Two years sobriety
from you

i want you to
take photos of
of me as i shift
unexpectedly
i want to know
what I look like
when I see you.

let's be honest
sometimes I turn
towards the wall at
night and close my
eyes, I can see your
hairline, a fracture
of scoliosis in your
curved spine, I can
almost trace
the bumps of
your vertebrae
through that
thin cotton
sweater

let's be honest

you start to turn over
before I lose you in the
geometric dark, sometimes
our eyes play tricks on us and
we see colors, well, sometimes
mine play jokes and I see you.

I hope i never
meet a better

liar

one night you
read The Count
of Monte Cristo
to me while I
fell asleep, I dreamed
of ships and paisley skies.
your voice was a thick
molasses

My grandmother wakes
before the sun and talks
to God, I wonder if he is
listening and answering

the hydrangeas found your
face through the crack in the
sliding door, during the early
morning before our bodies
decided to sweat off the night
and the fan blew cool air up
the lilt of our shoulders
that rolled and pressed
like pistons--I forget what
we spoke about.

but i felt your skin beneath
my thighs and begged for just
one picture of you, like this
all day-old and dewy and beautiful
with the morning shining out of your
chest, aglow and gentle, just one picture
of you, like this,  just one picture of you

*like this

Sometimes I still get a little
nervous when i see pictures
of you, and i assume there
are still angry bits hidden
out there but i haven't
thought about you in
a while, haven't cried
about you in a while
haven't done much
about you in a while
and you know what?
I think there is a such
thing as getting over
your first love because
I
got
over

you.

It might be your birthday today,
honestly, I never remembered and
I had to sneak your license out of
your wallet to check, something
I always felt infinitely bad about
and I hope you don't read this
because the conglomerate of
poems I've written about
you seems a little bit
obsessive. I had to
talk myself down out
of calling and the neighbors
continue to be weary of me behind
their little peach windows with the cream
lampshades because I regularly shake my
head at myself and my lips move in quick
stripped, phrases. Do you think, that maybe,
I should stop feeling guilty?

Maybe.

there is a lot you
don't understand
but there is a lot
we still don't, so
don't take it to
heart, honey,
don't take it
to heart

let me find a lover
in the winter, let that
lover find me, let those
cogs twist beneath the
earth and set events in
motion, light a fire beneath
his chair that sends him cross-
ways here, on a train with my
name, burning charcoal for my sake
god, i know you know me better
i'm waiting at the station,
i'm waiting at the station.

whatever is
planned, let
it happen
gracefully.

i a m
s    o
scared

you always drew
your duality and
it makes me cry
even now.

dim car, orange shadows
the radio is fuzzy but we
still sing the words, and the
telephone wires are licorice
strings against the moon.
the 7-eleven is a lime in the
distance, a buzzing machine
over aisles of bugles and salted
pretzels basking beneath the
heated lamps. Occasionally
I can feel a road-trip in my
bones filled with endless
nights of my bare feet
on the cool dashboard
curling against the
pane, steady breath
steady breath, and
at least someone
beside me.

there's a dale as you're entering
El Paso County where my fingers
feel heavy and my arms take on a
distant memory, a spirit dug into
the highway that radiates the way
the land does in Mailuu-Suu or Sellafield
because in this valley the rocks are coquelicot
and the trees gasp from snowy outcrops
in a tender, pleading kind of way--
so much so that I want to reach out
and thread through their weeds--a
demand so visceral that I feel the
pine brush on my palms and the
bark scrape skin from my forearms
but
then

the valley opens with it's shaved hills
and pulls back in the rear view mirrors
where its memories don't reach.

when he was
just bean, a
mere potential
for life his mother
wished for a girl
but instead got the
makings of a man

but subconsciously
unhappy she never stopped
wishing and he began to become
undone as his parts became obsolete

i'm still thinking about how mama
said hold fast to your happiness
white knuckle the chain and strap
it to your shadow--
how i'm still so reserved, as if joy
were a bird or a butterfly, a flightless
insect trapped between my fingers,
who i've peered at many times through parted thumbs
and blown wolf whistles just to force the gale winds out
of my soul, to gust the incorporeal detritus out of the corners
plunk giant oars into soft green waters, to dive, dive, dive
where the waters rush in, in tremendous gulps
slamming into the walls, curling into the middle--

