I am afraid to tell
people that I have
no friends, because
I am afraid to lose
them too.

My mother once told me that
what's in the heart comes out the mouth
so I became accustomed to believing that everyone is inherently bad
instead of the latter

I recently unearthed old photos of me
with a mop of scraggly black hair and
a ***** smile on my face, the kind of
smile I used to give before sinking into
myself, twisting my face up to disappear
and reassess my insides, how was that heart
workin' out for you, sweetheart?

And years later I still feel the familiar jolt,
manage to think that I am too sloppy for
loving, I've always been a pallet of nudes
a swarthy child waiting to be as blue as
the sky, holding myself to a standard
physically impossible, people tell me
I'm beautiful and I still wonder why
if this is as easy as loving myself then
I want to know how,  I say thank you
with a hand over my heart to hold in
the little girls, who still wait in the middle
of empty classrooms for a partner, who still
envy the women that grew fox-glove petals
in the golden hour while I crouched in the
curly willow branches, semi-dormant
perpetually brown with too much skin
standing off the side because I was too
afraid to touch others,

too afraid of an olive complexion. Too afraid of being in this body.


When someone loves you, how will you know?
what will they do when they see my scars, the ones that only
show at certain times in certain ways? Under hot water and at
noonday? when will I be okay with a broken heritage, with a mexican
daddy who cut the ropes back to the village where I was supposed to
return to? And why do I feel like the winds and hot sands when boys hold my hands? Like I am burning up the rivers or smoldering beneath
the dry autumn brush in San Isabel, where only beetles and lizards congregate, a backboard baby with
an overprotective mother, carrying the strings I've tried to tie to others--

direct me home, sir.
direct me home, ma'am.

Tell me who I am.
tell me who i am

I want to bloom--

is that the word for it? I want to unfurl,

billow, love unconditionally, fearless

no excuses, there would be no excuses

to be pure in an impure vessel

a spirit hasn't chosen its home

beautiful in my wretchedness,  

salt will still burn like all the others

but i'll be soothed by words of milk

is that strange of me to say, I want

to know the woman I'll be someday

all weekend i fed cucumber skins
and apple chunks to Minokie
and several times i thought the old
corpses of tree trunks were fallen calves
leant to and packed with damp soil, white
roots stretched out under the overcast sky
peeking out of the natural mulch and fern
soft and raw

If I walked past the rocks quick like, they
looked like shoulders or kneecaps, angel heads
that the earth washed out, pines keeled over with
their innards exposed, the sound of veins being ripped
from the bedrock still audible

I started thinking of things based on where you
could have been or would have been
with me--sleeping patterns we might have
discovered, the narrow places we find we fit,
the hollows too cold and mountains just right--
how the night flashed behind my eyelids
like a buoy in tumult and the rain sounded like the footsteps
of someone stopping at the edge of my tent over and over

I keep casually mentioning your name because
it still sounds right, but i'm cautious around the syllables
as if i've taken clay to fold around the ends, spoken secrets
into sego lily petals,
I'm a little more down in the earth as if
i've been too high up in the clouds, i've picked up
this strange way of speaking that the old folks are
drawn to--they touch my wrists and pray with me
over their anemic daughters and passed sons--

they hear me.


I keep thinkin' maybe we're meant to be or maybe
you were the catalyst to an end of a softer life i'd been
living, one without the smell of cow pats baking, the dense
grass giving off steam, uncomfortably humid but it makes your
sweat kind of sweet, and the bees think we're honeysuckle, foxglove
jim hill mustard, soaked up in truck exhaust at 5 am,
a dry cold that advances on your lungs--
almost hurts the way it unabashedly fills you up,
doesn't feel sheltered, feels saturated and heavy with
possibility. Feels like the amber grass, newborns, cold tin roofs,
stars in the back of your throat.

tell me, was that in your blood? and when i dug splinters out of your
palm, when you were staring around my earlobes, did it spread? Did the birds pick you up and scatter you like wildflower seeds? it jumped river, through our mouths or elsewhere

we're not talkin but you're still here
we're not talking but I'm still there.

how do you
tell if people
are lying to
you?

If he listened to my body's language
the way that my hands talk,
the static noise that is my hair
the things my knees say in remorse
all the laments made by my stretch marks as
he swam along the surface
with his fingers on my skin,
to hide between the burlap,

If he could just hear the thoughts buried,
beneath his muted kisses
all the things i wish I could say,
without dashing his deepest wishes

The things
we reserve for
people we don't know

there's a dance I do for you
not for you but for you
sweeping my hips, so animalistic
my hair is bed-mussed, yesterday's
eyeliner beneath my lids, my
lips are tight and dry, I'm
roiling, muscles pinched under my skin
rolling, against bones
knees filled with rocks because
i'm planted on on the ground, covered
in sand waiting to be
clean
clean
clean

am i to think
i am the only
one who finds
sharing bodies
to be sacred or
was that lost
am I just

dreaming.

