my favorite ****
color is the unwashed
indigo blue of your truck
with a muddy license plate

Parked off to the side
Beside the pines

whoever tries to
forget you is a
coward.

I've been holding instead
of hugging, lately. And
I've found that everyone
feels like they're breaking--
thin pieces of plywood
that might snap if I squeeze
too hard--

there's nothing quite poetic
about the ways I miss you
in correlation to the lack
of time we spent getting
to know each other, but
i still feel the heat creep
up on my neck around
3am and I have dreams
that i'm chasing you
through tattered hallways
streaming with silk and felt
but never catching you, always
opening doors to more doors and
losing your heels around stapled
corners, and up plastic stairwells
I could have swore I was actually
up on Oak Creek Grade cleaning
mud out of my backseat, pulling
strips and strips of cotton from
the floors and nursing oily
shoulders--with someone
telling me take care of him,
take care of him--


it doesn't take much for me to realize when I'm still hoping for something.

You asked me why I stopped
talking to you. I told you a half
truth, but really it was because
I was sick of hearing you hate
everything in existence

So,
yes, I have waited
for you for so long.
But I will continue
to love you fiercely
just as I did before
i knew your face.

I  s t i l l  b l a m e  m y s e l f.
a n d  w e  c o u l d  a r g u e
t h e  d y n a m i c s  o f  h a t e
a n d  w h a t  c o n s t i t u t e s
a s  h a t i n g  b u t  w h y
b o t h e r  w h e n  y o u
w i l l  never  s a y  m y
n a m e  w i t h  a
p o s i t i v e
c o n n o t a t i o n.

To be honest, i keep waiting
for something to happen, to
appear, to somehow find me
but I should know that I have
always had to search things
out on my own. You would
think that all this time with
myself I might learn some-
thing new, but I know this
skin, I know these feet. The
boundaries that have made
me up are ones I've already
pushed. I am trying to make
use of material that is not
palpable. Getting no where
with no one to tell but

you.

this should
f e e l  l e s s
f  o  r  c  e  d*
you should
feel more
right
.

perfect timing,
as in,
doing a once around and through
to find an old couple departing in
the senseless maze of a parking lot
pulling out in that corner space near
the front--they must have had
your name on their lips, on their
suede coats in the early October
chill, your name printed meticulously
in the shopper, carelessly thrown into
their suburban driveway, subliminal
during their morning coffee,

yes,

perfect.

I'm not strong enough
or bright enough and
maybe I deserve that
kick in the face, tellin'
me to wake up
Brooke
Wake Up.

This poem is called text her back because
I'm not sure why I reached out to befriend
you, but you taught me how to swing dance
beneath the lone concert awning in the middle
of Veteran's park at 9:00 pm.  Is that how they
do it in Texas? The niceties of i-don't-quite-know-you
and I'm avoiding telling you my age because I'm
worried I'm such a baby.

This poem is called text her back because I thought
calling you a blessing was a bit of a stretch for we've-
only-known-each-other-for-a-week, I don't know the
details, drowned out in nuances,
afraid of "I'm sorry, you
thought differently,
it was just a
dance."

i told the person I loved
the most not to read my
poetry, but I have given
this link to two other people
and they never bothered to
read any of it.

what does that say
about me?

I want so badly
to send you these
songs, what am I
craving? for what
do i long.

that acrylic portrait you painted of
me is in the garage because it kept
falling off the wall as your ghost
moved silently through the halls
and unhinged the nails, you stood
in this room and opened the windows
blew the frames down and told me
to forget about you.

