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'.

The more I let my future be
The more she looks like me

Youuuuu
are
justlikeastrongcupofcoffee
in the evening before bed
to keep you uh-wake
on a day where the afternoon was so divine
it sloshed into the night
and now you don't want to close your eyes
and miss whatever else
magic might
befall your nest
So instead of rest
youjackuponcoffee
withmilkandsugarandcream
that feels warm in your throat
that feels smooth on your teeth
and you walk up to the window
and feel nothing but content
to let your feet peruse the hardwood floor
or to sit in your favorite chair
your lower back relaxes
and the lighting compliments your hair

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.

Nothing so soft and inviting as your skin
Your lips like little heavens
Your eyes holding thousands of celestial bodies
Electric connections in your freckles
Your glowing cheek bones
And texture of your laugh lines
The way your upper lip covers your teeth when you’re being silly
Your delicate fingers
Your forward and bold shoulders and the way you make me feel something new when you hold me
When you pull me in with desire I feel something some unexpected magic that I though died in 6th grade animate in fluttering movements
Your subtlety
Your gentleness
Your ventless embrace of life
Your ******* shaped by an artist
So round and cupped and just in between petite and full
Your *** with dimples and delicious weight
Your long legs
A retired runner
The rhythm in your shoulders
Your *** appeal
The length of your neck
The sweet wild sparse little forest of dark hairs on your abdomen conspiring to make me love you even more
Your pouting *****
Your perfect face
Your golden back
The tightness of your tummy, or the bloat when you’ve had too much coffee
The levity in your footsteps
The wisdom in your voice
The softness in your voice
The cackling child in your laugh
The vulnerability of your honesty
So careful with me and maybe me with you too
That vein on your slender but firm bicep
The way you look in my passenger seat
The many beautiful boundless expressions of your hair
The beauty mark on your *****
Your darling moans  
Your balance of masculine and feminine
Your hand on the small of my back
The way it made me feel so many new ways
Like a teenager, like a woman, important, protected, loved, important, worth protecting
Your slow love
I bet you don’t know I feel all this way
How could you know
I never told you all this
Would you like to know now?
Would it be fair to tell you now
That you’re committed to someone bolder than me
With more time to give

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.

Thank you for everything you ever did to me
Said to me
Thought of me
Thank you for the awakening
For the clash
Thank you for letting a famished lion drink
thank you for the visions
The melodrama
The in-tents-ity of my late youth
Could have never been such a tremendous explosion
With anyone but you

I don't need you
But you help me
And I help you
And I like having you around

But I don't need you
And then sometimes I don't want you

Can you be okay with that?

Can you just exist with me?

Does it have to be so connected all the time?

Why do I so badly never ever want to hurt your feelings?
Why do I think you're so fragile?

I still think you're lying,
And that you did cry
Silently on my back when I pushed you away from my thighs.

Why can't I believe you?
That you're not as fragile as that?

I just think you're quivering
And that without me you'd suffer
Anxiety attacks.

Is that selfish?
Is that narcissistic of me?
To think that you need me the way your face convinces me you do?

The way you cling to my hands
Though you've stopped doing that so much
I suppose.

You leave me alone now all the time,
And that's nice.

Sometimes it’s been too long
Since I’ve contemplated my own beauty
Spent time in the mirror
Admiring my cheek bones
And collar bones
And my hair
Admiring the way light
Plays on my face
Like a painting
I’m an adorer or adoration
And being adored feels just right

I don’t know,

Simple, simple, simple.

Divine. To not know.

I like to smoke
I guess
It makes me feel like a moody
Old but very important man
I have a hard time though with
the contents of the smoke
I don't like to get too high
I don't like cigarettes
I miss his stomach
And the way shirts fit him
I miss his arms that aren't here
Did I only love him so much
Because I knew that soon
I would be an ocean and a country or three away?
I hope not, I hope I'm not so fickle
Is that even fickle?
I also like the sound the embers make
When you breathe in
The little crackling sound
soothes me
It feels nostalgic
Almost like I could be inside those crackling embers
So complete
He would do this thing, I'm sure he still would
Where he would close his eyes to calm himself
And let a big slow breath from his nose
Because the sight of me was so exciting he didn't know what to do with the feeling
I ******* to his voice
Just his voice in my own head
It's so well memorized.
His upper lip I could never really know
Because it was under that beard I love so much
I love how he's never on his phone
He's just thinking and looking around and eating
The smell of his beard
The veins on his big bear hands
The warmth of his arms
The cave of his chest when he's holding me
His sensitivity

