more than a willowy spirit without a
body--

and i thought for a moment that people could be homes
too, the way you walk into hugs or are metaphorically
gathered, i watched him in the mirror sliding around
my waist, resting on my hips, smelling my hair, picking
me up to put in a vase, ridiculously pretty, you know that?

and it's not that I longed for more,  
that I have longed for where, for a here that
i am acutely aware of how i vacillate between empty
and overflowing, of my own thoughts, i have heard
you think too much and maybe I do-- maybe too much
of me lingers

In dreams I unzip and turn myself inside out
like a dress, fold my shoulders down and the mountains
reappear, i am all the grass of a former self, before the tides and winds and men, before my choices bent me back
and took a swiss army knife to whittle me away

i think i am longing to be clean
to be over to breathe and not feel the strings
the way my voice splits into a rank of pipes swelling into a hundred  voices and he only hears a few, i am many
longing to be one, he cannot twist the drawknob
because I am already filling the cathedral in the words of
Stravinsky, the
                                m onster never b r e a t h e s


and I feel like i never have
i am earnest to fill my lungs with air instead of water
join the present, but the Welsh knew me too well,
the portuguese, saudade and the Germans, sehnsucht
put a letter to the things that can only be described in paragraphs or tears or indeterminate intervals of time sitting on his bed while he showered, all the doors slammed, empty coffee cups,
clogged sinks, unswept floors, long drives,
shots of whiskey, withering glances held on tension and
te amo mouthed across the room--

we wonder, can we be reached?  wrought? touched.  found.
in our deepest hearts, wounded mysticism, an untapped sense of joy that can be lanced and spilled, I am wistful, anxiously waiting to be siphoned,

Hiraeth.