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 have to ask myself
am I
afraid
of
being
alone?

In all, I am brimming with emotions,
questions I'll never ask and the odd urge to
scratch your head.

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.

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.

"You don't understand,
I'm not strong enough
to let go of these people
who don't even care for
me."

one of the few things
I remember is standing
at the corner of his garage
pleading please, stop.
while he laughed, circled
the pool table, breaking
the billiards into two pockets
close and tight, that wide
grin spread across his
face before sprinting
through his front door
hoping i'd be too drunk
to remember him spitting
*get yourself home on your own

If only you had
known
the only way to
make
me fall in
love
with you was to
sing
for me

who can say
that they have
ever gone home?

i placed red flags
around the old self
and quarantined my
old life, so maybe that
is why he doesn't come
as if to say, no, not yet,
you aren't quite ripe
too small on the vine
a bud, firm within
the tangles, solidly
green and sour
I'm working on it



I'm working on it.

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 bees
call her
a flower

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.

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.

do you ever
feel like maybe
you need to shake
out your skin like a rug

i'm doing that thing--
that thing where you only
remember the good things,
the good things are saving me
from the bad things which were
so few and far between, which in fact,
weren't many at all,

I was trying to distract myself, really
if it's a question of whether I could have
loved you regardless of our differences then
the answer is yes, yes, I can.  

but the proper analogy for what we had probably
looks something like two indians on opposite sides of
the river, or maybe you were in the middle, maybe I
was knee deep in the shore, toes between the stones
with an outstretched hand, maybe it wasn't a river,
maybe it was the rapids---was I yelling?

When I said I was done, what I really meant was, i'm done
hoping that you'll cross the river. Because you're pretty stubborn,
like you're on this rotating pedestal, and you pick up where you please
but I'm rooted, dug in, cemented to a lifestyle.


I dunno. I couldn't ask you to change.

I'm doing that thing--
that thing where I remember all the good things.
wondering if God has you or someone else,
it's funny how much I miss you.

I'm falling o
for you     u
then you      t
go and do
something
beautiful
and again
i'm stuck
[inside]
for
you

My mother said
what's in the heart comes out the mouth

it wasn't necessarily a curse
at least i don't think of it that way
but by default I hear everything
as the truth, or some form of it
those words wrapped around your lungs,
threaded up your esophagus
laid out across your tongue
every time they speak
i'm wondering why they
say the things they do

I still spend
time trying to
be pretty for you

I long to leave the loop i
weave around my legs, listless
okay, once in a while, waxed over by
candle drops, wishing water would
soothe the burn brought on by bittnerness
cooked into my skin but my body is nonporous
can nothing save me from
being too dramatic?

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

if you're still out
there and if you
still read these and
if you still remember
the password to my
private blog, if you
still have my diary
entry and that painting
that flask, that TV that
shirt, those jeans, if you
still remember me, my
skin, my hips, the way
i smile, if you haven't
erased me off your
elbows, brushed me
off your chest, wiped
me against your pockets
find my chapstick in an
old jacket and call me



hey, chris. call me.