truth is
i'd prolly
still pull your
coat strings, kiss
you if you showed
up but we both know
you won't,

push off your hat
tell me you don't want
to hear my heartbeat

tell me you don't
want that.

he doesn't read these
anymore but who does?
i've always communicated
the best through silence

drafted out a couple i miss you's
but who's gonna receive them?
keep pushing it out a little farther
to see how long I can make it,
and every day it's a little longer
you gotta make it hurt
while she leaves
and tough draw kid
well, those were the right words
and i'm okay now that i've
really ground it into the dirt
and woke up this morning
pretty much done with
just about everything
said fine, God, you've got me
and I still don't really want to
listen but know better than to
talk back, even daddy
didn't take no ****
so I know he ain't gonna neither

well i drifted pretty far
cause the wind takes light
things easily, so i aim to
be heavy as all the ocean's
water but still as small as
i can be, no i don't want to
be no big thing,
let me fall back into the way
it's supposed to be,
when I was okay with
growin' up the walls
finding the cracks
when i spoke with
roses on my breath
i know she's still there
cause i still call them flowers babies
and the daisies, sweethearts
please grow, i tell them.
please don't die,
i whisper.  yeah,
she's still here.

is this the silent ache
they talk about?
that turns into something
much better?
am I growing without
really knowing?
put down your suitcase,
what a weapon it's been

all the things you thought
you had to be, and what
you needed to change,
maybe you didn't have to be wild
but needed a good shake
a good earthquake for that
rebel in you to learn who
you really weren't


all the times you've been stirred from
sleep, well it's okay to dream now,
go ahead and laugh if it loosens up
the dust,
even those that took you far away
fell in line with something greater
a conquest in their direction
doesn't mean you looked the
other way,
lonely barely begins
to describe the storm
but everyone has seen
the smooth stones at
the bottom of the river,
at one point
rough and withstanding,
day to day relenting,
but i've never stopped
to judge a pocked thing,
and it's certainly not
the worst to lose a way or two
or be knocked from a hiding
place,

so it's okay
that you're
all alone,
the road is mighty long
good lord that suitcase, you wield it
like a sword,
it's okay little girl,
we've never had this
in the bag, and if no one's
here to walk you back
then

sometimes you gotta walk yourself home.


sometimes you gotta walk yourself home.

they're asking the
wrong questions
a lot of meaningless
interactions, more
i think, rolling cherry
pits between my
fingers, more
prattling on about
stupid things I
don't care about
you just need a good ****
she says, so blase, as if being
touched by anyone else, kissed
by a stranger would be any better

and i think about how I don't
how I just need a good night's
sleep, a good cry in between
library stacks or a pair of arms
I know too well,
how i only want his
his shoulder, his breath,
how lucky for him that
I can't stand the thought
of anyone else, how i've
tried but leave my phone
at home, ringer at full volume
'cause i know it won't be for
me

you just need a good ****
she repeats, dropping an
orange slice in a pint of blue moon
I can't do that,  I say, won't do that
the ice in my water is melting
that's not who i am.  she
interrupts, sure it is.

but i know better.
they're asking the
wrong questions
saying the dumbest
things, and I have
to believe that they are
wrong, i can't be
the only one who
wants just one
just one person
just one touch
just
one.

i had this dream about you
and your brother, not the one
where you were a boy and I led
you out of the woods--

but we were down by the ocean
and i stood in your shack surrounded
by that thick, mustard yellow carpet from
the 70's and a pair of old workboots, I couldn't
drain the sink but that didn't matter because
i could hear you outside,
rustling around inside your pockets
your jeans were filled with condoms
what did you expect, brooke? you
ask me, palms out and up, I shake my head.

what?  in that carhartt and vest.
What? louder.
you start towards me and I realize
that this is a dream I can't wake up
from, the deck is disappearing, the
house disintegrates, your boots
sound hollow on ocean water
and the only thing I can see
are the minnows scattering
your hands out to your sides
yelling
*what
     di d  you e   x pe ct

jack of hearts.

