blake said something
interesting, prefaced by
i told you i'm not educated
as if he's begun every sentence
with that since he could believe
himself--

i just thought ya'll had
to be in the same book, maybe
not on the same page--

and he laid his hands out on his
lap as if he were tryin' to read himself

and ya'll are just different books
and i figured
maybe that was so
maybe we were two
fictions in the wrong
section--maybe I was
paperback, maybe I am
prose, maybe I am an anthology
of asides, of footnotes and maybe
you weren't even a book
just a slip of sheet music
to mark my chapter--


dunno, I say, laughing.
but I should go home now.




I should go home now.

over the last few months
you couldn't put a number
to how many times i've thought
about you Matt,

how many angry drives I've sped
through the twisted wind channels
of brush hollow and stood at the
outcrop looking towards the dam--

the ungodly mornings spent staring
at my right arm stretched across the pillow
not even thinking about you but also him

this translucent idea of a man that
might exist, thin as a wafer and
constantly fading

how often i pulled up your name
and stared at the trees in my yard
or the sunsets or the moon that
was gratingly beautiful and was
just ******

but the amount of time it
takes my soul to ease into it is
shortening now, and all the
things I missed back then
the traits and bits that
flew silently beneath
the radar are all coming to
light

and I am realizing how blind
it all was, how constructed
the lies were, how I was
never the perfect girl for you
i just tried so desperately to be--

and the strangest people are
speaking into my life at
the most unexpected moments
I don't think i've got you  nailed down--
could it be that it's because you don't
quite know yourself either?

How funny,
how true
maybe all that this was
and all that you were--
a catalyst on the way
to figuring it out
but I shouldn't give too
much thought to the potter
or the ***

you were a blessing either way.

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 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

Have you ever
made your
peace
by speaking
and to no
avail did they
respond?

it is nice until you decide to come back



i thought it was the evening
in the trees but the
leaves really are yellow
much like myself and
you
were we ever really
green? this coastline
is lonely but I feel
myself for the first time
scrolls of soft skin
and black hair--all
the wrong i've ever
done in boxes, manifesting
in headaches, i am *sad
a faint hint of optimism
on the rocks
in the sea, breaking
against the cliffs
the waves come
together but I
haven't
been.

The man at  the gas station
Regarded me suspiciously
When I asked if he was 24/7
im not loitering I just don't know
Where else to go
And he brings two milk crates from the
Back and stacks them in the corner
Between the case of donuts and
Oreos

Cautiously mops the tile and
Asks if I want something to drink--
I must look positively pathetic and demure
Dressed in all my flowers and points
Dusty jeans and soft black hair

Girls like me don't do this, I think.
If I am a girl like me, if this isn't what
Girls like that do, I wouldn't know
I've lost and found a lot of that lately
Off and on strong, on and on weak

trey is yelling at me from the backseat
but I've tuned him out, his tan hands
are chalky and skinny, I've stopped with
specifics, with millennial lingo, I tell him
if you don't
shut up I'll
pop you one

girls like me
i guess.

everyone is just a trophy
a ribbon with gold lettering
paraded and pinned on
trafficked without knowing
but I don't want to be someone's
harp, the goose that lays gold
eggs for show, i am not the
prize that follows your glory
days stuck in a stadium
i am desperate to
shake this off, the
bragging rights
scrawled over
my shoulders
i do not want
to be spun on
a pedestal before
your family--what
kind of infamy
gently unwrap me
and hold me in your
palms, i am more
injured bird than
vince lobardi trophy.

you tell yourself to
get out, just go
buy a beer, walk
around, but these
people still look
lifeless and you
end up having to
chaperone a field
trip to the local
dance bar,
corralling drunk
adults into corners
realizing that these
people have no
agenda other than
to touch you or
fight, what a
silly notion
to believe that
it would be any other
way--worst of all,
April is there,
probably March,
June and July, too.

have you ever swam through the dark
and the lights switch haphazardly from on to off
whoever was on the shore has long since gone home
a pair of footprints sunk into the waves

and when you realized you were the villain
did the water become deeper? when he told you to be honest
did you feel every lie creep up your spine? not a shiver
but a steady climb,
each fib a hand dug into a thoracic foramen
squeezing into the spaces you hid your darkest self
a leak in the structure

you're crying give me love
from the bottom of sandy trenches
open palms that are only raging deserts
it's not a question but a statement of fact--
why love the things that still haven't learned
what they want? the weak kneed girls
that leave trails of broken bones and healed boys
slivers of metal wound in their hair
and just enough poison to really '
work it in
be honest he says

*on

i am tired of chasing
the people that don't
exist and feeling lied
to far after the fact,
so long down this
road that I no longer
have the right to ask--
were you, did you?
did she, was she?
i am hurt by all
the moments I allowed
myself to be involved in
that only served to show
what a silly fool I was
for not discerning soon
enough, for not saving myself
preserving something I'd always
held in high regard and now
it just feels stolen or dead
and I am ashamed to
wonder who could love me now
after that, after he,
after


after.

**** 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

Please consider
my wishes no
one else does

songs i've never
even shown you
remind me of your
dark hair, more puerto
rican than swede
sometimes you'd
snap at your mom
jokingly in spanish
and it took a hell of
a will to not sink fingers
into your hips or feel
up your spine,









how much of
me is drowned out
in a well of bad
do you think
of me at all?

after months of
not dreaming and
now that's all I do--

you came unannounced
to get the last of your belongings--
usually a house is a rough analogy
for my heart

and I went out to the garage
wide open, not a single
thing of yours left

what a strange
thing to feel like you
never knew someone

i have the hopes
strung like outliers, darting
off the graph,
stretching a little too far
I was never good with
strategy, math, a rough
sediment but never dust
and we reached the
angle of repose so
long ago.

i want to
see you too.