everything, ever'one and they mama
remind me of you
god******
songs you never even sang
and every western movie that doesn't
star Wayne (I kept him for myself)
people drop you in
conversation real casual like
and I still go a little cold
like someone done pour
icewater down the back of my neck
but I can't admit to how much
it still hurts to talk about you
'cause that would be some ***** ****
so I smile and let you roll off my tongue
as if there's not a single thing in the world
that tug at my heartstrings anymore but
you still do


you still do.

i spoke through a keyhole
come find me
in the middle of the night
god read a chapter out of ephesians
clear as day,
and since then i've been
hearing myself
like my heartbeat been
a tiny pulse, pyura chilensis
split apart to see i am actually
here
I've been beatin' this whole time--

and we learn too fast we made of stardust
but that was all ash and seed
before we ever came along
we've got sweet pea and
cardamom in our bones
all the surly wiles of our mothers
a mix of turpentine and
spanish flame
come find me

and i'm whisperin' back
*alright, i'm comin'

i'm finally sleeping through the night--

and for a couple days I'll wake up and
not think of you at all--
people say your name and it sounds like an old prayer
each syllable a funny amen

I've been shadowboxing myself, my old friend
i've been been relearning to to be comfortable with silence in the end
neither of us kept our promises but that's no unforgivable sin

i've considered a hundred thank yous
all lined up  on the lawn, white pickets to make a nice fence
and sometimes I've stood in my kitchen and stared at the mugs
whispered i don't know myself but that's why
i left, wasn't it?

i'll admit to being jealous of your happiness,
i've only so many faces to keep, and i only want one

it's taken a while to own the fault,
i see  every shameful thing and dust off the
way i used to hold myself

I'm finally sleeping through the night
a little bit heavy, no less able to dream
and i hear part of you like i might
the soft hurt i left in your bed
so, please forgive me
when you get the chance.


please forgive me
when you get the chance.

i asked nick
what year he
felt was the most
wasted

and he said even
one step is a step
forward--

but there could be
no better embodiment
of anger, it is there every
morning telling me that
he is home that I am
a body, that i am a bad thing
it rides in the bed of
every dodge ram
and permeates every dream
where i hear trumpets echoing
in the mountains, in valleys i stood
with my father and
God's voice thundered from higher
from clouds like a ***** through the earth
heavy rainfall across miles
and miles of unsodden land
and we were crippled
into the dirt--

I asked nick
what year
he felt was
most wasted

and he said even'
one step

is a step


forward.

when you are travelers
your conquests are
passages highlighted
in yellow
dog earred pages spoken
in pictographs
but when you are conquests
with velvet letters painted on your back
rooms filled with red thumb tacks
girls with names scrawled all across
their thighs, passport stamps carried
from country to country
milling about with scabby knees and
raw elbows
a noh mask to hide your shame
and not your face
a push pin on an unlisted county
barely within a three mile radius--
he's a photo up on the shelf and
you're just another notch in his belt.

i keep tellin myself you don't have to
feel that way, you just gotta find the
right thing, the right song, the right man
and every time I've been on the couch
at the fair, on the floor with
an arm draped around me
and his fingers tracing bittersweet
intentions on my side--
I'm thinking of the  back of your head
of you fingers with the cuticles you never pushed back
of the birthmarks beneath your arms
and of a girl's body that i've never seen naked

because i collapse in on myself and say it's not time
and scientists say that black holes are things from which
light cannot escape but
I am going to let it matter
so when he leans in for a kiss
and i see your hands on her hips
shoulders bunched up in the cold
you're standing out in the snow
truck growling in the driveway
I say it's okay,
i am not out to
bandage the wounds
that need to breathe
I told her I am just
going to let it hurt


i am just going to let it matter.