I had a dream we
kissed and you ****** the air
out of my lungs, said you were in trouble
oh, but it was a dream, I was in no wrong so
I kissed you again, gave it back

no respecter of persons
and neither should I be
no respecter of persons
and neither should I be

I see you blended
into my artwork, a
pencil smudge or
shape in the carpet
alight in yellow paint
dusted over in eraser
shavings, drawn out
in miscellaneous shapes
and misplaced lines, I
drew you out till the
last strings, the last
lead, the last words

I have not been happy in a while
and I cry a lot, but I will not tell
anyone because I do not want the
reputation for being a cry baby.

it was an incredibly
sad thought that hid
itself well, almost didn't
catch it--I wished I were
a boy when I love being
a girl, as if the amount of
self-loathing I expend would
disintegrate if I were a different
gender.

the count of monte cristo
sounds so much better after two
glasses of sweet wine, the rim
resting gently against chapter 5

“This philosophic reflection,” thought he, “will make a great sensation at M. de Saint–Meran’s;” and he arranged mentally, while Dantes awaited further questions, the antithesis by which orators often create a reputation for eloquence.

How great this will make me look, in other words,
this fine comparison between two similar things.
and I find myself smiling, like one would over
the renewal of past lovers, past books
the direct gaze of persons no longer
strangers, beneath waterfalls
wings spread
vaguely vulnerable
and somehow
liberated.

i have
no one
now.

I'd forgotten about the last frost
the tv casting a flickering glow on
the opposite wall, I'd been counting
the number of times you'd said ****    (six)
still expecting (hoping) you to take my
hands and blow warm air through
my thumbs--

we left the cows (which had dwindled since I'd last been)
and climbed the rails near the house to get to the roof
it's so dark that it's light out here, I've got some song
by the Randy Rogers Band coming up through my
hair and buzzing on my lips

curse the photographic memory, I see you wobbling on the icy ridges
putting your faith in bolt heads to hold you upright--this stretch of
stars linin' up with your shoulders, your heart is crooked but beats
pretty straight--sometimes the air glistens around you like you're
still cookin' in the sun or maybe you've got some of that anger
still left over from Ashley, (who knows) I don't say a thing.

People say the night is black, but the night is blue. The night is the color of the year, purple quartz, johnny cash's long drawl, the night is your shadow, your laugh, a wily hand briefly tucked in the seam of my thigh where it all runs together, where all the water meets on Coleman land--disenchanted by our differences, scouring skin like shrikes waiting
for an opening, going in for the dive and finding that I am all melted
wax and whimpers--
lying shoulder to shoulder like we first
did up on Skyline,
boy, did I.
Boy, did I?

Lately I have wondered
where my life has gotten
to while I spent my time
worrying about the sand
on the beach or the hair
on my head.

I said
i like the smell of whiskey
and the whole cabin was filled
with puerto ricans and chile pepper
seeds scattered on the floor, a hundred
pots lined up on the stove with rouxs
and sweet syrups, masa mixed with
pork broth, shortening and garlic
the men lining the porch in
sunglasses and blue wranglers
going on about the rig or Virginia
or Hurricane Matthew--

what is it?
about running away?

I thought;
time passes so fast
I've clipped pieces from the past, snapshots i've unknowingly gathered
Uncle Dude three sheets out, standing in the kitchen
after you'd been drinking all day, your mom reminiscing in the corner
with tired eyes and stained fingers from wine,raisins, condensed milk,
consoling a drunk neighbor, (Florida State won earlier)
through the screen while you reclined in the sun or
the rotating image of your heels crunching through the
long morning grass.


I'd been sustained on quiche that needed no seasoning,
coffee creamer, cherry pie and the feeling of slipping bare
feet into boots, on quiet, on  
dark forearms and white biceps
the print of a little bird ring,
dark, brittle nights that smelled like cigars and Coors--


I've been trying to talk to God
all weekend but I think he's gone.
I think I'm alone.
I think I've run away.

I'm home, but there's nobody here.

If it is true that for every closed door
there is one that is open, then I have
closed every door to look for cracks
in the windows, slivers of light near
the rugs, waiting by the slot for the
mail to arrive, never blind-peeking
because I place weight on the hope
that this house will break apart and
all dust will fly from the rafters above
me, who might finally breathe the
foreign air and taste the new day

I've heard that my body is a temple.

that disciples once traveled through, they used my ribs
as stairsteps and slept sound in the soft
ventricles of my heart, I've said I used to be soft
and this is mostly true, mostly lies,

you can lay a  f i e l d  o f  c o t t o n  
over  concrete  or cover  granite  in
s  i  l  k  but that does not change the
consititution of what lies underneath
and I have been cold
a bear trap constantly reset, I have been a wolf masquerading
as a girl, slick bricks of ice wrapped in wool

there has been hell in this holy city
and I have been raging through the rooms
scattering caltrops in the halls, wrapping widowers
in smoke, steaking kisses, slamming doors, wreaking
havoc where there need not have been--

Have you seen me? call the troops, have you seen me? fists clenched
temple burning. A chest full burning brambles, hot marble walls.
there is hell in the holy city.


hell.