i went back through
my old pieces

and it all became so
bleached,

white sugar, white rice,
skim milk, I used to be
so rich, cream, honey
oak sap,

I wrote and it felt
natural, saw in
words and coffee
hues, tastes and
teaspoons clinking
bowls rolling, counters
covered in  flour
batter running into the
sink and onto my
feet, i could bake
bread on my palms
leavened and without
yeast

i wrote like everything
was alive because it was
because it is


because I am.

lately when it rains

and it pulls at all
the earth, humid and
oaky,

i wonder if it brings
the same out in me,

summer sweat, the
whos and wheres
buried down deep.

i am tired of chasing
the people that don't
exist and feeling lied
to far after the fact,
so long down this
road that I no longer
have the right to ask--
were you, did you?
did she, was she?
i am hurt by all
the moments I allowed
myself to be involved in
that only served to show
what a silly fool I was
for not discerning soon
enough, for not saving myself
preserving something I'd always
held in high regard and now
it just feels stolen or dead
and I am ashamed to
wonder who could love me now
after that, after he,
after


after.

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.

i will stop holding my
heart out like grocery
samples, take this,
take this, I've heard

we take we
think we deserve--that
of lonely people, then--

i would love to give
to the lonely but not
myself,

if not a hand-out then
bushels of peonies
wrapped in brown
paper, in bloom
and beautiful.

i don't think i have ever
let myself heal in between
storms, i have shacked up
with missing roofs and
bullet holes in the trim
the rain soaked carpets
a mere nuisance like
creaky doors--
but lord would I love
to pop the seams on
every shoddy job i've
done, lie all the materials
out on the floor and accept
the work, look at what a mess
I am, people can love messes
but for their sake, I would
like them to love
a little more so--


don't mind the holes,
the haphazard strings
and leaflets--I am still
learning and moving,
sewing, accepting,
working.

i still hang my arms
out the window because
i need to feel the wind
i'd never call myself claustrophobic
but i've always been fonder of
wide places, as much as
my house feels like a
trench i still walk in
and breathe home
whether god is there
immediately or not
I have chosen to
believe he is present
in the most petty of
circumstances, even
then as I sat on my bed
debating the gas mileage
to his house, and instead
taking off my shorts
and turning off the light--
that each of these low blows
has been engineered and if
rolling with the punches
were any more true, (possibly
caustic) then I am willing
to take each hit or
throw a few if need


be.

it's still very strange
to silence a place as
you walk past
or to hear that you
are a ***** from drunks
i once thought that
love carried over
into rough circumstances
but I can see that people
will gather on sides
proclaiming their support
and hurling rocks--
i just never thought
he'd be the one to
listlessly watch
it happen.

i still remember how
it felt to hold your temple
fine dark hair reaching past
my second knuckle
and now my fingers plug
into air, i still rememeber
just how much to spread
them apart to accommodate
the sharp shelf of your
forehead, how to trace
your brow bone without
waking you up and
brush your eyelashes
to show how careful
i really am, these details
scare
me.

there are eggs on the stove.


and the house is clean, been
gettin' enough sleep, a little
bit free when you drop some
constraints, put up a little
gate--
and the right people like
to come as they please,
the wrong just sorta
skim the outskirts
pace the edge of
town and find
themselves wet
rags to peel out
of bed, but I am

rising
to meet
the day.

i've never wanted to
haunt a thing less--
when you find the
house is full of
ghosts and ghouls
faceless creatures,
and you're another
cold wind or chilling
touch, much as you
don't mean to be,
sometimes you
gotta just break
chain and go,
you're not
much of the
phantom type
anyway, meant
for warmer days
or a means for
such on brisk
nights.

i would have
withered away
the way insects
do at the bottom
of a local water tank

an old stray dog
panting between
street signs in the
boonies,

I have never fully
feared obscurity
but I would if I
slept like the dead
and found comfort
beneath a neon moon.

the window
always needs
to be opened.

even the air
needs room to
move and billow

like white noise
i  need to be reminded
to breathe, or keep driving

to will, to forgive
to let things hurt a little
and then move along
not think too much
about the way things were

the windows
always need to
be open, one
arm out, with a
good song to fill
you up, remind
you to breathe--
like the air,
in and out
in and out

out

out.

people only know quarters of the story

a retelling, the abridged
condensed, shortened,
can you truncate the
things that have not
ended or strip it of
it's beginning--can you
choose between one or the
other?

the novels exist in our
backgrounds, in the attics
we wrote and wrote to say
we did but only to store them
away when we found we could
not erase people the way we hoped--

I have learned that there is no getting rid
or escaping a place, not unless you have
fully healed, and it's not enough just to say
you have, to be able to go and be, do and feel
without the tangled strings of your past
curling behind you--

but luckily i believe
in such a
life.

