quietly, in the mornings
with only your fingers
shades tilted in, the lapis
dawn that barely makes
it through, door ajar
studied, an open book quiz
unmentionables, spoken in
water drops
melted butter
shower steam
vanilla
milk
cinnamon.

before the sun
before breakfast
before the earth opens up like it does
take it with a grain of salt, with an ounce of optimism
the glass ain't even here, we have lakes
we have amber canopies, other hands that shield
lovers that reach for us mid-dream, us
they reach for us in sleep induced affection,
they may as well be reaching across continents
who knows how far away they dream,
fingers sliding across cello strings
they make beautiful music while
they are here, traveling limbos to find us
but we're here in the morning, in the quiet morning.



how to eat honeycomb.

that old song by
eric church still
makes me hurt

anything that
moves, the green
grass and the trees
turnin' colors, I'm
sittin out on the porch
beggin' them leaves
not to fall,

I'm not ready
I tell them, what new
girl's soul have you settled
in, made your nest in the
rafters like I did in your ribs--
you remember,
girls like me

girls like me.

You sweater has been in my car
for a year, I accidentally used it
at the beach but it still smells like
you, so maybe when I'm braver
Maybe when I'm stronger, maybe
when I'm better, I'll take it out.

he once blurred out a photo
of a diary entry, but I have
read through many things
and beneath the gaussian
he had wrote

*I'd rather be alone

I had a dream
I awoke to my own
I made it out of a never-ending hallway where
truckers bore down on my back, I
saw the morning through a crack in the woodwork
I could breathe the air,
lay out over the trees below me
if so tangible, vivid, how not was it real?
who is to say these illusions aren't physically palpable
a photo etched over in pencil, grainy
my hands were soft and drawn
but when you wake up in a place where you sleep
you open your eyes

before you left i dragged you the mall, we actually took your car
and I told you about the skin under my thigh that felt like a mountain
pasture and then we went into Teavana where the cashier manipulated me
into buying forty dollars worth of tea leaves and I felt like **** afterwards
because i hadn't really wanted to buy forty dollars of tea leaves. You didn't
roll up your sleeves, but you stopped me in the middle of the walk way by
Starbucks and the American Girl store and took the bag. You took my wallet,
my receipt, my heart, and told me stay there. When you came back, you said
you had returned it.  I stood in awe of you, ready to cry. You had skin, lungs,
eyes and a mouth, living, breathing, ready to lie at my expense.  That was the first
time I held your arm in months. Looking back, maybe it was only child parts of me
clinging to the one person that continued to stand up for me, i don't know. i really don't
know.

I still have that receipt.

she planted secrets once
potted them with fresh
soil and watched them
grow, they were never

weeds

What is wrong
with talking to
me? Is there something
wrong with me? is there
something wrong with me?


is there something wrong with me?

I would never build
her of my problems
I'd understand why
all inventions hate their creators
trying to do for the good of themselves
others, if they contribute
but i would build
her of my problems
then maybe i could
make it work

I want a typical romance
I will jump in the pool naked
brisk and covered in goosebumps
taut, skin straining out
if you offered to kiss me and
hold a split peach in handfuls

Did this happen last time?
I'm not really sure, our last
encounters seem entirely
imagined, as if I wrote them
in a book and fabricated them
elsewhere. Those memories of
you don't feel real, not even
that one last love note, where
I called you at the Rihanna
concert and held up my
phone when she sang



Stay.

have you heard that animals
come in more than one form,
not just covered in fur or lined
in scales, in shirts and jeans
they walk, talk and conjugate

have you heard that diseases
are more than just viruses, they
have names like thomas, luke, jeff,
scribbled in notebooks, sipped through
cocktail straws,

this is no friendly cherokee parable
spoken in elderflower and feathery
folklore,
the wolves are here and have always
been, you know they rarely come in ones,
curtailing escape, the abridged version of
all-them-who-called-wolf because we don't
cry wolf, we seek wolf.

speak wolf.
so surprised to have them at our throats
when we have been no angels--
neither devils
just another injured animal
trying to make peace.

did you conquer me?
DID YOU CONQUER ME?
did you conquer me?
was this land enough?
To be pillaged, to be sought
to be taken?
Did you conquer me?
Are you happy now?

she is a fine cut of meat
my heart grills under the wires
she's fresh like cucumbers

I always wondered when
I was going to stumble upon
one of your pictures, I ended
up realizing you're not pouting.
I didn't really want you to anyway
I've been doing the same things I
was doing with Chaz, trying out
the nun business trying to be the
****** freaking mary so as not to
hurt you, but I'm not actually
hurting you am I? Because you're
doing just fine and I don't need
to walk on eggshells, I love you
but I don't need to walk on
eggshells I LOVE YOU but
I don't need to walk on
******* eggshells.

I'm done pouting.

love a girl like pyrite
when you found me in the mines
shook me from your baskets
saw me glint in the sunlight
said my  irises shifted like tiger's eye
i was never what you thought

love a girl like pyrite
if she's your gold then i'm a
shade of amber, a copper quarter
if I was hard then she is soft and
quick in your hands like a gardner snake
faint and without teeth, tangling through
the grass and you love the silent chase
the girls that flip belly up and
kiss your corners, kiss your
borders, rub away the ash
and lay themselves over your grenades
your sticks of dynamite you blew
me away with

love a girl like pyrite
because I was a fool's gold,
the normal luster of something
grand, sieved through your tables
back into the river, the unspoken
daughters of not-good-enough
lying in wait, picked up by farmers
by men who sell, who hock, who
pawn, washed down in Vindicator Valley
run between thumbs, turned up amongst
rocks the ordinary, run-of-the-mill
we can only be imitators of
the greatest


love a girl, who's fool's gold
would you find her?
would you keep her?

I remember when I was young
my dad used to be the last one
at the table, because he served
himself so slowly that the rest
of us were done, by the time
he got there. So I would stay
in my seat and play with my
peas till he finished, so we
could leave together. Now
I am older and he stays up
to watch TV, I have other
things to do, but I have
to say goodnight to him
before I go upstairs
because that is the
only way i know
how to say
I love you

I want to be beautiful
like that, a thrifted soprano
note, high above the choir
a dipping lilt that will
hush
hush
she blooms