i pulled away and
you sighed as if my
lips were only poetry.

for once I choose
to dip us (then) in
honey, steep us in
jasmine, I am not
sugar-coating, just
preserving, just for
once forgetting that
bad happens, that
good can stay if you
let
it.

i thought i saw you at the
coffee shop today, it even
looked like you from behind
calves placed flatly on the
stool bars, hunched shoulders
in a faded blue t-shirt and tan
khakis, this person wouldn't
look at me, turned his head
so far left, and let his hat do
the talking, I can't be sure it
wasn't you, i'm playing it
off as a joke, but my lungs
are in my stomach, my heart
clear down in my knees, if
that was you, why wouldn't
you say anything to me?

I have lost
you to the
world.

Little souls
are not lost
in tragedy

I set your glasses
upside down over
my nose, tried to
see the world the
way you do, but
I could not, and I
am

sorry

i am afraid of my own
of myself, of the things
my dad dreams, of no
answers, of asking
questions to my
pillow at 2 am
out loud and
my voice
sounds
so soft
and mistaken
like it really shouldn't
be there.

i was beneath the bed
listening to the in-out
thinking about how we
all take the air differently
when josh came with the cold
outside and drunkenly mistook
me for Christina, found his unusual
place and passed out  in stiff shadows,
smelling faintly of fireball cinnamon whisky--

plenty of moments reserved for sinking
or abandoning ship, receding into that quiet
place, hungry for a will and a way

when matthias finds me ransacking the
kitchen cabinets, i am rattling the underground
Seattle with a clorox induced vengeance
because i only seem to find peace in leaving
an old place clean, running my fingers through
jello shots that have disintegrated sometime in
the 3 am when for a few minutes we must
have all been asleep.

( all            the             while              Adele   )
hums in the background--a languid Hello
solemnly stitching itself into my memory
something to later hold dear, some fragment
of an adolescence that was realized on this
night, when I was removed from the place
beneath the bed, stolen from the house
dreaming that I was found inside
the mouths of strangers that
passed alongside Boylston
with their misshapen bodies
coiled in streamers and
various liquors

so when i return at 7 am
still wide awake and waiting
I examine my ******* in the
foggy mirror of the bathroom
before taking what I would
endearingly refer to as the
dirtiest shower off my life---
how could such a thing
be so? I'm curious myself.

I've spent two weeks cleaning an old place.

born runner

born runner

born runner

You said thanks for
the closure and I
tried to hide how
wide my eyes got
all this time and
I was hoping maybe
maybe? maybe? maybe
what? Maybe, maybe.
What was I hoping
for?

i could describe
the sensation as
wringing, but in
truth, the motion
is more like milking.
Sometimes in the morning
there are hands in my chest
and instead of milking, they
wring to the tune of old peony
lotion and your face in disassembled
machine parts, brief instances that belong
nowhere (but existed once) and maybe I
fabricate you but the hands keep reaching
and wringing, cording me through the loops
in their fingers, unforgiving in their job.

how easily i remember
why I loved you after
all this time, it's strange
to see you talk and watch
your eyes move and hands
tremble gently pouring
coffee grounds, you'd
never say you're
nervous but
right as I
thought that
you strummed the
guitar and said so.

i'm pushing all these
decisions with precision
but there is no sneaking
with a god who knows
your heart and my
perfection is pure
fiction, a boy built
in a hundred teenage
romance novels imposed
on every man I meet, each
interaction a fitting but men
aren't shoes and I am not
cinderella.

i don't know
what he's thinking
but it isn't of me and I
shouldn't of him. He said
i have no preference
and I apologized when
I should not have because
the truth is I can't be sorry
forever for the  things I did or
said. I have to forgive myself
at some point.

west of town they're these low
white clouds filled with frost
straddling the mountains like
a woman's thighs,

it's not cold enough to freeze
but bitter enough to bite through
the glass and needle into the cracks
small as pin-******,

Westcliffe's got the worst of it but I've
been thinking opposite of your whereabouts
ever since you told me I'd be better off alone
cut straight in with a bodkin, 'cept you had
no thread, just took any sharp object meant
for better things and delivered readily.

i used to think
of you in ragged
edges and now
so gently as
the music
clicks
away.

my heart
hurts something
fierce

while
worrying i
would never
wake up without
thinking of you first,
I realized i managed to see past
the thought of you today there's
so much of me  that's new, so much of
me i've never seen, and i've only ever taken the
first step but watch me, watch me take the second
and the third and crescendo far above the heavy thrum
of acoustic guitars,

but
didn't you
love.
that.
about me



anyway?

there is an aimless sense of
wandering, a trip on an empty
train, floor awash with foot prints
streaked under the seats and here
I am clinging to the handrails, but
like a dream the corners of my vision
are fuzzy and I fight to be unaware
and somewhere from the end of
the car, horses stamp their
hooves, all lined up
behind red stanchions
they aren't bulls but they
breathe like I am red, and
somehow this is all curiously
distant, sauf pour the speed of
the train, the only thing that is
unnerving is the ways in which
I move and blink and how i am
made up of seven billion billion
billion atoms but this number
seems so inconsequential and
small compared to how lost
I feel and how many times
a day I ask myself what
I am doing.


