Slowly and then all at once
I was beneath the sheet
It touches my nose and sways as I breathe out
Is it pink? Or white?
Who knows

Sheet touching my nose
And I crave nothing
I’m sweet on this sensation
Of cotton wooing my nostrils
And breath circulating beneath my chin for the sake of this prose

When the bee doesn't buzz,
And the fleece doesn't fuzz,
When the drones die out in droves,
And no pollen dusts our alcoves,
When the holy taverns echo,
Y nuestra miel acaba y esta seco,
The sweetest verse ever crooned,
I'll always buzz for youned,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
My sweet honey bee,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
'cause only a Queen knows a Queen.

you made me feel like the hundred acre wood
and then you slowly rot my oaks where they stood
you burned the grass
soaking my soil with redbull and whisky
the maple sweet syrup you once adored now you find too sticky

I don't know you anymore and that is good.
Better than the falseness of your wind blowing through my wood.

How do I quell these cravings?
When the longing flees from my mouth and ears
Just to linger in the back of my knees

When I can't get you out of my minds eye
When I wish I had known you longer
So you would still know me now

Should I have memorized your finger tips your hand prints your pink lips... more?
And should I have you touched you twice more at the door?
Then should I have wrapped my legs around your knees and not lay coyly atop the sheets like a cat also teasing your breath from your cheeks?

Should I have devoured your lips a hundredth time?
If I had would you be in my bed tonight?
Beckoning me
Eyes aglow as I parade myself around the room.
Like a horse at the races ready to make me croon.
Desires more than met when I lay on your chest?
You’d look at my mouth and feel pride
Knowing just what it’s like inside.

Or maybe no,
You would still be gone,
And I would still be better for it,
And the backs of my knees would still feel sweet
From the touches you chose to forfeit.

There’s a cool breeze blowing
And I can already feel the relief
After the rain

The rain may not even come
Fickle LA weather teasing

But the sweet emotion
The unburdening
The wet eyes in the sky

Reminds me of home
Watching a rain storm pummel the pavement outside the garage
Walking up to my fathers back
Turned to face the storm
And I stood with him and felt
I felt held
I felt made of Stone
But one with the storm

Heady wholesome relief

Just a cool breeze is a enough to rustle through these memories.

Steal down the stairs won't you?
Come into my quiet heart
Here in the dark
Undress me
Savor my quiet parts

Turn your mouth inside out
Let me know your taste buds
With my fingers my nails and my tongue
Put your knuckles in my lungs
Tear the flesh
Beat it numb.

Why did you break it when you knew it was broke?
Why did you take it when you what they'd wrote?
Why did you taken me to you rivers when you knew I couldn't float?

I was somber and blue
But I lit up like a fool
You blonde goddess
I lit up like a fool for you.

The thought of you and I smiled in the dark
Whispering "Undress me
Savor my quiet parts
And please don't hurt me
Here in the dark".

Have you ever fallen in love like a cookie dipping into milk?
The milk is thick and whole and fills the holes
Where anxiety used to tick
It makes you softer, makes you better, makes you wetter and sweeter still
The only catch
My cookies beware
Is that if you get undipped
You’ll find yourself now soggy silt
Fumbled across a paper towel
Leaking your beloved milk.

Neon
No neutrals
New and glowing
Green and wet behind the ears
High on nothing but the night

How is it
That I meet someone even more lovely
More interesting
Taller
Better dressed
With more to say

And still
I rate their kissing
On a scale of 0-how you kissed me

Still I wish it was your touch that traced along my spine. Even though you didn’t do it as well as this new lover, I still want to know how it would feel from you. I want your fumbles.

Three times we slept together
that’s it.
That’s nothing.
But. Clearly it’s quite a lot.

Because still I compare every new lover to the way you’d throw your head.

Still I keep a guard up between my iris’ and their smile.

Still I feel like these are passing time until I see you again.

And for what? What do I want?

I honestly would just love to get lunch.

See what you look like
In the sunlight
Eating a sandwich
Smiling at new things.

What makes you belly laugh?
I don't know.
I just know that I like how it felt in the dark, in the sunlight, under fluorescent lights, nighttime lit by passing cars peeking though my window, I like how it felt under the moon.

And that I'd love to sit across from literally any table with you.

She's a seamstress in her way,
Stitching together her dreams,
So the seams lay exactly how she says they may.

