I remember the kiss and my reddened
body turned on your mattress, a slip of
rubber, a small snap and your limber hands
dried in salt
were upon my thighs
had I really let you have it on the floor of my downstairs bathroom
where I could see the dirt beneath
the porcelain toilet, my shoulder blades
puncturing my skin, so thin,
rolled across the tile?

Here I was again, letting the innocent daylight
spill across my belly, pleading
instead I let you polish your buckle
Me
grunting, you whispered
I love you,
to make amends in
perhaps a moment of regret,  maybe
you realized something or in this lapse
you thought it necessary to reassure  me
because that
after-all
would be logical

well something deeper
than the ocean here burns,
splits apart and quakes --

we've seen farther than the working
men can go--felt the emptiness of a
disillusioned life, wondered how the
masses buy away their souls,
he touches you and you feel
not a thing, just the skin beneath
his hairline that doesn't glow--

You hear about his sanguine childhood
a finespun gossamer thing,
stretched across the state of colorado,
webbed and spun around
tent stakes, campers, drawn into the Four Corners
spooled in a Chattanooga coffee mug, dipped in  
day old orange juice
I have
settled
into the bottom of his
cup, a thick pulp, rind
and stem -- terrified that
I won't pull through,
that this isn't enough
that I am too much
or too little, haven't
been or seen
there are no
scars on my knees
or callouses on my hands
when the bears came I had
no pots and pans --

I study the sofrito, stir the
rice, break open green olives
and slide the pimientos onto
my tongue --
deftly speaking about shredding
chicken, chopping onions, rolling
corn tortillas
wondering what it is about people
about parents, about chile con carne


this pan holds 21
like the age, like the game, I think.

I am truly terrified.

Have I ever not feared failure,
although everyone else said I was going slow
if there wasn't such a push to be a
someone
or a
something
maybe I wouldn't worry about getting anywhere, anytime
soon

I see,
when I look at her that
everything is so smooth and
without hindrance
taut, I suppose
whereas when I try
like that
I am crooked and unappealing
there is no equivalent in
my world that can compare
to her
i could never be
appropriately pretty
for you

the way he wears his words
must be the way he wears
his clothes, in few but many
not so much so that I still
can hear his heartbeat
pulse between the lines

i'd been saving
this cream colored
dress for you
with the silk lining
and lace flowers at the
hem,

instead i am brushing
pollen off my shoulders
knee deep in dandelions
pulling canada thistle
and sheperds purse

a black and white
filmstrip on the refrigerator
moving in stop motion
empty moscato
a blue flannel
and a half drunk
waterbottle still
on the right side
of my bed.

I'm terribly weary
of new faces,
I can feel the concrete rising up through my chest
piling at my lips, i'm turning to stone
solid as granite, this is more than just a wall
more than just
a statue, my
organs go too.

i had a dream i was rising through the trees

i had a dream i was falling through the ground
on docks calling a name i've never known
sitting in empty studies with the lord
calling mine
bad news used to sound like footsteps
down the hallway, used to be my mother's
hand turning the doorknob
and now it is a rotating hubcap
or a night without stars
full yellow moons out over the
complexes in the west
it sounds like empty milk
cartons and the tone of my own voice
it is people demanding that i be open
the most tragic of flaws--

i am meeting people just like me
telling them I want something more
can the wounded want
more?

I used to like when he hugged me outside my car for
four minutes, how he wouldn't let me leave even if it
was cold outside and i was only wearing flip-flips, always
after our lips were red and chafed and my hair was a god-awful
mess on my head,

I used to like it when he listened to odd future, when he complained
about how ugly he was when I knew he was beautiful, how he was
worried that I would care that his skin was rough, that his skin was rough
that his skin was rough, but I loved his textures, his angles, his curves, never
smooth, never flat skin.

I used to like his baby cheeks and defined jawlines, how nothing ever mixed
with him, but he was milk and paint and oil. Baked potatoes with broccoli and
thyme, rosemary cloves.

I can't point out where all these things ended.

When I started to complain when he held me for too long in front of the door because
I told him he couldn't hold me in front of the car anymore. It was too cold.
When did my lips starting staying pink instead of red, when did
my hair start staying perfect, when was the last time I had held his hand
without being afraid of some boring, ridiculous reason, when was the last
time I laid in bed with him when was the last time I thought that he was the
best thing to ever happen to me, where do these thoughts go?

Overthinked, thanked, thunked? Did I wear beyond use, does my love have
an expiration date?