i can hear you
greeting every single person
with a sideways hug and a slap on the back
and the words echo down to widen the crack,
these people are fillers, are caulking, are clay
their presence is a temporary fix,  a belay
a hold on the rope, a helium anchor
the weight of a person held down by paper


you used to put me there cause I fit just right
nestled into that place where you had
carved out a ledge, less room for emotion,
for feelings, for thoughts, a space to put
whiskey, clean sheets and some guns

you reckon you're empty, that people
can forget, but these pennies are wishes
that you can't be rid,
each wish is a stone tethered back to the source
when you find you've been slinging rocks
at your younger self--

the injured rabbit beneath
the porch, the ghost in the attic was you all along
rattling chains, speaking in tongues, writing down
in the books that this was all you've got, all you've got
to give, all you have to offer, that if this didn't work
then nothing would ever--

and i can't tell you enough how much
that isn't true, how beautiful you are in
the sun and at night, covered in shadows
whispering hank williams songs or sharpening
knives, sprawled out in the bed sweating bulleit rye
with these soft little breaths clenching your shoulder blades
tight, with your back to me trembling beneath my touch
it's been a while since you said that felt good.

I've never immortalized so many moments
wondering if i'd ever get them back, but i've
made the process worse by opening my mouth
i've never been the easiest task, always formulas
and charts and long scrawled out graphs
words and scripture and please-be-safe prayers
split down the middle and made of a jury
a table of people watching you perform
you've probably felt like you loved a crowd
an audience of me all staring you down
but
i
promise that the person i want to be
will be softer and kinder, capable of
unfolding, unlocking, unsheathing,
opening, and stronger and easy
to
love.

and i'm praying for nothing
but for god to crash this train
and ruin who i don't want to be
because i can't stand the person I am
and can't wait for the person I want to be
and if honesty isn't enough, then actions
will have to do
cause I have to
think i'm enough, darlin.
I have to think I'm enough
without hearing it from you

I am convinced he must be
like my dad,
who works next
to the wasps and they
are not at all unsettled by
his presence,
he gently blows them away
when they settle near his knuckles--

yes, you must be like him
because my father is the only
man I know who speaks to
hummingbirds and knows
just about anything you'd
need to know about jet planes
or rifles,

he's hanging the welcome sign
talking about the grass out back
loving me despite how little
affection i've shown him growing
up, still navigates around
fears, discrepancies and
every decision I never made

he must be like you
you must be like him
packing in church
carrying drilled pennies
and two dollar bills,
i dunno
i dunno.

you taught me that
the shaky old men
in bars have the most
to say

so now these veterans
come into the bank and whisper
about funds, fill me in
about navy ships and
rifles and I listen
intently--

and I'm not as scared
of dark places, of people
i don't know 'cause everyone
just wants to talk, just wants
to know someone else--

i don't know much about you
like you said, just that you're
wounded in a lot of ways but
play it off pretty good

don't we all, though?
routine you said,
****** nights, ****** conversations
I kept hoping, kept thinking
kept believing that maybe
this, maybe that--
i can't say for sure that
he doesn't hate me, but
i will always want to tell
him to get home safe
or to rub his back,
maybe this
maybe that

but maybe's bring no one back
neither do confessions, or kisses
indian head pennies, buckles
or engraved pistols,
when someone is done
they are
done.

the truth is
i am hoping
you remember
me soft and malleable
sweet wine vinegar
wandering
the backwoods in all
my bittersweetness
twisting in my sleep
or humming
incoherent songs
in the passenger
seat.

i still say hello
to the tulips in
my kitchen,

speak to the
two sunflowers
in my garden

who grew
despite
my absence

I've run out
of what little
patience I had

yell at people on
the road and tell
people to get out of
the way at the store

convinced I am
probably meant to
be alone by the way

I still say hello
to the tulips in
my kitchen,

softly touch the
two sunflowers
in my garden
and smile by
their gentle adversity
and the way they don't
respond at all.

should stop using
the past as artilllery
all the things you said
were alright are spent
bullets and hurling casings
doesn't do as much damage
as you'd like.

the next time you
go to the cabin
east of the fort
(my east, not your east)
(left, if facing the cabin)
(wrong)
look for the tree with the
white yarn wound
around the trunk with
a bunch of knots that
wouldn't hold,
where I
wished that no matter
what you
would be
here, that
i would last
past all my fears
and make it there again.