With sharp scissors and a wet tongue,
She snips the cloth and licks the one,
Who'll slip through the needles eye,
Carrying all that metal in her noose,
coyly cuddling with rose and chartreuse.

Sad like Valentines Day 2019 at Fed-Ex, boxing up my husbands things, Papa on the phone spouting fear in my ear, tear rolling unchecked down my cheek, my thumb penning a pragmatic bullet point list explaining 'leave you'.

You’re just a tall bachelor I guess I never knew,
Took that flight with poor Lu
You were faded and probably wearing black
Suffering a separation anxiety attack,

So you high tailed it to your coast
And took back the peanut butter toast

It was a beautifully clean break
But it’s a shame we never socialized the snake.

I didn’t even know you were on my mind

Hair like spun gold
Your lips remind me of a big beautiful ship cresting the white water in a warm ocean at golden hour
Aura like a goddess
Scent of exactly what I want
Smile like a child
Heart of a lion and a kitten and a snake
Legs tall like the pillars in Ancient Greece.
Did they know you? Were you a goddess way back then too? That they built their cities on pillars modeled after you?
I think so

Romanticism gets the best of me on eves like this.

Where to even start, I don’t know
Maybe with your wholeness.
With your completeness.

Sometimes maybe it feels that there is too much,
Such a great muchness in you,
It’s not too much.
It’s exactly as much as you are.
And it’s a blessing and a beauty and a bounty
That you will always overflow and you will never run dry.

Just the shine in your eyes could make the whole sea glimmer.
Just the zeal in your laugh could contest with all the lemons in the world in zest
Just the shimmer of your hair!
It could send rockets to the moon.

The point is
That you,
You,
You,
You,
You are the point.

Nonchalant, like a toddler who pulls your hair out of your scalp with strong, damp little fists.

Nostalgic, like wet carpet and dusty, musty, summer camp drawers.

Ticklish, like a scratch you can't itch that seems to live just between your collar bones and your chin on the thinnest part of your skin.

Bitter sweet, like days old, left over red.

Whole, like cows milk ripe with chewy, sticky cream still hot from her utters.

Bright, like sunset on a day that you never wanted to end, haunting the night that you never thought would begin.

She reaches again
and finds it.
Ah, yes, there,
Swept under the rug.

Your psyche would shatter,
Your veins turn blue,
Your bones surely would melt into glue,
Just a glimpse of the dreamscape of my year without you,
The magic moments in my mind,
Would burn out your eyes and leave you blind.
Your heart would wrench.
Your throat would catch.
And vengeance would never be mine.

I’m never ***** anymore 
I used to drip onto the floor
Libido was higher, more, my core.

But I suppose, no, it was not.
Because it waned 
Yet 
I remained.
Yet
I miss being effortlessly wet.

I know, I know
It’s in my head. 

But maybe mostly it’s the bed?

Say, what’s different about my bedding?
Is it that I had a wedding?
And now,
Linens my sister gifted my ring and I
Sacrificed
Sprawled beneath some other guy
Another lover

Oh! dear, I’ve blown my cover.
Oh poor dear, my mother.
I'm a disgrace,
A divorce, at my age?

So, is that what stole my soak?

You know, you shouldn't marry a man,
You don't really know.

Is that what dried my dripping *****,

A quick ****,
From a new husband,
Who wouldn't hear no.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Far too simple for my psyche

When it’s no longer that contrast
The purple and blue and brass
I can’t grasp

When nothing’s juxtaposed
When there’s nothing to compare
When I’m naked and no one but me’s there

There’s you

My key fumbled with the lock
But you found me in that pause

Invited me to immerse my eye line
To indulge my gaze
To throw my glowing eyes into
The lavender sky
The silhouettes of the trees
The rooftops stretching out to Beverly

You waited until I was giddy
And craving your shoulder beneath my chin
To steal away into the night
Leaving welcome sweat on my skin

The length of your arm tracing the length of mine
And your perfume at my wrists

Sad like Valentines Day 2018 with my lover I loved no longer beside me in my bed, watching Inglorious *******, spaghetti I slaved all day on in the garbage because I spilled it in my haste, the words 'leave you' on my tongue.

I hurt the me
That was good to me
By being his,

I betrayed my own sweet heart,
And now she’s run away from me.

Now she hides in the shadows.

And I miss her smile.

I want to steal her light.

Of course she hides from me.

