For all the times
I have never had
someone to dance
with me, I remember
kody ruzanski who
nervously tapped my
shoulder in 6th grade
and i still told him no

good walls make good neighbors
do they make better you and I's?
something about you blinded
me,

i will tell you what peace and
strength are, without the
nights out and one too many

they used to say you were whipped
but you said you just liked my skin
the way i breathed, staying in and falling
asleep but

i don't think you did.

he is all pine and I am apple orchard

so maybe I do not belong, here nor
there, maybe I was never meant to
have roots for how often I was
meant to move,

I realize more and more  how
people will say *anything
or the right amount of nothing

good walls make good neighbors
and i tore all mine down, i shared myself
and he shared all them
we are not children anymore
and i am grateful for a few
drunken months if it meant
that's all it took--

i cannot be mad about the
girls you slept with
but I can about their
kisses spread across my
thighs, how I opened
up all the way thinking
it would solve something--

so I am shedding this skin
scrubbing away, I am not forgetting
just forgiving because I can't keep
reliving the conversation with a
silly little girl at chiles detailing
the morning after
with
you.

Somewhere in another life—

I have a family. All together under one roof,
not a single thing is discernible in the jovial
chatter, all amongst the other like
water skeeters, stones on a clear, glass pond
Rivulets of honey slipping betwixt to become a laugh on another’s lips

In adjacent rooms, we whisper gleefully,
someone is finger combing through my
hair absently, past the casement windows
there is an ochre radiance that
the morning glories vine around
and the deer in the fields observe
inquisitively, drawn to us in the powder blue evening

Like licorice, slippery elm and dates
Long socks and linen, hands caked in
flour—

Effervescent, a little salt, a dream


Somewhere.

go on
despite
*despite

I would head home but
I have no home and that's okay
because I'm not the same and
all the people who
used to know me wouldn't find me
even if they tried because
they'd be looking for all the things
that made up
who I used to be

(to be honest, I'm afraid
of your sister, (or
i could be mad) but I am
drawn away from things
(or people) that pull at
my skin and plant their
words that never bloom)

it's 9:41 pm at night

it's 9:41 pm at night and
i'm thinking about when Chris
told me no one would ever love
me as much as him--and I'm thinking
about you too. Because I know that love
is not a thing to be measured, and if it were
we wouldn't do it with time or space or the edges
of old wooden rulers tapped briefly on knuckles

and tonight you're wrapped around my ankles like
a tabby cat--somewhere out there with your ropes
untied and shoes unlaced, your straps all in an organized
tizzy, with your caps off, windows open, and an empty
dresser drawer that you never know what to do with--    but i do

and I'm not asking you to come find me because that would be
too easy and I know you'll settle in at just the right time
probably in no hurry, supposedly passing through but
you'll find that you're woven into the threads of an
earth so familiar, and the girl at the counter seems
to be asking if she can dance with you without
lifting a finger, because the way she moves is
not at all unique, but you've seen her before.
you've seen her before, somewhere in a dream
in a memory beyond your body.

Say what you can say--that's me. Here's your chance.


Here's your chance.

I'm falling o
for you     u
then you      t
go and do
something
beautiful
and again
i'm stuck
[inside]
for
you

while you were eating
cherry pie that sunday
after i reached for your
hand and your fingers
didn't curl around mine--

i took to the trees behind the cabin
and stayed the mossy grove buried
in this golden scratch
the neighbor's conversation downwind
about the mountain lion they'd spotted
and the spiritual sort of fear I felt with
my eyes closed, the mechanical click
of my own heartbeat, how things
used to flow and now they only
swarmed,
always
swallowed.

i was singing songs to call you out,
like you did the first time, when you
came up around the hillside and
followed me a ways out--
softly at first and then no more,
replaced by the force that came
upon me, where suddenly I was
uprooting trees, picking the most
desolate, gnarled aspens--unhinging
their roots to press my heel into their
soft bases, hulking forward and watching
them stretch out and out and out--

I found old yarn and tied
it for later, to find, to untie
to hope for second chances
I left the copse and you were


eating cherry pie on the porch
rummaging through coolers
oil sloshing through your bones
dragon fire in your blood
hard-headed over puerile matters
over your time, over the weeks
staunchly grounded into your own
wild western ways,

The duck's back, the bear's pelt
You've been roaming alone in the forests
As the beasts do, the lost, the frightened,
Admiring the darkness of your own shadow
The way it draws and casts away,
Doubly conflicted of your nature that
Mostly takes and takes and takes
Bears and
Men and
You.

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.

And how do I become known by God?
how do I find solace in Him traversing
the plains of my heart?
how does that become a lullaby ?
I am still
figuring it out in the golden highways
of my spirit, whispering into the
abandoned rooms while I
sink—

Groanings too deep for words
Too deep for
Anything.

well he's back from the rig he says,
heels up in dragon's blood
crept through denver at an easy pace, left his soul
on the toolcase, packed up with the coveralls
said there's never room for that--

and he sleeps while he's wide awake, said he
left his love up there, said he'll be by, but he ain't coming back
where back is home or here or me, he's spinnin'
i'm grounded, i'm looking for his strings,
he's unwound, divided and callin' my name--

used to kneel by my bedside, hold my hand around 10 at night
smelled like pine and cold wind, but you'd never tell him that
and I wonder about the longevity of his trust
the miles left in those long legs,
If I've all but said too much
to keep him runnin' from me

well he's stained by the deaths of many
and I've them locked away, makin' sure there's no anniversary
where he'll drink the funerals away,
we're both troubled by the other's demons
but his don't scare me much,
just play things and shadows all rearin' their heads
his own chorus of voices tellin' him it should have been him


and he sleeps while he's wide awake, said he
left his love up there, said he'll be by, but he ain't coming back
where back is home or here or me, he's spinnin'
i'm grounded, i'm looking for his strings,
he's windin', drawing fangs and ready to flee
to show me how fast he can run away, and he can
probably will, out of spite, out of fear--

and if timing is everything like he fancies it is
i'll be here waiting like i promised i would
'cause he'd hold my hand at ten at night
before i'd wait for the sound of that engine
pullin' up,
him whispering pretty girl
to wake me up,
hey, pretty girl

hey pretty girl


hey, pretty girl.

I don't want you to become
another foreign thing in my
closet and inside
I ask myself what I expected
What I was hoping? Every
secret thought, I don't capture
them all.

And your memories: those I
deem property of Chris inside
my head, play on a spanish loop
with He Venido on low in the background.

I don't plan on getting rid of you.
Or forgetting you, or burying your
face behind stacks of books, The Count,
The Little Prince, A Clockwork Orange,
Things Fall Apart, and most of all the
Lemony Snicket hardcover that you
hid condoms in, the ones we never
used.

I have tried to document you because
I hope that it will help or that you will
see these things, but I have taken your
willpower for granted.  You perhaps
write nothing of me, maybe in a
diary maybe no where maybe
I am buried, maybe I am gone
maybe you have ripped out
my pages, my pictures, my
hair from thoughts no longer
strays on your bed, maybe you
have chosen to move on.

I don't want to end this poem.

All drafts
too many

edits

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've learned that failure is subjective
as beauty in the eyes of the beholder
sometimes a hard fall or soft landing
a moth flight against the porch light
or a bruised knee, left on the cement