Once, I told him that I was not hysterical and he could call me
he answered what's up kid as if his voice had dropped, but it
hadn't. I replied submissively and he told me that it would not
work even though I did not truly want it to in the first place. It
was so silent on the other end I could hear his car running. Here
to stop on the hill to talk, the cul-de-sac with no cars where I once
sat between his legs and did unspeakable things on the porch of
someone's summer house. He wasn't sorry even though he said
it twice, I made sure to count. I could probably account for all his
apologies on one hand, the entirety of our two year relationship
was one. They say you lose them the way you gain them, so I
must have fought too hard both ways coming. He said goodbye
twice and meant it, where my mom found me curled up on the
swing by our old house. Drenched in sweat, it must of been 80
outside, I smelled like paint, we were redoing my room. Summer

is so hard now, Maroon 5 on a Chelan boat. The memories are messy.
What was that, three years ago, now? I am still startled by your name
in my phone, by the notes I still find in boxes. I've kissed a few since you
anyway, but I still remember the way your neck felt.

He broke me and
i choose to still feel broken
I broke him and
he will forever blame me
for the pain that he feels
despite how many times
i would have told him I am
sorry
I am scared of boys and what
they can do when I don't make
everything abundantly clear about myself
My no's are too silent and too weak
everything I do is taken as a go,
go for it,
when i'm really saying otherwise
But I like to feel loved, and wanted
and everything beneath the sun, dirt
trees, water, water especially
i'm not agressive, I'm not these things
they think I am but
sometimes i gain
too much velocity
I don't want to skin
my knees to stop
no, not again.

you pull up and give me a
Hug, I press my fingers into
your shoulders and forget to
imprint the feeling. Earlier you
said I should just say things even
if they come out garbled, you asked
"How are you?" but it was more like
How are you? and it sounded a
a whole lot like something more. So
I ask; Do you still love me? and your
answer is broken, but you are hasty
to return, and you? I say yes, no
hesitation and close the door.
All I remember are the two beats
my heart gave, loud and unyielding
the way my chest was tight and I
wanted to ask if you'd kiss me
don't look behind me, I am so
confused as to why i. Why...i.
why I?

somewhere in my dreams
last night I swam in a lake
that glittered as a hundred
thistle prisms, I ran through
schools of fish, hallways that
whistled, stairwells that were
no feat at all, everyone was
somehow impressed by me
I held faces between palms
and kissed so many people.

the boys will pick up sticks
down by the river bank and bury
themselves in swampy soil and inch
thick ***** mags from before they were
twinkles or considerations and their fathers
ignore their quick wits and charms--let their
curiousity coil around the garden stakes till
it chokes the tomatoes and lays itself across the
blushing rhubarb that mama worked so hard to
cultivate.

Papas, why didn't you chop down those trees or
tame the stinging nettle, the roof is riddled with
bullet holes and the rifle in the attic is still warm
still vibrating on the shelf, buried in moss, in
wisteria dropping in and growing up the sides--
she can make a man more beautiful but still hide a broken a home

you had a chance to guide your sons

you had a chance.

Gone to the market
lost in the vegetable aisle
carrots, onions, zucchini
if this was him, then this is
you

all my photos are in his passenger's seat
these black and whites of him singing
and talking about the wars he has and hasn't
been in, navigating Penrose like he walked
these roads a thousand times before he ever
took a truck--

and he know everybody's name, date of birth
and probably their social, who died and when--
he's been livin' as 14 other people,
never gets no space and I'm no respecter of that
neither cause the way he looks at me used to
scare me and now I know he jus' scared himself.

saw it when he told me about Braun's body
in the brambles, and in the letters he gets from
past lovers full of jealous jargon-- you made me
feel terrible,  your fault, ending in a hundred
goodnights, she wants the last word and all I want
is for him to tell me what he's thinkin' when he's angry


'cause he is angry, with bitterness sunk down in his bones
and swimmin' 'round in his chest, he lost weight out at the rig
but kept all that melancholy to himself, brings it home and
drops it in a glass before taking it back in


he asks why I'm lookin' and it's just 'cause.
Just 'cause i'm looking at his eyelashes while
he sleeps or the lip of his brow hidin' eyes a lot lighter than you'd think, committing the eagle on his back to memory
with that scripture from Isaiah a ways off in my head,
scrawled on the back of my heart,
written at the crown of his spine,


I used to wonder about the integrity of his skin
if water'd seep through or run off, used to think
he was made of wood with rice paper shutters--
but he's a mountain, a snowcapped alp
you wouldn't know it from a ways off,
when he's just a soldier standing out
in the field, shoulders hunched, chin tucked
breathin' cold air, but Lord he warm, fierce as the
mistakes he runnin' from--

we both beggin' to be right
or good enough, for the sunlight
to make us into somethin' pretty
somethin' new and shined--
but for now i'm takin' pictures shotgun,
hiding my fingers in my pockets
thinking about the way his voice'd
prolly blow in on the curtains on a
summer's day, and he's singing
My love, is somewhere in that mountain....