Nostalgic kind of love
The kind that hurts kinda nice
In the sweet places

It feels old and familiar
Worn out
It doesn’t keep you warm anymore
But you love it for its wrinkles and holes

Sugar sweet
Like a pinup girls pouty lip
In a magazine from the 40s

Something is wrong with it
But it looks nice

And now
On quiet nights
It comes to you
Unexpected

‘I hope I’m welcome’ it says
As it seduces my psyche
As it takes my cheek in its palm
As it looks into my eyes and soothes the pain that it brings.

So many, many changes
In my lady palace, in my pink wallpapered hall,
You see, now I wish to know your middle initial.

You see, it's your chest hair that captivates me
On your face I ruminate
And it's your side eye sugar smile that slumbers on the suede side of my soul,
Especially when we found this new fold
a shape all knees and elbows
tucked up and out and in
a shape with my breast on your rib
and your thigh beneath my shin
all skin on skin
it's that love makin'
that a softer me would want to swim in.

Maybe I'm soft again
Maybe I should let myself lick you

"Let myself"? A world where soft desires reign?
Maybe it's not the initial I want to store away in my brain,
I actually just want to know your middle name.

I’m good.
No, but like
Really
Really good.

I hated your stiff ankles
Really really really hated them
I loved you
But I hated
Those ankles

Stiff, unmoving.
Like bricks, you said.

I labored for two years
Every time I saw you
And
Them

Cursed ankles.
Stiff and plasticy skin.
Freckles that weren’t freckles.
Burns that weren’t burns

Failure to coax
those muscles into relaxing
Failure to ******
the tendons into lengthening
Failure to ease
that joint into movement

But
I did like how my thumb fit behind
Your ankle bone.

What to do with the hum-drum, mundane, been done?

That no longer comforts, rests easy or pauses.

Now only exciting excites
Nothing bites quite as it might
Have when I was up all night
Dancing,
Now it’s poetry and mirrors that
Charm
Me

But thinking of that sweet drunk girl dancing on her toes at midnight with a stranger...
AH!
There it is.

A new mundane for my new old brain to charm when clouds won’t let go their rain.

Isn’t the wasp
Who acts like a bee
More a bee than the bee
Who all day, only has to be

I have w e i r d anxiety
And I don’t quite k n o w where to put it
I feel off
Like watching a black and white movie when you’re a kid with a theme that’s b e y o n d you and knowing that you don’t quite know what it’s about
A lack of an aboutness with yourself
Much about what I do and where I go and who I see
And triumphantly living this l i f e
As I w a n t
But feeling a l i t t l e far from m y s e l f

I’m writing a bookmaybe I should get back to it

It's March in California and,
It feels like an early September evening in Virginia,
An owl is cooing,
A nostalgic singsong that reminds me of the woods behind my parents house,
Comfort seekers in my senses inflate,
Disappearing into a heady haze,
Anything to distract myself from the mini self-betrayal I just executed.

I can watch myself as I do it,
Basking in this nostalgia,
The detachment from my pain easing my shoulders,
Making me feel high,
Or maybe it's the serotonin and dopamine,
Coursing around in my body,
Freely,
As it pleases,
Results of.

The owl is howling and my roommate is home,
My phone is silent and I'm blissfully alone,
Detachment, detachment, detachment,
My favorite drug, how I've missed you.

So sickly happy,
So near to trauma,
(my familiar place)
But my perspective saving me from feeling it..

I could be in Virginia in 2008,
My legs a little hairy,
A breeze blowing through my long, long hair,
Innocence teasing me.

Or I could be here, now,
Listening for an owl that has stopped calling.

How delicious. Sweet detachment.

My favorite drug.

Sleepless in Seattle on my mind and in my feelings,
Making me feel moody and 90's,
Chunky belts and colorful, dark sweater,
Old airports in family comedies,
Big clunky landline phones,
When Harry Met Sally and I watched it on a plane for the first time last summer.
Baroque in my headphones and 1950's swing playing from the ceiling

Girls talking loud, so important,
Deciding options for their next photo shoot,
sweet and divine making their plans.

And me
Silently observing, enjoying

If I were an overweight man
probably
I would be creepy

But I am a nice package

They're in L.A. for the weekend.
Oh, they've been to London and "her boyfriend is an *******"
She wore the baby blue, "it was my mother's", and it brings out her eyes
Why is he friend's with Madeline?
She's a *****
But we like her. She's very bold.

Plans laid and heading out. Good for them.