I've never loved, seen or appreciated a man in this way
I think he's beautiful the way
A magnificent beast is beautiful
Nothing about him is pretty
But he's delicious
He's like a mountain
A meadow, thick trees letting sunlight onto the ferns
A forest lake
A stag
So strong and transparent
So disarmed
So wild for me and me for him

I'm so stupid in love and there's really nothing to do about it
Especially because
I'm still more important than the way I feel for him
Anything and everything I need to do here
But let's consider that,
What do I need to do here? That I couldn't do there.
But of course there are logistics to consider.

I see it so clear is the thing
I see the yard in front of the house, the strange slanted wall up the side with the little road above
I see the goat
I see the stained glass windows
And the wooden table

I've never felt so safe and excited before in my life
I felt wild and free but held and protected and looked after in a way that did absolutely nothing to shrink my freedoms
I want to breathe him again

I want to go on about him in Spanish with a girl I just met while he stands there talking, probably understanding more than I know

I want to go to Spain with him
Live nearby
Visit his mother
Spend Christmas together
Meet his dog
Be adored in the way he adores
To be eaten the way he eats

I remember I loved so much to watch my pretty, delicate fingers with my long nails touch his hands and face
I like that he's rugged but gentle
I miss his back
Covered in runaway hairs he doesn't know about

His big, strong, hairy thighs
I still wish I'd wrapped around them in the sea
Calling his name
Casting a spell on his hands so he would massage me later
And he did

I want that romantic feeling again
Something about smoking always feels a bit romantic I guess

An old woman sits alone in a room
Counting words as they fall from her mouth
Creaking and groaning
Falling from her mouth
Crackling down like dry leaves

She is dying tree
With roots that feed the earth

She wears a cloak around her shoulders
Tassels brushing at the floor
Capturing dust from all the rooms
In which she's sat and spoke before

She is spooky
She is powerful
Within her darkness and light

Her ample hips covers the ground beneath
Wrinkled and fallen flesh
Her crossed feet have walked for miles on earth barren and dry
And in a garden lush and supple is where she learned to cry,

She is the woman
My old woman
Who's come for my nightmares
To ***** away the part of me that cries when she is scared,

She beckons me into the night
With long fingers
Wrinkled, knobby, soft, veiny, calloused,
And says:
'Child don't be afraid
Your time is nigh
Trust me for I am your old woman
and I lead only where you will go'

You gave me childhood
You gave me silliness
And ease
You taught me how to relax
How to let go
You sat with me in my shame
You gave me grace
You never yelled
Or wanted to fight
You lay down and listened
When I wanted to rage
You gave me kindness and family
You let me in
We were not a match but we did our best
And I am so grateful to you
You gave me countless characters
You were pure play
You let me have my fantasies
You listened to me when I was cruel
You showed me the sight of your heart breaking
You were exactly as you were
You tried, maybe too hard
Because you lied too much
But in the ways that mattered the most to you I know you were honest
And I know you did you damndest
And so did I
And I am so grateful to you

Yesterday I had good news
and I know only you would understand
The way it resonated in the deepest part of my soul
The way it tickled those parts of me only you know about
And I wanted to tell you
But I thought maybe you’ve forgotten those parts of me I showed to you
Or maybe they’ve changed
And you wouldn’t know them anymore
And I thought that telling you might make me seem lonely
Since I haven’t found someone yet to bare those parts of me to yet
But I’m really not ready yet
I thought it might seem sad to you and to the unknowable ether that I haven’t let someone else in to those parts
As I know you have done with your girl
But that’s okay
And I didn’t tell you and instead I just write a poem to thank you
If I reach out
I’m still scared that you’ll get the wrong idea
I’ve had a few dreams lately that you’re having trouble in your relationship
So I don’t want to saunter in
And mess anything up
I really hope you are at peace
And I am so grateful for you

