thank you
thank you
thank you
for being a
part of my
life.

People have
been telling
me Brooke you
don't have to stay
here anymore and
I know that now.

I don't know where
I'm going but It's not
near you, above you
under you, beside you
beneath you, I'm not
a state away I'm a
universe away, I'm light
years away, you fell
down a hole and I
grabbed a ledge.

this is the call of the quiet.




a resounding chorus of shhh


he says I'm too quiet
and I want to tell him he is too loud
that the voices in his head don't have to
always come out, he grins and says he
can change that, but i don't want to be
changed,

I want to crack open my chest so he can see
i'm filled with cotton, brambles and dry grass,
that opening up sounds like a hundred trees felling
creaking and wrenching,

that in my bed in the middle of the night, the switched lights
are humming so viciously that I need earplugs, the lower
the music, the more I hear it, he breathes a misstep and
my whole body feels it, that silence speaks louder
than any word I've ever heard, has volumes,
can deafen, can maim

and the bass of an old country song bumps
behind my calves, gushing air in hot bellows
into a floor writhing in white hot strobe
how come, I think, does quiet disturb
the lack of peace, how then, does it
call so much attention but nobody
notices when you leave the room?

hold your fingers to their lips
and plead, the way you do best
gathering their insides and putting
them to the test, have they found
the way to breathe without saying
a thing? can they change that?

I'm riding my bike home repeating the
words you said about the branches
and the clear blue skies and how
the trees are blooming now with
these soft little leaves that give
depth to something that once
looked so tangled--

I've just spent the last hour
runnin' my house key through
the grooves of that old tree on the
river walk, pulling up your name
in my inbox and scrolling through
all the things you said last
it's not a waste of my time, but it is to you
I won't fight you if you think that's what you need to do for yourself.

On the way back from Pueblo, I vividly recalled the
shadow of your lips, the way you cupped your palm
around my neck, took hold of the ringlets at my
nape and stroked my hair the way I have to
tell people to.

i wonder about my penchant for dramatics
for the phrase distance makes the heart grow fonder
how I haven't wanted children but for a split second
I saw your face at the end of an aisle,
I think about if it's right, then don't worry
if it's meant to be, it'll happen
but I never asked you to wait
and I don't think I could--
what if I come out
on the other side
of the world?

i had a dream i was crushing jugs of buckwheat honey
beneath my palms, and the plastic fractured and crumbled
apart like wax, spilling across the wooden shelves, piling up at
the edge before sheeting down to my feet, ending in tawny spirals--

that i was fighting with God, who was at the top of the stairs, hidden by the turn in the hallway, doing laundry--and how I stood on the first step as the vision wobbled and knew I wouldn't make it in time--even if I took the steps by threes.

He was saying something, but i couldn't hear him.  Something about me, maybe, but the dream was ending. The dream was ending and God was in my house, doing my laundry--

I woke up from the soundest sleep I've had in years.

In this dream I
couldn't get my
running shoes on
and I could see you
driving away, I chased
you through the alderwood
mall parking lot and got lost
in the brush trail that doesn't
exist, knew that if I took this
shortcut, my dream would lose
you so I aimlessly searched
between the cars, pulling
shoulders belonging to
blank faces, the sun
was setting and it
was getting dark
I woke up in the
light and wondered
why I'm still looking
for
you
chris.

I'm sorry your mom is
such a raging *****, I
know that picking
ice-cream is hard and
I would have given
you all the time in
the world. So don't
cry, don't cry, don't cry
because if your own
mother doesn't love you
then
I
will.

i no longer justify
my decisions with
self, and I find myself
murmuring reason
on the way home,
working through
thoughts like thick
nets of string, always
finding the end, never
cutting corners, snipping
middles, I'm not
cheating
anymore.

Swapping emotions
like jenga blocks, setting
them on top, aside for later
I'm good at trading one feeling
for whatever suits me best, makes
me a bit guilty for ignoring the
issue at hand. Unless it's really
gone? I never quite know when
things are really gone.

I will be okay
and I'm still
patient just
so you know
I'm still waiting
for you.

you're living under a warm
pink light and I can see you
holding her hand between
the wooden seats in that
cafe

there's a glass of cold water
on my desk and I'm about
to go to bed.

"well if he's god he
already knows my
tricks, and I'm always
playing tricks, I can't
ask for something without
and ulterior motive, so I don't
ask at all.

