i suppose that is the end of that.

I don't
have the
things they
love.

after months of
not dreaming and
now that's all I do--

you came unannounced
to get the last of your belongings--
usually a house is a rough analogy
for my heart

and I went out to the garage
wide open, not a single
thing of yours left

what a strange
thing to feel like you
never knew someone

i have the hopes
strung like outliers, darting
off the graph,
stretching a little too far
I was never good with
strategy, math, a rough
sediment but never dust
and we reached the
angle of repose so
long ago.

people only know quarters of the story

a retelling, the abridged
condensed, shortened,
can you truncate the
things that have not
ended or strip it of
it's beginning--can you
choose between one or the
other?

the novels exist in our
backgrounds, in the attics
we wrote and wrote to say
we did but only to store them
away when we found we could
not erase people the way we hoped--

I have learned that there is no getting rid
or escaping a place, not unless you have
fully healed, and it's not enough just to say
you have, to be able to go and be, do and feel
without the tangled strings of your past
curling behind you--

but luckily i believe
in such a
life.

Everytime I caught
A glimpse of the rafters
I saw you leaning over
The matte black railings
With a red solo cup
Lanky arms folded
Staring down across
The floor,
But then it wasn't
Just you in the corner
You were in between every
stool, in your many forms
And I wondered if this
Is what it was--what it
Was when people say
They've seen a ghost
But you are so very
alive.

i am the sand of sand
there's an awful lot of questions
that i would like answered

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

he asks
why don't i look him in the eyes
why do i look away
why can't i make that contact
does it scare me?
does it embarrass me?
truthfully, there is no truth
in why i don't
i don't want the connection
i don't like not knowing
what does or doesn't happen
behind those pupils

do not feel the need to change your works/pieces because people on this site don't think you're up to par. I encourage all of you to keep writing
in whatever forms the words come to you. This is not high school or college. You are not being graded. Criticisms are welcome and considered but don't have to apply to your work if they don't fit in with how you think your poetry should be written.

there is nothing wrong
with never having been
loved in that way

But I will never
settle for less than
my standard, high
as the sky, thick as
the ground, these
morals will never
rupture and I have
you to thank for that.

have you ever swam through the dark
and the lights switch haphazardly from on to off
whoever was on the shore has long since gone home
a pair of footprints sunk into the waves

and when you realized you were the villain
did the water become deeper? when he told you to be honest
did you feel every lie creep up your spine? not a shiver
but a steady climb,
each fib a hand dug into a thoracic foramen
squeezing into the spaces you hid your darkest self
a leak in the structure

you're crying give me love
from the bottom of sandy trenches
open palms that are only raging deserts
it's not a question but a statement of fact--
why love the things that still haven't learned
what they want? the weak kneed girls
that leave trails of broken bones and healed boys
slivers of metal wound in their hair
and just enough poison to really '
work it in
be honest he says

*on

you listened to
Ricky Gervais
podcasts and
harry potter
audio books
to help you
sleep. I
remember
when your
hair was
brown.

Do you always
see the moon
as a whole?

It takes a while
to settle into new
choices, i would
tell you that you
will always be my
my
my
but you aren't mine
to call my, my, my
but you were my
Link.

i want to
see you too.

I see
angry people
everywhere

I recently unearthed old photos of me
with a mop of scraggly black hair and
a ***** smile on my face, the kind of
smile I used to give before sinking into
myself, twisting my face up to disappear
and reassess my insides, how was that heart
workin' out for you, sweetheart?

And years later I still feel the familiar jolt,
manage to think that I am too sloppy for
loving, I've always been a pallet of nudes
a swarthy child waiting to be as blue as
the sky, holding myself to a standard
physically impossible, people tell me
I'm beautiful and I still wonder why
if this is as easy as loving myself then
I want to know how,  I say thank you
with a hand over my heart to hold in
the little girls, who still wait in the middle
of empty classrooms for a partner, who still
envy the women that grew fox-glove petals
in the golden hour while I crouched in the
curly willow branches, semi-dormant
perpetually brown with too much skin
standing off the side because I was too
afraid to touch others,

too afraid of an olive complexion. Too afraid of being in this body.


When someone loves you, how will you know?
what will they do when they see my scars, the ones that only
show at certain times in certain ways? Under hot water and at
noonday? when will I be okay with a broken heritage, with a mexican
daddy who cut the ropes back to the village where I was supposed to
return to? And why do I feel like the winds and hot sands when boys hold my hands? Like I am burning up the rivers or smoldering beneath
the dry autumn brush in San Isabel, where only beetles and lizards congregate, a backboard baby with
an overprotective mother, carrying the strings I've tried to tie to others--

direct me home, sir.
direct me home, ma'am.

Tell me who I am.
tell me who i am

there are
recent revelations
so secret, I am scared
to share them as if they
were birthday wishes and
you never tell someone
your wishes.

when love comes,
i hope he waits.

(in that spacce)

that by then my door
will be open, and the
house will be clean,

that he will wander
through the living room
for the first time since I
had been broken, when
he couldn't even find his
way through the mess--

a walking phenomenon
gliding through the kitchen
and out the backdoor,
when you come, love,
and the backdoor slams
i am knee deep in dried
leaves and ****,
wielding nothing but
yard tools and not
my heart chained to
the end of a virge
nothing but the
elegant vengance
towards wasps and
gardner snakes

both briefly carrying
heiligenschein against
the grass but

you will find i am
made of sweat and
warm lemonade
a pair of knees
embedded with
pebbles and clover
leaves,

love, bring your tools,
bring your faith,
the flint only i can
knap and I,
only you can
spark.