Judgement is the end of truth

We went to a pool party
Of a friend of a friend
We had ****** before
But decided to stop
Because we were working on a documentary together
Anyway we went to some pool party
And he judged the dark hairs on my thighs
That I didn't shave
I couldn't be bothered to care
I played up my attraction to the women there
For his enjoyment
We got quite tipsy
And went back to mine to work on the doc
We smoked a joint on the balcony
We got faded and swoopy
He kissed me and we went to my bed
I was riding him and wanting his to slap me
It excited me
But he wouldn't do it
So instead I slapped him
He was confused at first
So I slapped him again, a bit harder
And then he was a bit annoyed
I slapped him again
He told me okay, stop
So I slapped him again and as I did I stuck out my tongue
I slapped him again and again and finally he got angry
And saw my game
He slapped me and I squirted all over him
He saw how much I loved it
And he did it again and again
It was all I could do to ruin my sheets
And cover us in my ***
Finally he came, we were a mess of *** and slaps
Even as we lay there haphazardly slung across the bed
Sideways and hanging off
His long, long, long arm could still extend to my face
And laying there, breathing heavy and slow
He kept tapping my cheek with his finger tips
And my **** kept throbbing

One time
You used the word
Reek
To describe how badly yours hands smelled of orange
And now sometimes when peel a cutie I think about
You saying
Reek
And how your hair flopped into your eyes
And that stupid watch
Everyone liked
On your wrist
Just there
Beside your fingers

I remember your thumb knuckle
I liked it a lot
I don’t remember your finger nails
But I remember the way
Your hands sent me
The way they felt on my skin
The way I craved them
The way that electricity jolted through my throat when your palm pushed against my Adam’s apple

For my withoutness of you
I can be humbled when I need
I can feel longing when my other seeds
Fail to take root

But

I wish I knew
You
Still

So

I could eat a cutie and
Not try to remember
The way
Your lips parted
And you flashed your teeth
When you said
ReeK

Honest decisions
From people who feel good
Are the amber of the earth

I climbed a tree
Praised it's firmness
Then judged it's dead leaves
And then it said to me:
Don't love me because of how I make you feel
Love me because I am a living thing among living things

Lately I’ve been letting my hair grow
My leg hair has caused me consistent unrest in my life
Shaving and plucking and waxing only for it to bristle again 30 minutes later
Coming in dark on my pale skin
Sharp and tough as cactus spears
So I’m letting it grow
And wearing shorts
I went to a friends house with my hairy legs and he was shocked
He wondered out loud “you go out like that?”
That time around my grown out leg hair only lasted a month
I wonder how long this phase will last
Maybe I’ll never shave it again
Wouldn’t that be easy?

I feel the same about a wild lawn
Of uncut grass
Growing in thickets and patches
Different species and colors and lengths
Catching the light
Being divine
Maybe my leg hair can be like this

I emerge from the dock barefoot in a t shirt
And find my sister talking to neighbors
They’re wearing shoes with their hair done
I wonder how wild I look
Not as wild as I am

They’re teachers too
My bare hairy legs reveal
That I’m a feminist
She clocked the legs and didn’t have to
Take a moment to let it sink in
As my friend from college did when I went thrifting with her last week
She started at them and then quieted herself
But this lovely woman in hot pink
Gave me her approval
She said I’ll be okay teaching
I can handle myself she said
I’m a feminist

Reactions from women
About my hairy legs
Are becoming
So fun

I forgot that I’m a lover
I mean I guess I always knew
But I forgot I’m the kind of lover
Who’ll kiss and kiss and kiss until we’re blue
The kind who’ll miss and miss and miss the sensation of a you
Who
I enjoy

You came back
A Karmic kiss in my DMs
A sputtering start
Formed by my fears
Smoothed into a languid forgiveness
I never dreamed would be mine

Such a special gift
To communicate with you
To think that one day
I might again lay like a cat
Coyly atop the sheets
And read you a poem
Etched from the friction of my longing

Or that I would just get to smile
At you from across a table

Or take a bath
Or text you while I'm in the bath
Or hug your body
And let all the sweetness
I've held for you all these years
Bubble over