What am I doing?

i had a dream that girls put purple flowers in my hair


for him to see across the dance floor
and when he saw me he laughed with
with his body, took to me immediately
with strong hands, kept dancing when
I fumbled against his knees because
what did tripping matter when we were

flying.

where do you go
and what do you
say, what do you
do, or think or cry?
or shake or wish
someone was there
to take your hair
and snotty nose
smile and say
well aren't you
just a mess
come here
come here

waiting to be
someone's dancer

am i so wrong for wanting to feel right?


am I so wrong for wanting to feel right--
to go without an ounce of distress, to feel
like the corner of a couch was a cove and
not a prison, or that the ***** of his nose
were the side of Humboldt and not a cliff
edge I want to throw myself off of

because i feel trapped.


because I feel trapped--
i alluded to a rabbit in a cross-hair
when my mom asked. The rabbit knows.
The rabbit knows it's been caught, it doesn't
feel right.  She freezes. She tenses. She's unsure.
She's grounded amongst the long weeds and bulrush,
is he waiting? is he watching? When he touches her
shoulder, what is he saying? When he stands between
her and the door, is he a threat?  Is it presumptuous to
think he can enter without invitation? how many
doors in a house require a request to entry?
just the front? the bedroom? the heart?

I feel small.

I feel small, like my body has shrunk and consists of
significantly less matter, less much, less stuff
which is scientifically impossible, matter can neither
be created or destroyed--but I can certainly be rearranged
in space, so I melt into the backboard, become one with
the paisley pillows, find solace in holding my own hand
solace in my unassuming nature, in my rapid bunny
heart--
and
therein
lies
the
problem.

Gaudy necklace still
beneath my pajama shirt,
they talked about things
till three am but i still
woke up at nine and
ate trail mix on the couch,
thinking about how nothing ever
goes the way i want it
too and how badly i just wanted to
kiss someone when the space needle
erupted into a silver sparkle and
brought the new year.

Sometimes my mom speaks
to God in the afternoon, and
I hear her through the walls
her whispers, but mostly her
why nots and what ifs, how sos

too quiet
too quiet
you don't talk
she's too quiet
she's too quiet
you never talk


but I talk, I have
so much to say, so
much on my mind
and this laughter is
genuine, is genuine
someone give me a
chance, give me a
**** chance.

inside there was a
spat b e t w e e n my
bones, a wrenching
in all the sockets
every single
curl in my
brain was unfurling
but all I could do was
pinch the calluses on
my palm with a calm
ferocity, he does not
want me to c o n d e m n
myself but i was already
******* in, concave and
ready to collapse.

I'm too often concerned
with things I can't have
and what would he think
if he saw me naked? well
what if he did see me naked?
and what if he didn't like what
he saw? Well i suppose that is
too bad,
is what I should tell myself.

maybe i got caught up in that rustic
devil-may-care way that you leaned
on any counter, how the hot oil from
your grandmother's pans shot up and
flecked across the posterior of your
hand and you didn't even flinch, just
sort of sighed through your teeth
and how I spent the few seconds after
that wishing I could press myself against
your back because you are so solid.
But I digress, because I've learned that
idolizing people is a mess of self-inflicted
palsies

Nevertheless, my affinity for compounding
problems manifests in my lack of willpower,
in your forearms that are like thick bristlecone pine
branches, dry and scarred with your
obstinance--

and when you would go to wash your
hands, you'd roll your sleeves in
this rough, intensely **** manner
with your hip pushed up against
the lip of my sink, working the
dirt out of your knuckles.
So as you kneaded your fingers
back and forth; your Venke's
pulsing, I found myself to
be too hungry for you,
for this

I've never been around so much
man,  so much cord and bark
i've never touched a person and
not felt like I was going to slip
through them like some spectral
being, like their spine would
give way before they bend in
two around my palm, barely
grounded by their own
body weight.
The difference is (was?) that
you feel so full, so stalwart
and



(I got to thinking; maybe I wasn't ready.
Because for all your worth, all your
redeemable qualities, I'd cashed in on
the way you made me feel when
I hadn't for so long and that's not
the way I want to,
Not the way I
Want to
Not the
Way )

well did he
love boys
when he
was with
me?

He said,
I don't want to
be afraid of being
myself around you
I just want us to love
each other for what
we are. I don't disagree
except that I thought you
were being yourself, I thought
you were happy with what was
with what I was. With what you
were. When we met I told you what
it would take and you agreed. Don't
blame me for your sudden change of
heart. I hope you are afraid of being
yourself around me. Because for all
the lies that you told when we were
to                                           gether
you
should
be.

everyone hates you if
you're competition, but
I'm not competing any
more, am I?

he sat in his
room and thought
of her he dreamed
of her he wondered
why she
couldn't
just break
a couple
rules

but why would you want to break the things that mean the most to me?

That one night when you
scolded me for being afraid
of tap water, I pounded on
your chest and cried into
your shoulder, but you
knew why I was mad
as if we had both
waited too long
to open up
and it was
too
late.

do you remember
the night at the bonfire
beside Javernick's old pump
when you turned and told me
I didn't have a choice, I was kinda
in your life for good, I'd just got off
the phone with Zak, who'd laughed
and must have known I was staring
at the stars and said just relax, brooke
back then, you sang Hey, Pretty Girl by
Kip Moore to me softly from the bed of
your truck and I wondered if I really was
in your life for good because I'd already
written you
into
mine.

i have seen people lose
their innocence, I have
seen them tie their feet
with vine and swallow
rocks with smiles on
their faces.