who laughs when
the suns hits her
face and breathes
good morning
into every waking
moment because
every moment is
w a k i n g -- calls every
d o u b l e - y o l k  e g g
a sweet baby and wants
to move the living room
rug just so she can dance.

most of these things
still feel pretty empty--
Miss Rebecca prayed
for me today, got all
misty-eyed when I
started to get choked
up, sweet-girlin me
and letting me play
with her grandson's
hair, he's so soft
and new like
babies are, with
them big watery
eyes the color
of pond algae
so little and
alive, and I
sorta don't
hear what
she's asking
God, i'm too
busy rubbing
his back--
thinking about
all the parts of
me i'm gettin'
back, and every
time I turn around
and go home instead
of runnin' his way.

is it really like that?
I wonder, him not
sayin' a thing and
ignoring you after
he gets off,  i still
hurt about that
about bein' looked
through and through
like I wasn't even there
but lord if that's the
last thing on his mind
anymore, a silly girl
silly, silly
girl.

drive miles out
open up, find a
spot you never were
you owe no one an
explanation for
screaming or crying
admit to all the things
you did and go,
show up and expect
nothing, you don't need
roots, that is why you have
hands, nimble and ever busy
always searching, you don't
need roots, your fingers
have always done a fine
job of digging in so
drive miles out
open up, find a
spot you never were
the newest things are
always scary and
you are infinitely
cautious but despite
the ticks in your surface
are so worthy of good
things.

everyone is just a trophy
a ribbon with gold lettering
paraded and pinned on
trafficked without knowing
but I don't want to be someone's
harp, the goose that lays gold
eggs for show, i am not the
prize that follows your glory
days stuck in a stadium
i am desperate to
shake this off, the
bragging rights
scrawled over
my shoulders
i do not want
to be spun on
a pedestal before
your family--what
kind of infamy
gently unwrap me
and hold me in your
palms, i am more
injured bird than
vince lobardi trophy.

breathe a little
with me,
open up that chest
a bit, you have time
but not for this,
i can see you coming
back, a ways out
around the bend
with that pretty smile
I've missed,
an' no one out there
as happy to see you
as me, your arms
are leanin' up
a few weeks
done you real good,
so keep walking
keeping on coming
i've been scared to
have you back under
this roof but you never
did care much for theatrics
come home brooke,
come home.

the problem is i know
you so much better,
you've got a lot of
that real hurt, with a
ghost swimming around
in a shell,

with a mama you love
'cause she gave you that life
and played in the mud, gave
you the ol' one-two when it
called for it, (or when you didn't)
and a daddy who never had to
say much which is where you
got that hint of altruism,

but you still found yourself
raising a brother, lookin' out
protecting the property,
growing up too fast with
no one understanding,
taught to rely on a good
team member or a good
fight, the good fight,

but you've got more than
a pass waiting on you, more
than pretty girls at bars, crashes
on bikes, nights full of stars,
all those ways your mom didn't
pull through or pull in, and i hope
you find them, i hope you find all of them
every good and pure thing out in the day
and i hope whatever's in your heart gets a
good chance to breathe and that  no
one find you in your time of change,
just after when you're healed up
and pretty,
not that you haven't been

'cause you are kinda pretty.

oh well he's
still looking for his Mary
dressed in black, a vice
for him (or a grip)
with smoke curling
out of her ears, ready
to take him away, he ain't
no devil but he sure as hell
looking for the woman herself
with hips swinging always loaded
made fresh in the Rye factories
a tall glass but she always empty
he's lookin' for them girls to fill,
that have followed him 'round
since 2010--least that's what she said
the ground is hard, packed and trodden
but that's where she is, curled up in
florals and denim, she still
burnt as the core of a fire
and they always go out
you've seen it, woken
up in the morning
with crumpled tin
buried in white ash
and wood so black
it just crumbles.

how can
they call
it special

when just any
girl will do?

i see now how
people are drugs,
but not quite how they
bring out the worst--

and i only have so much
to say about my own choices
just that you can board the
wrong boat and it will take
you, will
take you.

if I could pin point the exact moment
it would be at Louies, the night I chased
your headlights up Frazier, before it turns
into a county road, blinking rapidly
as if that could clear the fuzz,
and you passed a little suburban
going 70 past high meadows--
these are the secrets I hide
the first time being so
drunk the juke box
was kaleidscoping
in and out, and all
I could focus on was
your thin frame across
the room, pool cue in hand
mouthing I love you

oh, but did you?
I think i associated
a few too many with
you coming back, or
having you, but you
were no object, and
I was only confusing--
washing you up on
shore and pulling you
back down deep,

oh, but did you?
I was not doing the opposite, but
the wrong crowd found me in
my weakness, and took me in
as miserable people do--
but if it amounts to
anything I have found
my way to the door
and opened it the
way i do best,

for leaving.