They say forest fires are good
for growth and that floods
provide nutrients
storms unearth old seed and
spread topsoil
So I am unconcerned with how
you weathered me because I
chose to set up camp beneath
the hill, on the mountainside
At sea level, I dug my calves
into the mud and braced for impact
there is a difference in me and them,
in how they handle
the wind--
you're right ,
my heart still races with pikes peak
looming behind antlers
But I will still listen to Garrett
Hedlund and cry, unperturbed that
I am still alive and feeling
even if you are no longer
here, watching me sleep
whispering of course,
Of course pretty girl--
I will still tell people
that is my favorite
thing to be called

i'd been saving
this cream colored
dress for you
with the silk lining
and lace flowers at the
hem,

instead i am brushing
pollen off my shoulders
knee deep in dandelions
pulling canada thistle
and sheperds purse

a black and white
filmstrip on the refrigerator
moving in stop motion
empty moscato
a blue flannel
and a half drunk
waterbottle still
on the right side
of my bed.

he told me it's kind of like you copy people


I saw a certain amount of truth in that,
but it was more like adding a layer of paint
onto a canvas i've already been working on--

ever since I can remember I have treated people
like arts and crafts, like books, like in depth studies
I've loved watching documentaries on the salinity of
ocean water
Shakespeare's secret life and cotton blankets
watched my father put together bikes
disassemble sinks and make things work
been at a loss for words but filled
to the brim with definitions i'll
never use,
always been
fascinated by the unknown
and the known, often found
with acrylic smeared on
my thighs like a palette
deep in thought with
no poker face, searching
for different ways to describe
the way I have or have not seen
people-- dodgem, reticent, abseil,
cloisonne.

so,
yes,
I see the truth in that
in wanting to understand so badly
that it becomes a part of me,
but how can you tell them that?
how can you tell him that?
how can you say, 'this is me'
a conglomerate of many but
still my own?

i cannot put a halter on curiosity
putting songs on repeat to harmonize
to, wanting to know everything about
the things people love because
there is so much to appreciate,
to follow, to grasp and I
want to get in and get
*****, I want to
twist between the gears
touch everything
every fencepost
every brick, every
old paperback

so,
maybe.

maybe that is true.

if i am a dead language
then you are fluent, and
if mandarin is the hardest
form of discourse then you
learned me as a back-up--

I have always been a tangle
a mess of overreactions and
sentimentalities, too proud
to call for help or be pulled
from the rough convinced that
if it  must be done at all
it must be done by sheer
willpower and
iso
      l at ion

i am trying to unlearn that
i do not have to be alone
but it's in the company you choose
that some mistakes are too deep
and coiled to come back from

if i am dead language then
i am old norse, a handful of
runes and sounds falling off
the tongues of no one special
just scholars and politicians
struggling to make sense
but not all too
concerned
in the first
place.

when he comes I hope i'm ready
I hope by then i have healed over
that my scars are just midribs and
my backbone the strongest flower
stem he's laid eyes on--

that i won't be the prettiest thing he's
ever seen but I might be the brightest
because maybe he'll see me from miles
out or maybe i'll be the dimmest glow,
maybe I will be the brick beneath a sheath of
Virginia creeper,  and he will have to pull
apart the vines to see,

i am not trying to hide I will say,
i've just been still for so long, i stopped
waiting, I was done hoping, i'd accepted
that you might not show up but lord
i am so grateful you did--

and maybe the rain will fall and
i'll stop being hidden without trying
and all the moments I laid in the tub
with the hot water running over me
will not seem so strange and I will
not shame myself for crying
so often.

he started sayin' somethin
about girls and cars and
that's when I tuned out
'cause i'd already considered
that,

not the showin up at his house
part, but the other girls who might
have kissed him in my absence

albeit something I've never understood
i'm not too good at cover-ups and my
libido only stretches for one person
at a time but
i couldn't blame him for things
he did when I wasn't his and he wasn't mine

who knows what happened in that time
but I can't care
and if other women
are on my skin then
at least i am on
theirs.

