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.

what a threat to be erased.

or i will erase you completely

people are strange and

the quota for that is filled--

one time is enough to be

told such an ugly thing.

i imagine she is
so much more
fair, they all are
always blonde
and delicate,
I have to
tear myself away
from this place
where my body
is just a shadowy
afterthought in
the midst of a
hundred yellow
strands, someday
i will not stomp
through the forest
someday I will
be able to linger
and be the kind
of beautiful

the kind
of
beautiful.

i read an article on the asymmetrical nature
of internal organs including, but not limited to
the nature of the heart

and how the body folds in over itself so
many times as it forms.
how outwardly being able
to sense things on both side of the body is crucial, so
we are to have two legs, two arms, two ears, two eyes--

but the heart was on the inside,
with less pressure to be two,
mattering less as to where it was
distributed--more likely to be
a mess,

would i have been better with two
hearts-- one on each sleeve?
to sense things on both sides, would i
have been more aware, more transparent, or
more dense, with the capacity for much, for
much--

or would i have been
overwhelmed with the novelty
of each person i meet, which I often feel anyway
as if i should tuck them away
and seek out promises to
keep them stolen into
the one, singular *****
that I have?

I should have been born with two--
either way, the unevenness of it all, you can't fix
the broken with the same crooked hands,
I am not at all symmetrical
I do not sense with both sides of my body
not at all with my heart
I have acted on an imbalance and hoped
the sullied appearance of such a vigorously beating thing
rough and on it's own would
speak volumes but it does not
and has not.

you said bad guy
like it was inevitable
as if the amount of
things said against
you
made an awful lie
true, as if a town with
zero know-how had
gotten inside,
you
said you had to stick
around to show it didn't phase
you, didn't want to be held
because maybe that's not what
good guys do.

maybe you're right. good men
have run further,
and if you're still falling then
wait for the ground,
but you'd be silly to
think you're
anything but a man
who wants to best
or deserves the best
and if you have to
hide it then hide it,
fake it if you have to
fake it but you're
too warm to
talk like that
there's no ice
in you yet
just a breeze
just a season

**** it, should stop even trying to
be the good guy

but that's not true,
because if it's not me
it will be someone else
twice as lovely with a
better heart probably,
the way i wanted to
be or thought i could be

that's not true,
you're too good, a little rusted
salvaged from a bunker in penrose
but you shine up real nice,
you're kinda pretty
i said and you smiled
like you used to,
but *that's true

you're too beautiful
to be the villain
have you seen the
gems they dredge up
from the earth?
covered in soot and grime,
a thousand years of soil
they don't sell for much
but lord if they ain't
the most gorgeous
things you ever seen
dandelion yellow
pine green,
the kind of
oranges you wouldn't imagine

and if i could ever make
you believe a single thing
again it'd be that you're
some kind of sunday-morning
leave the weeds for another day
kinda feel, sweet corn and barley
Rest my head on the window and
let
Just
*let

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.