I am on the dusty plank between winter and spring,          the end

Of February snapping closed over 28, and                             I am

Impervious to the way time has                                          too eagerly

Bounded out of reach—not that I would even,                     awaiting

My certain departure,

Think of drawing myself up straight

And using it for more than finding ways

To stay cold.

I do not want to die,
but what a bother it is,

keeping this up.

It is a whisper of a word
Foolish, or explosive.
It is both prostrating and proud,
Igniting swaths of hope in the eyes
Of adolescent girls who catch onto it—
Stroke it and dance with it, doe-eyed.
As if they've never heard it said!
as if they've never felt
It hit that place inside
So raw and tissue-thin
It leaves a bitterness to float
Up, and spread across the surface?
One too many times
I've closed my skin to the bright
sky, wrapped up in you and
the sins beneath our fingernails.
One too many times
I've wrangled with my own hands
To sever the cords,
To drop the **** word at your feet,
To fall away.

Snagged and spindled on my sweater cuffs,
Memories spray forward in sparks.
The scent of new linoleum,
The stoic hush of the phone line,
And my bedroom window, sealed tight
Against the ghosts of you and I
Kissing barefoot on the lawn.

Every morning I paint over purple rinds
Of exhaustion beneath my irises.
Every morning I curl my joints inwards;
I have nowhere to go anymore.

In the end, where am I?
Slandered, spoiled, sea-sick,
Misfit, ragtag, falling star,
Washed up to age-old shores
And confined within their limits.

Nobody can join us, nobody
Will join us, it’s a matter
Of admitting that you’re broken
It’s a matter of building walls around
Your own disembodied pieces.

I watch only through breaks in the smoke,
When on occasion the edges
Fall into sharp clarity,
Like a kaleidoscope of bad dreams;
My dull eyes take in the present
With regard to nothing but the past;
He falls in love with a girl who is
Beautifully, dangerously naïve.

Like the flicking of a lighter,
Life sparks and jumps forward--
Not the steady flame that follows,
I am the curling hush of ash.

There’s something real ******* intimidating about a blank white screen.
It’s like there’s a glaring eye in every pixel,
and the cursor, in its intervals, stands stiff and haughty,

blinking again and again like a demand or like a question--
how, why,
                  when, what, why, why?

Camellia, you’re crazy;
          Camellia, you’re lost;

Camellia, there’s ***** beneath your bed—
lock the door and stop answering your phone.

What to do, what to
Do when a young boy dies?

Tell everyone you loved him,
Draw up meaningless old memories,
Stretch him between your fingers like
Cobwebs and old chewing gum?
He was your ping-pong partner,
Sat in front of you in Algebra,
Rode your bus?
He lived four houses down the road,
Wore the same jeans,
Walked the same halls?
Or was he your best friend?

I didn’t know the dead boy.
I know a living one who did.
One who went on church missions
Went to parties;
Smoked with him,
Set up dates for him,
Now there is so much
I have to say,
But I won’t say it;
I will make things worse,
I will lose it, break down the walls,
I will fall into him again
Out of sorrow.

All the way home I bang the steering wheel
And shout obscenities at the empty
Windshield, frost-fingered,
Lifeless.

I am so sorry.