And I'm still here.
Ache in my neck,
Baroque in my ears (because I heard it improves learning and slows heart rate),
This anti-poem coming from my fingertips

Alone in this cafe and now the mood has shifted.

Double yous and Vees

Mouth tickling me and mixing vees

Vife and happy to be

sometime
s

I wish

I

was a fashion designer or someonelikethat maybe living in newyork being botheredbymynicotineaddiction but happy to not have to go stand intherain

wearing bellsleevesonatuesday and feeling n i c e and callingmymotherbefore dinner and having lunch withmybest friend and her dog

and living a life asleep

sometimes

it feels good towishicouldbe someone else and to know that instead i will alway
s

b e  m e

Anxious she finds herself
Though lately less so
Childhood bed
In her childhood home
Thinking childish thoughts in her childhood head
Russian nesting doll

Nesting
Nesting soon to be though not so
Rings and nausea
And please let me sleep
Head in her mother’s lap

Mental illness and lack of routine
Tapping on her glass

The blurry light from the hallway outside the bedroom reflecting on the shiny wooden headboard.
How many many many times has this dappled wood revealed its imperfections in that blurry reflected light?
Put me to sleep with your consistency and resolve

Thank you little light
And mother’s hands that flipped the switch
And eyes that remember
And mini terrors of her adolescents that gave this reflection the right to sweep across her consciousness in swooning waves that feel soothing as they scrape.

In this moment its comfort is quite enough

No mirror to keep me company
No reflection to satisfy my lonliness
A dying narcissism
A quiet relief
A tearful goodbye
A quickly deteriorating something of something of myself

Self image vacancy
Mirrorless existence
Me only inside of myself
No me projected into my own brain

Just me, with me, however I am, having no idea how I am.
Age old vanity plane that could reveal all the illness in my head, covered in king sized, pure white, Egyptian cotton sheets

Oh how the body pinchers have fallen

Muérdame
Hazlo, fuertísimo pero
No
Tan
Fuerte

¿Recuerdas que soy que?
Ah, si. Delicada. Una delicia.

Muérdame
Ahora. Hazlo, peor que antes
Por favor... amor?

¡Ooi! Muy doloroso viejo.
¿Sangre?
Sin sangre. Entonces otra vez.
Por favor tesoro. Otra vez.

Y al mismo tiempo
Mi cariño
Toca mis costillas
Suave, suave, suave, sutil.

Otra vez.
Muérdame. Pero con cuidado.

Soy que?

Memorizarme.

Delicada. Una delicia.

Hay amor, muérdame otra vez?

Rose petals thick and heavy
Just ready to wrinkle
Strong, firm, delicate
Simple
Feigning delicacy.
Tighter and tighter to their middle
Lips curling back
Pouting open
All eventually revealing the
Veins!
Veins
Veins
Veins on the roses
From the underside spread upward,
Uncurled,
Veins.
Some so proud and broad
Some coy and curtseying
Some wide open, greeting you.
——
Some angling to the light
——
Some fading their color at the tip
——
Some!
Some doubling inward. Two twists inside!
Why? Overcrowding.
Petals wide,
petals too ready, petals broad
And she made herself a lover
——
Some older, wiser
By quicker death wisdom grows
The peaked face within
Afraid
Afraid of what is coming faster for her.
Something her beauty could not slow
An aging ballerina, refusing to retire her slippers
——
Some wider
More careless
Hippies
——
Some like a dance
Such a vulnerable entrance  
Opening up her lips, her arms, her legs,
Spouting out her tiny tongue
Aroused
——
Some so full
Hiding herself in her layers
More of her.

Ancient.
Just a blip.

Trimmed from their bush. Here to die in a vase by my bed.

Simplicity
In all its forms is good.
Simplicity
Simplicity
Sim pliss ittee
Even divinity has nothing on it
For simple things are not simplicity
It is the conduits and the nuances and very pragmatic essence of things that are simplicity.
Divinity is better than to be divine
Simplicity is better than to be simple

Be in the dark, in the quiet feel yourself, only yourself around you, feel just one bit of your skin as it exists on you, and be clear. That simplicity is where you find rest.

Oh, divine.