before the maroon 5 concert
chaz said his mom wasn't home
she had stripped his mattress and
put everything in the wash
and I only remember wondering
why it hurt so much
and the silk threads of the seams
catching on my bra straps--
I had thought it was
supposed to be so much more
than pumping and churning
like pistons in a truck,

the difference was you
stopped when I asked
shiverin' above me in
a warm sweat
and all i could do was
run my fingers through
your hair over and over
stay silent and move slowly
because no one has ever seen
me like that, wavering
and rocking, working my
way up, using your hips
like training blocks, stretching
my thighs out over your bed--
lord I ain't ever asked for more
never bruised nobody 'cause
I wasn't thinkin', he's got
these welts i don't even
remember, he sayin he let me
in like he left the door's open
during the storm and I was
rain, hail or wind, a noise,
a knock, just me.
but I opened the windows,
the basement, the attic
pulled out the chairs in
expectation, I have nothin'
to say for my fears, they're
there and sometimes they
shift gears and gun it
but that don't mean
i didn't look at you
and wonder about
things I shouldn't
or replace my daddy's
name with yours just
to
see.

(bjo.) The things that would have happened anyway
set in stone, meant to be, sure to occur

i don't take much confidence in the things
set before me, the inescapable
yet unseen routine of habit or spontaneity
it is inevitable that I should end up
whereever i go or whovever i am
and should i break those around me
it would have been meant to be

it speaks volumes of characer, it was
unavoidable the people i hurt or the ones
i saved, the stirring and the turmoil swept away
I woke up in a panic, feeling *****
as if my heart had rolled through the rough
and my breath were swung around on a turbine
pumping air the wrong way
and instead of blood, dirt blew through my veins--
although I prefer to think of that as
evitable
or that
soil precedes the flower
that purity cannot just be had
but found, because it only exists
beneath a tarnish and we are not
born unharmed.

that is inevitable.

I lost myself in march, in
the bar, in a tailspin that
looked like a two-step, like
a man, in myself at the edge
of the water with my toes
dug into the reef wondering
why the ocean seems so vast
because i've only ever swam in
ponds--

and I cut my lifelines because I
still believe that i won't find myself
in the arms of someone else, but I
still feel the pinch of every rock
and string that snaps, and I love
a boy who can't love me back
broke his heart and he's back
to his old plays, the ones
he executes on his own
and I can't run the ball
as fast as he can--
I've noticed the trend
the way I take a heart and knead
but men aren't things to bend and need

every turn I take is a 360, standing
where I was before, and I don't know
how to move, how to take the first step
how to have the faith in faith, how to believe
in the immaterial

We stood in my front door and he said
she's still in there, you wouldn't be
crying if she wasn't. the last sober
thing you said to me out of love
in a voice I won't forget because
you haven't used it since,
and If I ruin good things
then i ruin good things
and if I ruin good things
then I ruin good things

well i've had my toes dug
into the edge of the reef
and I guess I just needed
a good cry, the ol' one-two
to the gut, I've been tryin'
to be perfect for the sake
of everyone else's fairy tales
holdin' on to the tailgate of
your truck because you're
the first person to care
in a longwhile, that's a
longwhile, but you don't
care no more,
he don't, no more.

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.

I think too much about you--
in the morning; when i roll over
into the pillows stacked on the right
side of the bed where I no longer sleep
(but I will)

and at night, 'cause for a moment I
was using alcohol to lessen whatever
need be lessened but now I can't
stand the thought of forgetting that way,
or forgetting at all
so at night I open my blinds and
leave the door unlocked--praying
things will heal and that this will buff out
(and it will)

there are things that I don't even know
that i worried about, things i never
asked or thought to ask because they
cut too deep--i shouldn't have to ask
if i knew, but that's just the thing, isn't it?
we had never seen these sides of each other
whether they were the
worst or not, both terrifying and hurt
better out than in,
i'm not sure what he thinks of me now, but--

he doesn't answer and I realize that maybe that is the answer--
the, no, i'm not good enough anymore, not after all this.
so i woke up this morning and made my bed,
called my dad, washed the dishes, put up my hair
and
      continued
        

   on.

haven't seen my dad in almost
three months, so he came over
to talk about the weeds
and the dandelions
the lilacs that i haven't
planted and the creepers
tangling around the
fence posts,
he touches the leaves
softly like he does with
most things, circles the
yard and scuffs the gravel
with the heel of his boot
inspecting for the usual--

