i downplay myself
because I'm afraid
thinking that I'm anything
good will mean that I
am
not.

i am so much like
the tide and sand--all
there and then not a trace
each grain pushed up and
dug in, washed away by
a smooth hand, pulled
up and dredged out,
separated by skilled
fingers from the
muck and ****
swept out of my
hiding place where
i clung to the rocks
and crevices with fervor
only to be cast upon the shore
water-logged and soaked in salt
i am each mote of feldspar and quartz
drawn and then flat, riddled with color
and grime, pulsing day in--day out to
the heartbeat of an ocean, to a master
as a servant--fighting the flux where
it doesn't go

all the bits and none at all, against the
water then all at once, all at once, all at once
out into the sea, into the furious evening
to weather the storm or weather myself


all at once
all at once
all at once.

who am i to tell
people where they
should find happiness
because it's never where
I do.

so
what
now
god?

i sent you a text saying that we should take a break before you moved to new mexico the first time because I didn't know how to truly let you go (I still don't) and I didn't want to lose you completely because while I felt I was falling out of love, you were still my best friend, a rock, a safe place.  And I'm sorry it took so long to admit, that yes, i was falling out of love, but only the love we built around our youth, a haven for seventeen year olds that had roofs but wanted their own made of leaves and blankets, cologne and sweat. Yes, I fell out of love with adolescence but I still

love

you.

let me
take my
hair down
for you.

I still don't
like calling you my
ex, because you're
still a q-r-s-t-u anything
but v-w-x-y-z.

my favorite ****
color is the unwashed
indigo blue of your truck
with a muddy license plate

Parked off to the side
Beside the pines

It's possible that the only thing
he sees are the whites of my feet
flipping like silvery fish bellies
slapping the pavement, a straight
shot across the street, fluorescent
at midnight, no streetlights
are those her arms
pistons, pistons, pistons
I'm a born runner, born never
chaser, this is the way it has
always been

i don't even have to move to do it anymore

a counselor once told me I had abandonment issues

so i have dreams of this guy shoving his tongue down
my throat like a dart and it makes me s c a r e d of the
things     I can't see in people,      unable to discern the
true intentions      in the  b e d r o c k  of their   heart    
because I don't excavate men anymore (at least that's
what I will tell myself) and I've only e v e r had boys
for toys, people who  give  me their strings for play
things. endearing but emasculating, the two things
i've aspired to be and I guess I'm just   terrified   of
not having control, of being the lowest block on the
totem pole with you can leave me dangled over my
head, you can leave me, you can leave me, you can

leave me.

I wrote about the pinstriped girls whose elbows make you feel alive.


but I have tree sap in my veins
filled to the brim with leaves,
eaves that drip holy water
charcoal in my hair and
bluets follow where I
step, I am komorebi
the sun will always
always, always
find

me.

he says things like,
don't you remember?
we saw it together
and i jump for that
last letter, he drowns
out his own intentions
with nervous laughter
trades books for minutes
lives in the instep of his
mother's shoe and rules
with tired fists,
I once saw a girl cry and
she fell into his arms but
I have no reason that he
wouldn't deem juvenile.

You used
to be
different.

california has a spirit
that makes you want
to sleep with motorcyclists
whose arms are rich browns
the air smells like warm lime
and the palms look like kisses
I could be giving. It's all very cliche,
but california has a spirit and it makes
you want to  sleep with motorcyclists
whose arms
are rich browns
with salt n' pepper hair
they would probably
know how to love you
maybe.

It's so beautiful, God
and I want to see it too

it rained on the drive
home and brett fell
asleep early on beneath
the hum of sigur ros
and I realized my
thighs were warm
and I was living and
breathing and you
should want me
you should want
me because I am
warm and living and
breathing.

I want to tell him that I
love everything from a distance
but can cross oceans in seconds




that the people before him sopped
through my fingers like wet sand,
were ever flat and disarranged, empty
men with waterless words and exigent
appetites for my body--(that this is where
i learned the only way to please a man was
to give him myself)

I'm still undoing the knots, unraveling the little girls
coiled in lies, and taking mallets to the plaster molds
I built up around myself, mannequins for different men
and if there is anything I am confused
about it is him, his I-could-nevers, his frightening
absolutes, the ways in which he vows he can never change

you think you want me but at the back of your mind you want
something else

I don't want you--not like that. Not  as if
your worth was based on how quick you jump into the fray for my sake.  How many times you make me smile or say your name--however
you are soaked in rosemary and oil, folded up out of my notebook
into a thousand paper cranes--no, not even like that.