you tell yourself to
get out, just go
buy a beer, walk
around, but these
people still look
lifeless and you
end up having to
chaperone a field
trip to the local
dance bar,
corralling drunk
adults into corners
realizing that these
people have no
agenda other than
to touch you or
fight, what a
silly notion
to believe that
it would be any other
way--worst of all,
April is there,
probably March,
June and July, too.

go on
despite
*despite

I hope on nights
like this when you
are alone

You think of my long
black hair in wet tendrils
sheets drenched in vanilla

Lightning, the shape of my lips
(If you can remember)
and when the thunder comes,
followed by the soft static rain
your ears strain
for the sound of
my voice,
(If you can remember)

On nights like this

i used to wish the thunder
scared me.


but it never has,
always wanted to
catch bolts in my
hair, whip through
the rain, yell my
middle name
into the hollow
or up the crags
near Rockvale,
i will never
claim a wild
streak but I have
a such a loud
voice inside
me.

At the beginning he was
worried about what people might
say, as if there were mountains of
secrets at his front door--

People talk, I think.

And maybe some of it was true,
I'm not sure now,
the wounded climb
and reach, bring out
the potential for weakness
or subconsciously expect you
to be the same as the firsts
Or lasts,

I dunno, I'm crying in
Chucks office, trying desperately
to say that I feel *****,  
it all comes out,
I tell him about your note
to God buried in your wallet--

im not good enough for a good man
I say, and I cannot look at him.

People talk, I think.
maybe some of it is true,
i'm not sure,
but I will not go there again
or share myself so unabashedly

good enough, for a good man.

you might realize that
not everyone is bad
but that you are so
different--

and that is not at all
a selfish thing to say
nor is it arrogant,

you are not any
more special than
the next or
deserving of
better treatment

but there are
varying roads
and signs, as
the analogy goes
and you are
miles down
a thin backroad
a world away

from his.

maybe i used it as an excuse
the way children try their parents
by dangling or taunting

once at Louies when Sherry asked
me how much I drank, I told her I didn't--
before then it had never occurred to me
to do so, I had never had
a faulty plan to fall back on
it had always just been me
facing the consequences
rain or shine

Back then, she told me oh, well that'll change.
like some sort of ill-will, black words spoken
over me, you'd say she meant no harm
but why speak that out
over the softer things?

maybe it was now or never,
a lesson that had to be had
and this was the only way--
Kelsie said it just sort of happens
and I wanted to tell her, no, it doesn't.
it doesn't just sort of happen.
I wanted to tell her that he probably didn't
regret ******* her but he regretted me
as a whole, holding him down
and whimpering that I loved him

no, it doesn't just sort of happen
I remember everything,
and drunkenness is not an excuse.

good walls make good neighbors
do they make better you and I's?
something about you blinded
me,

i will tell you what peace and
strength are, without the
nights out and one too many

they used to say you were whipped
but you said you just liked my skin
the way i breathed, staying in and falling
asleep but

i don't think you did.

he is all pine and I am apple orchard

so maybe I do not belong, here nor
there, maybe I was never meant to
have roots for how often I was
meant to move,

I realize more and more  how
people will say *anything
or the right amount of nothing

good walls make good neighbors
and i tore all mine down, i shared myself
and he shared all them
we are not children anymore
and i am grateful for a few
drunken months if it meant
that's all it took--

i cannot be mad about the
girls you slept with
but I can about their
kisses spread across my
thighs, how I opened
up all the way thinking
it would solve something--

so I am shedding this skin
scrubbing away, I am not forgetting
just forgiving because I can't keep
reliving the conversation with a
silly little girl at chiles detailing
the morning after
with
you.

it's strange
where I stored away
all my loyalties, you
think you can bring
someone back with
courage or bravery
but you're only being
a child, really,

i threaded them
through each vertebrae
and stained every moment
with ink, every truck-ride
soaked in an alan jackson
song

I don't want to haunt you,
but at night if you are alone
or with a dead arm beneath
a pretty girl, deeply introspective
with the moon on your face
and you begin to tear into
yourself as if something
is lost or fading

all you'll find is a rung
of brass keys where I
told myself i could
where no other woman
has been, and she certainly
won't,

if storms are named after people
and every place is a concentrate
of you and me then
i have saturated the walls
in your peace and strength
with all my keys and loyalties
hung in the places you go
to find yourself.

oh, but it's alright, matthew.

