we were sending out
smoke signals, our campfires
miles apart, speaking in sing-song
tenting flames, using old letters for
kindling,

i was set on a title for god knows why,
thinking it meant more than what we
were on our own, scared you would
leave if we weren't but look at us now--

I show up at your house and curl up
into your chest, it's snowing outside
something i've secretly wished for since
October, to fall asleep in your arms
on a winter night
but we are in May
and he hates the
thought of being
more, we reached
for the moon and
snuffed out the stars

we were sending out
smoke signals, miles apart
using old angers for
kindling.

I used to think love
was some all encompassing entity
that it overcame most adversity and
saw 20/20
what we couldn't without it

we've heard that love is letting go
love is or isn't, does or does not
we all have our rules, our commonplace
conceptions, loads of ideologies
a garrison of things we've tolerated
in the name of such, love was always
tolerable,
would not yell,  would show up
at my door, curl my hair around
his fingers as if it were
twine, you have
read the poems
i've written about
what I thought
love would
be.

but if somewhere i know what
love is then it is buried deep,
it is lost in translation,
a text settled into the
bottom of his inbox
ground into the floorboards
of his truck, a phrase he
zips up and away
because it applies to me
but in the worst kind of way
packs it into the chamber
and fires

so this is a new renaissance
because I no longer think
of love as a solid form, as
a person, as the suitor in
that poem by Jane Kenyon
love looked like Matt and
was all types of wild
was me asking at 6 am
please do not regret
this.


if somewhere I know what love
is, then it is buried deep
in packed soil, lost in
translation, a few words
that don't even reach
the intended audience.

we like to think that only the dead
are ghosts, and we've heard some
say there they were as if, clear as day,
yes, they were.

and my mama used to say she could
see her lost baby, the one she did and
the one that miscarried, the way
they would have grown up into
pretty girls like me--

and lord how she waited on
forgiveness like it was a thing
that visited but some **** just
ain't show up ever,
like people and fathers
and brothers when you need 'em

they all the ghosts that won't
visit, they got too much on
their minds, too much time
and you ain't the one they
hauntin.

i think i saw him riding by
earlier today--
with so much time we spend
staring out the windows
I was on a phone call with
a customer about overdrafts
and loans--
but you can...you can...call..call the...
every word following a little bike out
on the highway
Miss? call?
I'm so sorry, I say, laughing.  I was
elsewhere.

I was elsewhere.

I was thinking about it the other
day, how i've actively tried to
cut ties while tying knots,
how trust goes both ways
but is still a one way street
you need to go down--

that you can orphan yourself
in a crowd full of parents
seclude yourself in the
arms of someone who
can't stand to see you
cry--

it's all a bit silly the way
we hurt, how we run
how we find a place
like dogs-- miles away
from home, afraid to
be sick or weak
or changing most of all

it's all bizarre, really

everything is subject to the
thin denim wear like his
old loose levis, things
get old, i think, people
sometimes.

don't it  make you laugh
the way everything still
carries on, solidifies
into the past and
becomes stop motion
memories clicking by
in a hundred frames
i've been waiting for
that film to fade
but it's still got
that nice sepia
tone that I
like to keep
around.