How've ya been? and I
nod because my dad hasn't
known a single thing 'bout
my life since I was 16

i'm getting a dog. I say, holding
my hands out from here to there,
half Shepard and somethin' else,

i still expect repercussions for doing
things on my own but he just smiles
and goes on about dog doors and
how i still don't have a gun in my house

branson was saying i should think about not
gettin' a  .22 and he pulled out
his glock for me to feel per the norm

where've you been?
around.
how's work? while i pull the slide back
and slip out of my sneakers
you know how you walk into a room
and they treat you different?

He's leaving now, his gun back in the holster
holds out his arms for a hug.

they don't like you much, huh?
no. and i laugh, to stop from cryin' and
mask the shake in my voice
it's alright, though, pays the bills and stuff.

i have no desire to tell him about the
things that have been happening lately
about Matt and the bars and the trip
to Walgreens for a two minute test
i want to ask him why he didn't
tell me more about boys and men
when I was little but that's a
silly question when I'm grown

we never tell each other love you
we just go, so he leaves,
his bikes packed in the bed
down 19th, truck grumbling
the way they all do.

walking to clink of a tambourine
i've got heavy chains but they ain't no thing
i've got no deep cuts but lots of ghosts
let's not compare traumas because
our boys have it worse

i'm not injured but i drag a lot of bodies
got a lot of bones in my trunk, no baggage
cause i lost it in departures but a hell of a carry-on

i've called myself a lot of terrible things in the past
few weeks thinkin' that might build him up
but i could keep doin that and be stripped
away, he's spent years callin' himself the bad guy
and i've spent it writing ***** in my journals
the hundred year flood seems to happen twice a decade
opening up
turning the corner
can't keep saving the blame for winter

i am chasing you down
an alley way, the slap of
my shoes echoing up the
shoots,

standing in front of your bike
your head tilted back, a toothpick
wobbling up and down between
your teeth, hold a blank
stare, jaw slowly working
i think i should slip between
your handlebars like a siren on a ship

speedwalking backwards-- stop, stop
in front of your door, head tucked
the railing catching a fall
and then wanting to
fold myself into
an origami butterfly
when you launched
off the couch and used
a voice no one has ever

I don't fully cry
until you mutter
jesus ******' christ
slip off the recliner
and hold me.

my mama used to tell
me I had something special
and I used to believe it with
every fiber of my being,

and when i was stretched
thin into highschool thinkin'
I was a sinner I still hefted
her words up on my
shoulders and plowed on
sure I could do no wrong--

you gotta off the weak limbs
**** out the poison, cut the
bad blood so I did and
realized that I'm no
special child, no bell
around my neck
nor gold in my veins
and I've always equated
worth to *** or how
well I can shake my hips

Strangest thing, enough
when I ain't no thing at all,
just a regular doe,
jane smith
baby blue
mint green
with a different
name.

in battle they tell you to push on
grab your gun and move forward, advance.  advance
in one way or another I have always
been told to stop doing the things
that make me, myself--
but for your sake I won't
bring them up, i will avoid
the work, the big words.

we let ourselves where emotions lead
follow willingly into fleeting thoughts,
run desperately where there are lights
where there is sound, where there are others
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Travel. Traverse. advance.

In battle they tell you onward
pick up your gun and fight, advance, advance
I have always lived up to expectation
until the last moment when i don't
when I have deteriorated into a
little girl, when I am the last straw,
the one that breaks your back (again)
but to bring this up is insufficient
because pretty words don't really
mean what I say or say what I mean,
right?

so our emotions take us where
they please, misguided and
utterly attracted to company
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Rove. Peregrination.

the key is
to walk into
walgreens like
you intended
to be there--
and joke with
the cashier while
she scans in that
little 11.99 box
put a smile on
and laugh with
her because
maybe she'll
think you've
been planning
for this.

when i was little my dad used to
call himself God, used to tell me
airplanes were bumblebees, told
me "bored" was just a plank of wood
so that was impossible--
never mumble, use an inside voice
but there's an outside voice, but
i never learned to speak with
conviction from him--

lately i've been calling my brothers
the weeds back there are taking over,
the spiders are everywhere,
god, zak, my heart is breaking
god, little sister I wish I was there, but
I'm not girly.