It smells vaguely of pizza
And there’s a little white fuzz floating around in the air,
I’m rewriting memories and helping a friend through a break up.
I’m sitting on my back staircase alone at night with no substance to keep me company,
Remembering a time sitting here with my ex having wine while he smoked a cigarette feeling relative peace and romanticism.
Now I’m contemplating the roughness of the stucco walls and the wrot iron and staircase and window cages,
The exceptionally uncomfortable and bumpy stair steps, all of the tangible visual interest around me,
Maybe falling in love with it,
It doesn’t notice me or maybe

Maybe it does, maybe it feels my weight,
Knows my smell,
Oh my god maybe these walls remember that moment that I’m thinking of!
Maybe they know all of it and they support me,
Maybe the me that was then and the he that was then is sitting here too just below me,
Letting the me that is now observe the sweet, pervasive sickness that we were lying in.

The pizza smell has wafted away and so has the little fuzz,
The wrot iron staircase feels okay against my head,
The angles that I’m looking down on feel unique to me, my frame of vision, is just for me.
He lived here, he bothered me, he smoked on this staircase nearly every night.
But maybe these steps and this material around me knew it was not his,
Maybe he never saw the stairs at this angle, maybe they never showed him their magic or their comfort or their mood or their simple, simple majesty.

Falling in love with a staircase and with the shadows that it kept secret for me.
Divine, it’s all divine.

Sometimes I miss the holy grace of ignorance,
Sometimes I miss the comfort that I felt when I read about David and his caves,
About his moody eyes and his harp,
About his *** addiction and his jealous, musical heart that only a god could love,
About the way he loved with abandon, reckless, selfish, taken aback in naivety, balking at those who dared disagreed with his unwavering need to be as he was

David made me ***
David made me feel closer to God and my mother
David told me a story of lust and ****** and protection and angst and a sweet tortured easily patronized self

Maybe in all of this, one day this flawed, beautiful man who murdered a giant and sang to lambs

Would be me

A woman, self possessed, soothing sheep and culling sleep in her victims.
Passion dripping from her honey harp.

David, thank you for the awakening and for the saturated hedonism that you spoke to in me.

Loving [you] me now, as [you are] I am,
In each moment that [you] I experience [yourself] myself
is
is like


what a body of water must feel like.

Affecting itself continuously,
Supported unconditionally regardless of matter or variants.

It is strongest, most full, most complete


when together.
In one container.

But even separated,
In different states,
With different influences

It can never cease to be.
Never

Always: it is
always you
are always I am
always.

But I am best when I am purely me,
Being me
Regardless of my conscious awareness that I am.

I am.

Moody blue waves go black with mischief in her moves,
Always flowing,
Spraying secrets untouched into the salt-heavy air above,
A slow smile spreads that far and wide away towards the sun,
Also turning on her tides.
Moonlight illuminating her curves and gestures.

Deceptive and lovely, a woman.
Never to be owned or won. Never to consider not being.
Magnificent. In her alcoves and her storms.
Gestures of night and paradise.

Curiousity killed the cat,
What of it?
I am not a cat and neither am I curious,
I think.

I want to know and see, but few things hold my interest.

Lately I crave being craved,
Lately I hate that I love the concave of my stomach when fasting for a smaller waist to contemplate in my mirror before going to work,
Lately I’m waking up moody,
Lately I’m grateful.
Lately I need more sleep,
Lately I’m not quite in the place I used to be,
Lately I think I must be growing or changing because this new sense of knowing is gnawing so softly on my skin it feels like luxury.

I think I must be on the edge of an expansive biosphere of me, complete and untouched, because the vision of her is fading as my ten little prints and their oblong archless counterparts bring me closer to the edge.

Staring boldly, daring no one proving nothing peering down into my canyons.

Just on the edge of this cliff, feeling my wind my edges my rivers holding me up,
And up,
And up,
And down so far below.
Though it’s not down that I will go.
It it through.

And richly on the other side I will emerge.
But for now that is not my concern.

Standing on the edge, arms spread wide, I’m alive.

Quite Grand Indeed.

What do you want?
A fragile heart responded:
'To be alone in the dark with you'
A comfort she longed for but had never known.

Now in the shower,
                                          lights off

                                                            ­              alone.

Good. Goodness.

A good that only a 'you' can know and no one else can know it.

Like dusk: created. An Atmosphere, A Mood.
A place to mend the temptation of that want.

Alone in the dark with you?
                                                                ­                   No
                                                    Who is you anyway?

Only a feeling, an idea, a fragile comfort of someone else's something else?
                                                           ­                       No
               What she wanted then, was this moment.

It just hadn’t happened yet.
The comfort of this space.
Existing in her body.

In this musky, soft, grainy mood of dusk.

It is all made of she and she, and she are one.