I miss you
you don't know how much*
the rest is incohorent, he keeps
saying sorry, over and over.

I guess I understand why, now.
the apologies, the childlike way
he'd turn and burrow into my
shoulder--something he'd
hardly done before

maybe I didn't understand
the reasoning behind the things
he would have liked, but the pain
was always so palpable
a heavy ache, a lonesome ache--

I hope all the blackest things
are the farthest from you,
and that you recede from
the places that only bring
temporary comfort,
i hope that you heal,
that all the ways you
have frozen over will
thaw, not a bitter thing
to be found,

i hope that the bees
find you sweet, Matt
because you are and I did,
you are not a body of
the things people have said

breathe, in and out


in and out.
with me,
in and out.

when you are making love and he cannot
call your name, his body covered in gashes
and half of them are not even from your
teeth,

after you have shown up at
two am to cry into his shoulder
blades, driving him wild with
your tears that he believes unjustified

to not know what you've seen
until days later, realizing the
dark haired girl was not just
any dark haired girl

if you are holding his head
while he breathlessly mutters
secrets, you have given your
heartbeat up as a lullaby
leaving at midnight
like the dirtiest cinderella
so he will not have to feel
ashamed about the
blonde hairs all over his
bedspread

you leave quietly
and close the
door behind you
when you are off work
when you lock the house
when the moonlight is spread
out across brush hollow and he
says you are ruining everything

close the door.

songs i've never
even shown you
remind me of your
dark hair, more puerto
rican than swede
sometimes you'd
snap at your mom
jokingly in spanish
and it took a hell of
a will to not sink fingers
into your hips or feel
up your spine,









how much of
me is drowned out
in a well of bad
do you think
of me at all?

you once sent me a poem by
caitlyn siehl when you were
drunk
about storms and people--
the second thing you would
send to me in prose I could understand
as if you were the storm or
maybe I was but--
I will tell you why storms are named after
people.

Because I have left the safety of my house
to stand in a torrential downpour, pulled
my hair from countless braids just so the wind could feel
a bit of the salvo inside of me,
and when It rains I love to
let it in on secrets, soak my skin
till my perfume runs and I steam,

and the thunder only sets my
heart a'running, i'd hold a
stake beneath the lighting if
it meant I could capture
some of that spark

(         ) if storms are named after people
it is because they are beautiful--have you
ever seen a richer thing,  the clouds like silken
quilts, patches and oceanic framework crawling
above the mountains,
Jesus, they take the earth and throw it round,
crack icebergs in half without even trying
strike the soil and things still grow
if I am meant to be scared of a storm
then i am sorely lacking--

i have never not chased a dust devil,
the bigger the better I have faced
stood in the current and felt every inch a mile
mud splattered on my shins with grass stains
on my thighs where i have slid
across the moss and ran with
water, with the leaves torn from trees

why storms are named after people?
because they are remarkable
leave bruises like bite marks
deep and askew
that stay long after being left
if any place was weathered by
you i will return
because we have felt the rain--
every inch a mile,
running with the
wind beneath our
jackets, unafraid
of the way the
rain leaves us

if you must love her
(and you must) because
all of her is worth the non-trouble
but the most-work--

then openly confront the
child that throws fits, when
she sits in front of the house
stewing, kneel and ask--
that is all anyone ever need
do; ask.

or say nothing when she
cries in church, touch shoulders
and keep singing, a low voice
undulating with her father's

if you must love her,
and you know you must,
you have been called out
from all your temporaries
and sort-ofs, nothing ever
remotely permanent
because you must


you must.

and if out here
I look like regret
then drive away

i can understand--
I took off the rear-view
mirror 'cause black trucks
still drive the highways
and not one of them
belongs to you,

if you need a body count
you have plenty of those,
slide back in to those old
lives, if you must.

water and oil.

after months of
not dreaming and
now that's all I do--

you came unannounced
to get the last of your belongings--
usually a house is a rough analogy
for my heart

and I went out to the garage
wide open, not a single
thing of yours left

what a strange
thing to feel like you
never knew someone

i have the hopes
strung like outliers, darting
off the graph,
stretching a little too far
I was never good with
strategy, math, a rough
sediment but never dust
and we reached the
angle of repose so
long ago.