early morning grey Greeley
Violet's cats woke me up
and I left her roommate
taking a hit upstairs, just
wanted to leave, just wanted
to leave, didn't want to think
that this was the same kind
of life you were living. i'm
still not used to this you
that I don't even know
still not used to this
you that was there
all
along.

haven't seen my dad in almost
three months, so he came over
to talk about the weeds
and the dandelions
the lilacs that i haven't
planted and the creepers
tangling around the
fence posts,
he touches the leaves
softly like he does with
most things, circles the
yard and scuffs the gravel
with the heel of his boot
inspecting for the usual--

How've ya been? and I
nod because my dad hasn't
known a single thing 'bout
my life since I was 16

i'm getting a dog. I say, holding
my hands out from here to there,
half Shepard and somethin' else,

i still expect repercussions for doing
things on my own but he just smiles
and goes on about dog doors and
how i still don't have a gun in my house

branson was saying i should think about not
gettin' a  .22 and he pulled out
his glock for me to feel per the norm

where've you been?
around.
how's work? while i pull the slide back
and slip out of my sneakers
you know how you walk into a room
and they treat you different?

He's leaving now, his gun back in the holster
holds out his arms for a hug.

they don't like you much, huh?
no. and i laugh, to stop from cryin' and
mask the shake in my voice
it's alright, though, pays the bills and stuff.

i have no desire to tell him about the
things that have been happening lately
about Matt and the bars and the trip
to Walgreens for a two minute test
i want to ask him why he didn't
tell me more about boys and men
when I was little but that's a
silly question when I'm grown

we never tell each other love you
we just go, so he leaves,
his bikes packed in the bed
down 19th, truck grumbling
the way they all do.

Has anyone ever said
your name like sweet rolls?

perhaps the reason
I cannot be still is because
light so often shifts, falls
scattered through blinds
refracted in mirrors, slipping
and bursting, drifting across
wood like a great yawn
tipped and toppled over
crevasses, sliding under doors
you've seen the way it reaches
in blithe slices,

perhaps I have been snuffed
out, i have probably trimmed my
own wick, or thrown duvets across
myself, spilled into black coffee to mix
with devils, see how good I really am
but found that you only flare up before
smoldering,

i've spent more time drunk in the past
month than any of the time before my 21st
woken up to trace the rafters in his room
and count the letters of an O'Neal jersey hung
on his closet, memorized the stitches on twelve
longsleeve shirts and changed the calendar from
March to April on a drunk, half-alive hour.

this isn't me, I'm whispering into his shoulder blades.
I'm so lost, matt. I say, but he no longer answers.
he no longer has things to say, he no longer has
the right to comfort me, that's been stolen away.
I have stolen that away, I am a light but I am a thief
too forward and impatient, hearty and loyal but incredibly
disconnected,

and don't be a ***** about it he remarks, getting into his truck.
I wanted to tell him, hold me like you used to.
maybe I deserve these things he says, I hardly know

anymore.


I hardly know.

please
say you
forgive me

he asks
why don't i look him in the eyes
why do i look away
why can't i make that contact
does it scare me?
does it embarrass me?
truthfully, there is no truth
in why i don't
i don't want the connection
i don't like not knowing
what does or doesn't happen
behind those pupils

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.

I do not know
how to forgive
them, though

Everytime I caught
A glimpse of the rafters
I saw you leaning over
The matte black railings
With a red solo cup
Lanky arms folded
Staring down across
The floor,
But then it wasn't
Just you in the corner
You were in between every
stool, in your many forms
And I wondered if this
Is what it was--what it
Was when people say
They've seen a ghost
But you are so very
alive.

My dad said
there was
a hole
and the girl
was the grain of
sand
but i feel
like a canyon and
the wind hollows me
out

I am terribly
sad and angry
it is so easy for
you to be of the
world.

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 will stop holding my
heart out like grocery
samples, take this,
take this, I've heard

we take we
think we deserve--that
of lonely people, then--

i would love to give
to the lonely but not
myself,

if not a hand-out then
bushels of peonies
wrapped in brown
paper, in bloom
and beautiful.

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.

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.

there was this dream
where the sidewalk stretched away
from me and brought all the people with it
the street lamps, too

i like the things you do to me
that's the only reason i stay
the way you draw the water out
the way you pull my skin apart
that's the only reason i stay

when you are making love and he cannot
call your name, his body covered in gashes
and half of them are not even from your
teeth,

after you have shown up at
two am to cry into his shoulder
blades, driving him wild with
your tears that he believes unjustified

to not know what you've seen
until days later, realizing the
dark haired girl was not just
any dark haired girl

if you are holding his head
while he breathlessly mutters
secrets, you have given your
heartbeat up as a lullaby
leaving at midnight
like the dirtiest cinderella
so he will not have to feel
ashamed about the
blonde hairs all over his
bedspread

you leave quietly
and close the
door behind you
when you are off work
when you lock the house
when the moonlight is spread
out across brush hollow and he
says you are ruining everything

close the door.

A little girl
inside of me
cannot make
friends and
she still hides
now and then

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.

one foot in and one
foot back, well it don't
pay to live like that, so
I cut the ties and I jumped
the tracks*

The more I think about it
the more I realize that it
goes both way, but you
never jumped the tracks,
chris, you never jumped
the tracks

but
i
did.


because one foot in was
more than one foot back
and I was tired of standing
in the doorway.

Occasionally they
ask me why we
are so different