people used to tell me to howl at the moon
but i've always been afraid of my  own voice
always wanted to scream but replaced the urge
with a smile

be blameless and innocent? Lord, I've been trying
but you can't force what you ain't,
tryin' doesn't seem to be enough for you either
but i've come to find i don't know you as well as
i thought, so bear with me while
I am, while I am
tryin'

i don't want to go anywhere too fast
i'd prefer you know what my grass
stained feet look like or know the
way my shoulders roll into the
hot light.

Jarod was talking about how
it hit him two months later,
how the air suddenly left his
body and he woke up at 1:30 am
with the burning desire to drive to
Texas, so he did. Although, he didn't
tell us any of this in the week that his
chest was splitting open while he laughed
at our jokes and sipped on in-house americanos
that didn't soothe any breakage

i think it's time i start breathing--
this roof, i've shot a hundred holes
to accommodate the rain-fall,
i'm catching the run-off on purpose
chalk it up to sentimentality,
I have three yellow roses pressed
between pages of the first book i read to
him, conversation hearts from a superbowl
party, a pair of movie photos tucked away--

I've been growing new lungs,
exercising the right to expand, i cannot
hold my breath for others, cannot decrease  and
hope for new foliage, shrink back and hope for
the steps to be taken, i cannot stop reading the
dictionary or using words  as if they aren't a
saving grace,

i can't deny the things i've done, the smoke i've
inhaled, the past month is set in stone, but I
can't close myself off like i've done before
I can't go back to hopin' someone will crack
me like a safe, venture to know the things I
want discovered, that's been done and proven

we've heard the sayings about Rome,
about walking before running,
was in such a hurry to be there
wherever there was,
but i've got to be here
I stopped documenting
and tried for experiencing
figured if it needed to be
remembered, it just
would.

so these new lungs need
good practice and I'll
breathe my best.

i haunt the things that
don't exist--the things
that could have been,
i've done it for as long
as i can remember,

valued memories beyond
the moment--so i can go back
to haunt them too,

sometimes it keeps me awake--
like my head is an engine and
my thoughts the spark that push the piston

people tell you to stop like its not something
you've lived with, a habit you can break with
21 tries, i'm not trying to let my mistakes run
my life but my conscience ain't for **** right now--

these ghosts we no longer haunt--
are they things we just forget?
I've never wanted to lie for
so long that it becomes  truth,
to sleep with someone else to
take away the pain, learn to
replace someone when the
going gets rough, I do not
want these half-assed remedies--
i may haunt memories but they
don't
haunt
me.

we like to compare scars
**** at eachothers bullet wounds
searching for the exit,
thinking ourselves doctors and holy men,

but we're only children with scapels
sharp wits for play things, asking
the other to lift their shirts, fold up their
skirts,
show us what we don't understand,
plagued by the notion of going it alone
faking it all the same,

have you heard that animals
come in more than one form,
not just covered in fur or lined
in scales, in shirts and jeans
they walk, talk and conjugate

have you heard that diseases
are more than just viruses, they
have names like thomas, luke, jeff,
scribbled in notebooks, sipped through
cocktail straws,

this is no friendly cherokee parable
spoken in elderflower and feathery
folklore,
the wolves are here and have always
been, you know they rarely come in ones,
curtailing escape, the abridged version of
all-them-who-called-wolf because we don't
cry wolf, we seek wolf.

speak wolf.
so surprised to have them at our throats
when we have been no angels--
neither devils
just another injured animal
trying to make peace.

i finally told him
I want to try.
with you.
I want to try, with you.
I want to be with you.
I want to be with you.
because it's been there
at the forefront of everything
Waiting to be said
okay. okay.  like a sigh--
I had been trying all night
From the moment he threatened
To drive away, standing insolently
In front of his headlights--
but he was quiet and
all i could do was smile
and say, but that's not
enough anymore, is it?
no, it's not.
but I know why it isn't,
and why this poem is
short with so very
few
words.
because decisions are
yes or no, but some yes'
are too
late and
some no's
follow in suit.