How do I tell you that I see your soul? Your threadbare spirits peeking out and the willowy fibers unraveled in your wake, that you are more than your mothers many marriages, more than the women you did not
want to have-- and deserving of a lasting love that transcends your mistakes and leaves your mirrors remarkably clean, did you know you can be clean?

How do I tell you that the broken do not fix the broken, how I cannot share the blueprint for healing but the burden if he asks--are we in the same book? The same chapter? I once heard that two people must grow in a similar direction at the same pace--are we on the same boat? The same road?  On the torrent seas, will you hold your own?

I realize I cannot come at you with such brazen artillery, that the paths I choose have no gates and are often unmarked, not even the grass gives way, nor the trees and twigs their secrets--and the journey is wholly faith, an expedition I have not fully taken but is presently on its way. When I tell you what falls first and where my priorities settle, I speak down the pike of the ways I hope to be and the woman that waits in whole.




So when he tells me I am confusing for the hundredth time and I sink somewhere off the Atlantic with the weight of my own thoughts, I am quiet.  His words are ever resounding but do not fill me up--just the glimmering hope that we will somehow

meet
in the



Middle

i love when
my room is
cold, I wonder
when I'll stop
treating things
like you are
still
here.

help me stay strong
and carry on, close
the door behind me.

Have you ever
tried to run so





far

she brushes her lips
with wet fingertips
and says

I'm so afraid of the
words stopping, of
not being able to say
the things tattooed
on my heart. Where
will they go?

she shakes

where will they go?

Why do we like to
belong
with people?

I've been twisting apple
stems hoping to come up
on your name, but i've
seen it written every
where else.

I'm not
entirely
sure you
will bring
May flowers.

it's been a year
since I saw you
last.

On fire in a bowl of water
he sprayed me with salt and
I burned on the floor,

but today barbed wire faces
told me what to do and
brought me to the house
only I can live in, showed
me doorways only I can enter
and a baby from so long

ago

shirt on
no more
play, all
work,he
did this

this charcoal is a part of me
and I believe i can erase my
mistakes with a chunk of
rubber, i can gesture draw
and not worry about the
lines, because all the lines
are me and i am all the lines

You dropped change
in my pocket and I
haven't had the
guts to pull it
out. I wish I
wasn't so
painfully
sentimental

sometimes describing
your face absolves me
of all the things I did
wrong, people see it
on my lips, *ask me,
ask me about Chris

he speaks
in cursive
and writes
sonnets on
my heart

why do we always remember the lips
the glimpse upward, the sigh, the gap
between their teeth? Never the whole
face, the angular pinky in the porch-light
the coarse hairs on a neck, the sight of a
jaw in motion, concave cushion when he
talks, never the whole body,
a single word, a single sound, a small
intonation, a rumble that stays, stays



stays.

but I am a different
kind of adventurous.
even if I only dance with
others, or hit whistle notes
with Brett, even if Joe's the
only one I'd kiss without
a single regret

I love long car rides, I'll
take your shift, I'll let
you sleep an extra two hours
I love the smell of sunscreen
and graham crackers and how I've been
sitting in these shorts for too
long that there has to be
a sweat stain.

I don't know, have you ever had
cheetos at a rest-stop before Modesto?
We'd make it to Santa Cruz on time.
I may not climb the Himalaya's with
you, or go to Paraguay because I'm
afraid of chronic diarrhea, but I am
so much more than my fears.


Have you ever had cheetos at a rest-stop before Modesto?

It's warmer after it rains
here, when the weather
brings spirits out of the
earth

It is the being mad
at others for others
that has gotten me
in trouble so many
times before.

I marveled at
how small her
nose was and
a tongue that
was the size of
a penny, all I
could do was
whisper, shh
I love you
baby, I love
you.

the song faded and
the crowd hushed
scott spillane played
a soft horn lullaby
and I watched Koster
love us, love us soft
so soft because we
were good listeners
without knowing
one another.