I didn't bother with it anymore"

I
know what to do but I
keep looking back at God with his
umbrella saying, you aren't going anywhere
are you? you won't leave me, right? Because I need you
to be there when I say these things and I don't even know
if
i
will
say
them.

sometimes I imagine myself
deep in the ventricles of your
heart, a small figure planted
in flesh, and I gingerly touch
the walls, where everything
seems so raw, I whisper that
I am so sorry, and you absorb
my apologies.  B        u          t
I am just another echo, a heart
murmur, that is exactly what i
am, a heart murmur.

stand fast, sink not
never of your own
strength, never by
your own legs,
always on His
shoulders.

i used to think trust appeared
with the right words, it would
b l i n k  out of the universe the
way new stars are born- - -not
and then a l l  at   o    n    c    e .

but you cross into the concept
that trust is built, as with wires
beams and panels, love, faith
and identity---

I trust him to do this, to not
do that, trust that he won't go
there and will come here, but
i've realized that trust has been
misconstrued with worry, with the
innate desire to control any and
all things that pass by me in their
states.

lately, though, trust had been been
a release, a slack line, a whole box
of blackberries, celery and raisins
pink knuckles, deep breaths and
sky blue nails

i have an armful of things I cannot
let go but they slide out one by one
without my knowledge, trust is a
blind thing, not like hope, because
hope is hoping and trust is trusting
with so much more vigor, less of a
spectacle and more of a private
ceremony, a quiet wedding
appropriated in smiles and
the brush of duchess satin
to and fro, to and fro
to and fro.

there was a rising
from something
inside my body
that wasn't quite
inside my body
and echoed out
your standards are too high
and no. one. will. ever. meet. them.

but i am just kid
trying to be too old
for someone to whom
I am just skin, a mouth
on two legs, he cracks
***** jokes and I
realize I don't
have to like
them

The first time we
kissed, I thought
your earlobes were
strange. And I still
remember the way
you tasted. A rich,
new, flavor.

my anger has manifested
into sore throats, the perpetual
swallow, even while you sleep--
that no saliva, cotton ball in your
chest soaking up the living, leaving
me high and dry, contemplating
the meaning of every idiom,
every moment, every customer
that orders five 20oz mochas
and doesn't leave a single
tip but works on the block
and complains about local
business.

it's understandable
that I have none of
my own memories,
they are all shared,
but I will make new
ones, I will make
new ones.

she said that it's not true
that you have to love yourself
for someone else to love you but

it is true and it resonates with me.
I can't rely on somebody else to
build me up only to find I have
nothing to fall back on, not even
self-love, so all I'm trying to say
is nobody can love me until I
love myself and I can't
even do
that.

I often look at the hands
of others and wonder how
they look so soft, when did
mine become so rough, why
aren't I pretty like them? Why
aren't I pretty like them? Why
can't I be pretty
like them?

there
are a
whole
lot of
excuses

we are encouraged to be light
but I beseech you to be heavy--
with your skin and hair and every
bone, with your gossamery soul--
a soul that could sink ships,

be heavy, you are much.

But Stephanie,
I am different
in that aspect
I cannot hate
him for being
wounded.

In October you
made me soup
after I said I
hated you.

oxygen
tank
says
zero

there's a candid
shot of you at the
picnic point beach
when i told you to
turn around and you
smiled as you did with
the water framing your
shoulders.

all the lights were out with the
exception of one orange creme
porch light weakly splayed through
the sliding glass door and it made
your face look like the purest
pastel I've ever seen in my life--
a-not-quite-brown but not-quite-yellow
and it moved across your lips when you
spoke, touched your tongue when you
paused and looked good on everyone on
the 1st floor of your parent's house
probably because i was delirious
and your dad had just driven 3 hours
in new years traffic to come pick us up
in downtown Seattle after your car took
its last breaths and we lost Joe as a friend for
the next
two years.


today
i finished the diary I started
on January 1st, 2014 at your
house before anyone was up
and I had fallen asleep in the
chunky gold necklace from
the night before, tucked into
the couch with my feet stuffed
beneath Brett's thighs, listening
to her voice--and Christina's and
Josh's and also my own startling
contributions in rhythmic breathing--
at some point you whispered that I was
sleeping (only half-true) because this
particular moment was insignificant
but happens to be one of the only things
i remember


that pastel color and making tea
the next morning wondering how
far away i'd be in ten seconds
and here I am,


here i am.

Our ideals are
so easily scattered
as a voice whispers
see, I told you so
but we should know
that just because
it is so with
another does
not mean it
will be with
us.

somewhere along the way
I convinced myself that I
am a one time thing, because
all of my exes date wispy blondes
with blunt bangs and blue
eyes, who probably listen
to a lot of She & Him or
Neutral Milk Hotel and
I am the Frida Kahlo of
their past, not to say that
Frida was bad but I guess
you get what I mean.

I dug too deep into that
wound and now I don't
know where I stand with
you, but I put myself here
so I can't complain anymore.

if only the sun shown a bit brighter
but these streetlamps will have to do
they seemed to glow when he would
kiss me, he's gone spelunking in my
heart to dissolve the mites and tites
where my reality teeters on emotion
and the soles of my feet may disband
as feet and the ground as ground, but
here the upheaval of roots can only be


good