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.

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.

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.

I once thought
I could be clean
by scrubbing,too

Have you ever been
overwhelmed by such a
feeling of nostalgia, blanked
the color blue and a song, a smell, the
light from the windows from so long ago
when you were young and the clothes you wore
were tight, stretchy and entirely juvenile but
the easiness,
minimalistic heart
what were you worried about then?


what was I worried about then?

but I'm not all here
my words are like dry wheat,
snapping
in the middle of a sentence, there are
parts of me that are lost and cannot
speak for themselves so the things I
say often break

i hope you walk
back into my life
and find all the dog
eared pages in that
book full of bukowski
poems, I only bought
it because I could imagine
it on your shelf.  I have to
remind myself that most
of what I liked, I liked way
before you but your water
brought it to the surface and I
realize I am so much more
like a snake than I think,
shedding skins that
belonged to you.

There are so many things
we do not perceive, but the
knowledge of this blooms
in my heart with fresh
water veins

I am hasty to assume
that everyone is
uninterested

ran myself up on the land
chasin' the dark black storm
cracked my rudders straight in half
fightin' them waves off shore,

i's up in the early morning hours
makin' sure the house not burnin
down, 20 minutes there and back to
try and prove something more

no sleep for a week 'cause i'm worried
'bout a question, the one that no one
wants to answer an' drives the nail in
could love a girl to pieces but she
ain't nothin more than the warmth
she gives an' the way she consoles

i've wrapped around him tired and sore
but i've been here, i've been here
just bones and shreds offerin' up myself
in as many ways as I can before
that just ain't enough anymore

and it never is,  the heart and soul

it never is.

Have you ever been
afraid
to
talk about
your life
as if
if you did
people might
use it
against you?

If only
my self worth
could be derived
from how much
I love myself
if I did.

there's a dance I do for you
not for you but for you
sweeping my hips, so animalistic
my hair is bed-mussed, yesterday's
eyeliner beneath my lids, my
lips are tight and dry, I'm
roiling, muscles pinched under my skin
rolling, against bones
knees filled with rocks because
i'm planted on on the ground, covered
in sand waiting to be
clean
clean
clean

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.