Will I cry when I see you face?
Will you let me hold your cheeks in my palms?
Take you in?
See how you've changed?
You became a man in my hands
In my body
I can't wait to see the man you've become
To see your new body
Tattooed and built

I hope one day we can be old friends
I hope you are a man who respects women
I hope you are still so sweet
I hope you don't notice the new depth of my laugh lines
Since you saw me last
I hope you marvel at the length of my hair
As I know I will marvel at the shortness of yours
I hope you let me touch the back of your skull
I hope you wrap me up tight

I have a vision of our meeting
I'm wearing a royal blue, loose knit sweater
Over a bra with jeans
I feel the strength of your arms
As you wrap around my lower back
I bend backward slightly and we both feel safe

And I hope there is still
A vulnerability in you
That is familiar to me
I hope you'll make me feel 23

Sweet confession
"You're the meteorite"
Sweet validation
"I like that"

Life is full of surprises
Our reconnection has taught me
That love is never lost
Good ones come back around
And my life is pure magic
I need only let longing warm the space behind my heart
Write poetry
Dream
And lost darlings will come back to me.

Reminding me of London
Nightmares huffing afoot
Freezing cold
And far too sold
To wipe my hands of soot

Leggings tugging at my legs
In their cloth pockets
Bunching behind my knees
Restricting my relaxation
Stretching out all wrong
My knees will be baggy in baggage claim
No matter I’m here now
As you shiver there by my side
A touch is a touch is a touch too much
Wailing indistinct won’t subside

Detachment in the whites of my eyes
Devotion dripping from my cornea  
Doppelgänger in another life
Singing sweetly the song you crave
She’s named Gloria

No bad memories
Let’s push them away

Naked now in bed and I’m feeling as
Cold brew in Alaska
Try to smile spotting a moose for the first time
How much is not too much to smile at this sighting?

Thinking of Madrid
Your one redeeming quality
your thumbs
Gliding along the coffee mug
In that old woman’s cafe
Aged photos on the wall
The best tomato I’ve ever had
Walking for hours while you called me a *****
Denver
Baltimore
With the gun and the perimeter and the door

Woodbridge
With the spaghetti in my throat
And the tremble in the notes
That you chose to bestow
There I am poised
Delicately
Trying to decide
Which of the two evils
May take my life tonight

Too much time spent in cars
In the cold
On the floor
Being BORED
what a waste

Sad sad sad man
Trauma and oblivion whittle away at your kidney
Doppelgänger in another life just a sheep herder in Sydney.

A notebook
A blank sheet of paper
You aren’t bringing old things with you into the now
Because you are present.
You have never triggered me
That’s amaZing

Each one giving for the other.

But then we were giving too much
From a place we didn't have to give from
From dry wells we fed each other our earth
When what the other needed was sunshine and water

But we hid together beneath the earth
Building little tunnels between our wells
Digging out the earth underneath
Forming a wide chasm between our wells
Earth cleared out by our most ancient thoughts

Our network of tunnels
Each giving consent to our nightmarish coping
Easily excavating thousands of avenues
A complex and beautiful city grid
An Atlantis a la toxic-lovers-just-learning-to-love-well built in the earth and clay at the bottom of these wells becoming one
Sweeping breaths pouring more and more illness through our tunnels

Our relationship built of the mutual chemical compounds in the poison cups we drank each day and then began to feed to each other.

We needed therapy and instead we held each other on the shower floor wailing and surviving by filling each other up with the others' insides, then dumping that new cocktail back into the other, over and over and over again. For a few moments balancing our sloshing insides between our mouths.

Each one giving for the other.