I have seen small flowers go
through concrete and morning
glories uproot trees,
I have wasted so much
time being angry and I am
done,

buried myself
beneath the aspens and
hunkered down for
a while,

i won't haunt you
because only ghosts with
ill wills linger and

I am softening myself
like warm butter or
sun-tea, melting down
into sugar or caramel

I have a few mean bones
but they won't
be around for
long.

so it is alright,
to do that, or be that
if they bring you peace or strength
then so be
it.

this is how it will go.

I will go home and take off my makeup,
cleanser,
exfoliant
moisturizer.

I go to chiles to meet alyssa
and talk to the nice waitresses
she sits down and starts talking to
me about her boyfriend,
you know who you would look cute with?
she asks me, I entertain her.

triple digits.  four consonants. She says your name.
I hooked up with him in april, but i think you guys would look good.

This is how it will go.
I will go  home and take off my makeup.

in april? i say.  She scrolls through her phone
I think about how I flipped your indian calendar from March.
yeah, got pretty drunk. Played pool. It just sort of happens.

this Is how it will Go.
cleanser.

I smile and tell her I know you.
we probably would look good together
and the rest that follows is irrelevant,
I think I already knew, I wrote a poem
about your bedspread months ago
but I am not sure how i will go
home tonight with her on my lips
and whoever else, I am not sure
how to trade one person for
another, how that is done
or if it is done if it is
really accomplished


this is how it will go.
exfoliant

so this must be where i am in
the dirt, where everything you
said finally makes sense,
you didn't want to feel
ashamed, guilty or sad
and this is why,
the other girls
you held
all the ones
with fair hair
and soft skin
that you didn't have to
feel ashamed of anyway
because I was just
the background noise
a skin you were desperately
trying to shed or forget
you said you gave me
everything but so did

i

everything that was mine to give
dispersed into other
women.

this is how it will go.

I will go home.
I will not call.

pink moscato from
bottle shoppe liquor
the man at the counter
said is that all sweetie?
no, it isn't.

I pulled these thin blonde hairs
from his bedspread this morning
not even really thinking about it
just about how fair she must be
to have such delicate strands
and how mine somehow always
seem so coarse, like wire or cord
perpetuating the notion that I am
too dark, too brown, too much dirt
too much sweat, how do people
replace others or use them to
mask pain, lord, someone tell
me, is it a trade secret? someone
fill me in, let me know what it's
like to let someone else slip into
the role I was supposed to have
as she slides into my skin, shoulders
gliding through the air,
he looks past me at the ceiling
and I wonder about her blonde hair
throw mine over my shoulders
curls damp and black
damp and black
damp and black

no, just a little lost.
a call for attention
helter-skelter,
off the boat

no, you don't get better in a day.
but you do see a little clearer,
as much as i hoped loyalty
to a thought or idea would
change something crucial,

I thought this,
i thought that,
i thought wrong

i was never the opposite
no, not a day, but minute by minute
and I am sorry that I never made
that clear, that I have the tiniest
amount of faith but enough to
know that i can be healed
and have no scars


not a day. minute by minute.
I was never the opposite, just
reaching through the brambles
of something much
larger than this.

here's what you do
he has the silliest, most
western grin,
you grab a good branch
everything is this nice
before-autumn green
and i'm watching him
plod ahead in his old
levis, copenhagen ring
a frayed outline
it's a good gun, is what I mean

you gotta get a good gun.*

he turns around and shoots.

i think he was trying to say goodbye
up there.

there's always room for a last hurrah,
and I kept stealing it away
what you want doesn't always matter, princess

he tried, a little.
to soften the ground
not the fall,

show me he still cared
breaking ties was too much
so he was only trying to undo
them, set me out into
the hollow and
watch me float
away.

how positive should I
be that someday I will
turn around to see him
standing in the doorway
admiring the mess of
a kitchen i left
tracking rocks
into the living room
woke him up too early
smiled at a baby in the
supermarket
spoke to the asters
and callas in the floral
department, singing too
loud over fried eggs and
***** dishes, I am in here
waiting, unsure of why
i have never
or how i have never--

good lord, where are you?

I have so many songs,
and so many things i want to say
about how i have given up
and given in, hovered inches
from the ocean floor, a rock
bottom with my name plate
not like his or hers,
and will i come back?

i have so many songs,
so many things I want to say.

i once asked him
if he still loved her
and he said I'd hope not

i think that we
misconstrue open
wounds for old feelings,
for love,

that it is harder to let go
of the things that hurt
where we told ourselves
it was okay to stay,
to bed down and bunk
that we were safe,

the truth of the matter is
that none of us like to roam
and every country, every
campsite is as beautiful as
home, where we shared
too much and hid nothing
because what greater freedom
than to bare all,

it is safe to say i know the outside
of what love looks like, like skimming
pages or folding sheets-- not really using
the thing,

not really using the thing.

i don't think this is what it is,
all grit and open blisters,
maybe that is where it starts
before anything can begin


i'd hope so.