We have been the self
casters of broken hearts,
without prize sometimes
but there is credit for the
things we have fixed on
our own, you fixed this
on your own. Reset and
splinted, healed and set

free

if it is true that some
get worse before they
get better, then I hope
God finds you in
between and
offers you
grace just
to see.

waiting to be
someone's dancer

this charcoal is a part of me
and I believe i can erase my
mistakes with a chunk of
rubber, i can gesture draw
and not worry about the
lines, because all the lines
are me and i am all the lines

Happy Thanksgiving,
and that's when you
started losing grammar
as if you had no time to
use punctuation for me,
I wasn't worth the finality
of a period or a comma.

today i read aloud to
alyssa while she cleaned
the machine, between the
purge of the steam wand
and the loud grate of the
burr grinder, I welcomed
a strange catharsis expended
into the shop where my words
filled up the sinks and found
sanction in release, most of all
when I read about Chris--who
has long since left my heart--
but that was only a lie, he
is still there, these poems
are still here, still in the
thick of my spirit,
waiting in cracks
waiting to heal.

the daisies
broke
ground today
such small leaves-
if joy could grow
i am positive that
was it--
crying over tiny
daisy stems
oh...hi
oh, hi, baby.
*oh, hi, little thing.

right after we reach that point where for the first month all I want to do
is explain the same things over and over to you, whether it be the things
you said last week or the things you said just today, or the way I feel
about you in fifteen different languages (with the first 13 still being English)
and that 34% of the time the water will be too hot and I will come
on too strong and all of my poems will be these drawling confessions
of love, because I do, I love. And it will never be that I fall in love easy
but more that I see the wounds in others, their quick tempers and shortages, the vices they pull from their back pockets when
dead friends come alive in conversations
the night he died he--


The truth is, before you date me--
the first forty-seven dinner places
will likely be Subway and Chiles
I won't eat onions in front of you
and if my carpets aren't vacuumed
you're not coming over.

the truth is
I spend a lot of money
on things I shouldn't and
will always opt for breakfast foods
or a jar of peanut butter over a
meal, furiously switch through
harmonies to Traveling Soldier by
the Dixie Chicks

the truth is


the truth is.

These are only guidelines and I am more predictable. My fantasies include meeting your family,
cooking with your mother
and several disjointed memories
strung together in this big awkward conglomeration of
sensations and fabrics, the erratic heartbeat of
every subway pigeon in New York
who lies to itself about it's
own desensitization
but the trains still rattle
their bones and the quick winds
still tear through their feathers
and each day manages to feel
like sets of ten minutes that
each last a year.

I thought back to when
I apologized to Jennifer
and she started her
response with the
fact that she did
not accept my
apology, but
i should not
have to apologize
for stumbling, for
tripping on myself
for losing my footing
for a while, for hours
for six months.

No. Jennifer. I am not sorry.

You did not
tell me you
were coming

up above the city
I am encouragingly
alone and a shutter
of bodies share the
passenger seat, a
deck of faces shuffled
in defining moments
motion blurred, framing
me,
here.

I'm tired of asking you to kiss me.

I'm tired of asking you to kiss me,
with this impatience that sustains
me, an appetite for romance that
is more fragile than the feelings
I barely have for you, after all,
chasing a single spark is hopeless
because they're lost as quickly as
they leave the flame. When was the
last time something felt right?
When something felt right?
The last time something felt
complete because it had run
f  u  l  l   c  i  r  c  l  e, when I was
comfortable being touched
or touching     I hardly remember
a time before this where something
wasn't rushed because i am a habitual
rusher, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

My clothes are a social
kind of hide, a public naked
when i come home
stripped, sort of alone
i can get out of these fabric holes
but i can't ever get out of this

skin

you whistled
when you
ate

I have one excuse
and people tell me
that I cannot use
Him.

Chris, why do wounds itch
when they're healing? and
you were in the middle of
something, drawing or playing
a game, and you kind of
looked at me sideways
and did that thing with
your lips.

Well what do you expect?
It has new skin  
growing over it.

and you must have went
back to what you were doing
because I thought it all to be very
prophetic somehow.

i'm struggling between
the halves of my soul
that grow out and away
upholding a frayed doctrine
that shudders and trembles
on its string, unable to be
on its own without a divine
voice to soothe the cracks
and speak sweet truths
place definitions over
ragged cuts and
stitch together
stone to stone
with nothing
but water.