he'll never find any of my body there, the hips he loves
have never bathed beneath these floral pastures, i am truly
none of this and all of it, nothing but the amalgamate of
sounds, of heartbeats, clicks and murmurs, of sudden silence
of comfort if such a thing were to be seen

if he could see, or hear or dive
he'd know i've never worn happiness
not as an extra limb or a shawl, rarely
as a smile, even he has called those short
slips banker dimples to emphasize my
lack of authenticity

no, it's smaller, wider,
smooth warm stones, the heaviness of rice
the grain of oak, the gentle selah in Psalms
it has never been attached to a body
trapped between fingers or ribs,
has never made an appearance--
i sometimes think I expend it
in movements as if it'd
be found around me in
backscatter, or slowly
shrugged off my shoulders
but
t h a t  i s  n o t  t h e  p o i n t
he worries about my happiness
as if it were precious but if it
were I wouldn't comb it through
his hair or whisper it in secrets
while he slept, brush it over
his skin or tuck it into his
pockets, he does not
u n d e r s t a n d
how much he
means.

I bite
because
i don't
know
how to
say
no

34b
8.5
20
36
29
140
5' 7"
18
16
8:30
6:00

i want to tell him
something about
how he was a monumental
loss, but I'm too afraid of the
ways in which he moves, afraid
of the ways he blinks and talks
of all the truths that are no longer
i could be moving forward but I'm
stuck on him, and bits of dream
cling to the walls of my consciousness
I'd say this is a matter of letting go,
but this is a matter of cutting ties
but which ties, which cords, which
wires, red or blue? Red or Blue?
red or blue?

you could take some
time to hold yourself
there will always be
lace dresses to make
you feel pretty, maybe
they bring out the purity
who knows, you could be happy

you could be happy.

I have torn myself
to Guam and back
in search of the
why

you bled your blues and
greens, outstretched on my
bed, you backstroked through
the stars and the planets fell in
line with your vertebrae, swept
the centauri beneath your elbows
and comets swam thigh-high like
sharks or pistols, armed by your
disgrace, I think, you always
expected me to shoot first.

the
girls at the counter have
called me beautiful closely
followed by it's disgusting
meant as an endearment, but
i feel every letter sink into
my heels, like sharp rocks
on the islands down by
the Arkansas--the ones
you don't expect that
your flesh rolls over,
smarting in the late
summer fuzz---but I've
always felt this way, like
rolls and wetness, curls and
clumps of mud sacked and
tied onto my joints, buried
by the sound of my own
laughter with a headstone
reading couldn't love herself
enough, rest in pieces.

God, I hate girls like you
zipped up with a smile and
punctuated by a hearty
chuckle--just kidding
yeah, me too.
because I
used to be the
wallweed who
was too forward
with her affections
unlearned the art of
grace--on how to say
thank you without
a hint of panic,
because they
teach you that
an agreement over
beauty should only be
one-sided, should only
be an extended invite as
long as you're not there
as long as the compliment
coats you but never takes
residence
how
then


do I say thank you to that?


I'm not trying to dredge up every
instance where beautiful was
replaced with ugly, where gorgeous
fell in line with rejection, where attention
was reversed with inadequacy--because
not every speckled bruised from my
childhood came from a direct hit
but all grew from the same
seed, the same insult, the
same withering glance
that taught me I
should be careful
where I put my
thank-yous
where my
heart lies
in the seat
of it, bleeding
out discrepancies,
escape plans, and
a certain measure
of unbelief that
cannot be gainsaid.

I only like myself
in the dim mornings
in the shade, in the soft
blues, when there's no
mirrors and I feel my
skin for what it is

Smile when you
cry so that a part
of you may be
happy when
all others are
sad.

I'm reminded of
how good a friend
I could be if I ever
just wanted to be
friends.

chaz said something like;

why don't you make yourself
your own standard? and how
brilliant an idea that was, to
look to myself for inspiration?

On this side
I mouth words
through steel
hexagons and
hope someone
hears, because
I really am the
parts of a society
that people have
come to hate in
a backwards
country.

I remember you dipped out
before I got on the wheel of
fire, shaking your head, and
I stood in line by myself. Oh,
but you'll do anything for your
sister won't you? I hate you for
this. I hate you for that.

You are too late for everything.

she took one look
at my self-portrait
and said it doesn't
even look like you
and I tripped on
the fourth step
up the stairs
but turned
around
and said
**exactly