*my love is somewhere in that mountain

perhaps unintentionally
he left a blue service pen
and a tube of chapstick
hidden in the inner pockets
of the coat he gave to me
and all I could do was cry
over lip balm and the
receipt from that teriyaki
place in December, on the
way home, I drove under
25, a heavy heart but two
feet MIA, and I wondered
over and over, over and
over, would anybody, will
anybody love me as much
as he did?

Once in a while when the city lights
are cotton candy and the phone poles
are licorice wires against melon skies
the chatter fades to clacks like drum
beats with the wind inside my lungs
all the cheeks are red bowled Okinawa
sunsets beneath mocha stained tips
of fingers and we are all humbly aware
of the way our feet scuff against the
pavement on our way past the 5th
Avenue Theater.

when you learned to blow
on hot tea, when you realized
good love wasn't an old wivestale
when your body suddenly became the
least of things to keep a man
and your ego just a badly kept
garden full of weeds and
borers
when you became nothing
dust and bitters, people began to
ask you how you saw yourself
and where humble and quiet
used to stand in you found
an empty ship, wineless drums
everything now seemed alarmingly
true, maybe you weren't more than
the sum--and how long had that been so?
how long had you been tolerable,
how long had beauty been your stand in
for a personality, how long had your hips
spelled your name, gyrating to the
songs you only wished you could sing--


I have only now started to laugh aloud
or walk knowing what's ahead and not
every inch of gravel beneath my feet,
deep breaths are my saving grace
i have traded anxiety for faith
i started dreaming again,
I opened my mouth and
not a single word came out
but i had left port
laden with
more.

your mom's number
showed up under a different
name in my snapchat contacts
and it was so silly---I felt something
slip away against me, lingering for
a moment as if that were goodbye
enough, but nothing is or ever has
been goodbye enough for you
with me for you, with me,
for you, for you. and I
wondered if you would
even let me know that you
got a new number or if
I'd text you one day and
someone else would respond
This isn't, chris, you have the wrong number
for how long would I have had the wrong number?
Maybe
all
along.

He stands like William Stanley Moore
a mugshot of an old gangster I saw once
in sepia, stony, strangely clarified, endowed
immortalized in caramel marble
glassy eyes and all--

he plowed ahead that night
fingers twitching, only to turn
around outside of the light
once we'd gone through
the doors and I'd fled down
the stairs in his wake
to clip his heels

I've been chasing his shadow
tying my lead to his bow
far away from my own
dock, a sailboat piping
behind a cottonclad warship

I am small and timid
soft and malleable, unwild
unwoven, strips of silk in the foyer
running through his fingers
sheets sliding down his back
I cannot give what other girls
have given, the way they
dive and plead and swarm
I can only coat, can only
rinse, only lather, I can only
run over--

I am standing at his bookshelf
running a finger over the spines
gingerly closing the cabinet or
slipping into his bed, tucked
away like a porcelain doll
I try
i try
i try

My hair was once all aquarelle
and peony, I wondered who

painted me

I'm sure he exists
i mean,
another like you
but for now you
are the only one
a strip of light on
the carpet in my
room, 30 minutes
away on a good
day without much
traffic and i'm
entirely horrified
by how confused
I am, my head is
all mist and tangled
string, my nose burns
with all the tears i
could cry but won't
because I already
have
most of all there are
parts of me screaming
to be acknowledged, to
let go of a hundred
things and welcome
something new but
i don't know how
i'm telling you i
don't know how and
nothing good comes
for girls like me who
are the way they are

I permanently imprinted
the image of you sleeping
to torture me on a good day
sweden filling out your lips
and long dark lashes rippling
back and forth, we have always
woken up mid-dawn when everything
is still soft and paisley blue, so I can't
remember you in any other way
than dark and lovely, the morning
light always spilling over you like
you were born to be in the daylight
with picks of orange in your eyes
just the way I like them, oak brown
like fresh soil, moss and maple tree sap
looking at me like i'm the only person
who will
ever
look
back.