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

Imprinted in my mind
is
my foot pressed against your eye
as
we made the bed a slip and slide

Days when life is hard and ugly i want to be **** with you
So I text you something *****
and you don't respond right away
and i feel a bit sorry for myself
and i lay in the bath
and i talk to my mother exclusively in Spanish about this and that
and i feel a bit better
then life doesn't feel so hard and ugly
and I contemplate the crutch of you
a **** sunshine boy in my mind
an ideal who is a fantasy
And says he just wants one thing
but really i think you love me
or maybe i mean as much to you on the flip side
of this coin we share
as I do to you but in a different way
are you aware of the fantasy?
or maybe I'm silly to think that I know how you think
you smoke
oh no, you smoke
you poor stupid little thing
did you start to be edgy?
How stupid
why, your poor shiny pink lungs
why damage yourself baby boy
i want to heal you
and i want you to heal me
you did heal me that day
and thats why i come back
and i healed you and thats why you come back
or maybe my ***** really is that magical
well its both
either way we both come back around
the promise of more of something
the tether between us
I learned that you mother passed when you were a boy
you texted me on mothers day
before that you texted me on thanksgiving
youre so avoidant and too cool for school
but you also said you were "holding it down in california"
so there's no way you can be that cool
i know you're not
but I want to bite down on the back of your hand
while your fingers are shoved down my throat
and up my ****
while you smirk down at me
and i melt in your hands that control me
own me
heal me
hold me
i want to take care of you so badly
and i deeply wish to be taken care of by you
but you know yourself well it seems
or at least you know what you are capable of
will this be like what happened with the french one?
but the reverse?
Will I be the one
with the partner
who still reminisces over text
but can't meet up while in the same city
and eventually it must be cut off in the greatest of what ifs?
perhaps
I think of him and it's unfair
though when i first saw him i was disappointed by what i saw
i thought his knees were too skinny
but really he was so hot
but really i was out of my mind and hadn't slept and
then we kept up the online infatuation for
three? four years?
with even more down the line
who is he to me?
what karma is there?
that we never met when i was in europe for over a month
but even in that time
it was right that we weren't together
because i was head over for that other one
oh so many ones
and yet here i am
alone
writing a poem to someone who will never read it
pining for who knows who
wanting a husband to manifest in front of me
and wondering if he does
will i still want you?
will i ever see you again?
what a joke if not
what silly kids we are to maintain this
to keep these candles burning
I supposed i can review our karma and
see what past lives loom

I don’t know
But I know that I’m liking this beau
I’m pulling back
And in the moment I feel off
Until I don’t
Everything feels good
And conversation feels easy
Until there’s one little lull
And then suddenly I feel that it’s always been a lull and I don’t really feel queasy
But that’s because I’ve already started pulling back
I also think to myself
It didn’t feel this way with that other one
Who pulled me in a direction I didn’t choose
Who wanted things from me I didn’t want
And who was not so generous
But could offer me value
In ways I know other people value too

This one doesn’t require any anything of me
This one is happy to watch and let me be
Paranoia sets in as I wonder in what way
He’s trying to take advantage
Trying to sway

But then I remind myself that’s an old way of thinking
An anxiety not meant for this party
And then I’m left feeling lulled
And awkward
Without much to say
Feeling confused because this is different
There’s no game
It’s so simple
There’s no jaded ulterior motive
There’s no underscore of disapproval of anything about me or the things that I’ll become
There’s no needing me to change
There’s no need at all

There’s a like and a desire that is plain as day
And the same from me

I don’t feel scared
I feel cute
I feel confused
This different and good
I am actually safe
There’s nothing nipping at my ankles

The conversation does flow
Actually
But sometimes it stops and I think that’s normal
It’s my choice to be okay with a silence or to feel like it’s gone on forever and always will

I just get a little tired after a few hours
I think that’s normal too though
To get tired with someone who’s also open
Who I don’t know yet very well

There’s nothing spoken into the middle
No commands
No plans

So I get tired with nothing to follow
No expectations to uphold

With the other there was a regimen, a schedule, an intention
But with this one the intention is just to be present
Just to be delightful
Just to exist and enjoy or not

It’s new to me to have nothing resisting
To have no little fear growing
To have nothing that seems like it will grow into a problem
On my plate

To just have this good, plain as it is and honest of itself until it changes into something and honest about that too

I am open and he is open and I just get a little tired leading
I think he also gets a little tired leading
Maybe
I don’t know, but I could ask and he would be honest

He’s really nice
And I get prickly when I feel off
And I only felt off bc I felt rejected
A rejection I created mind me
And that’s okay

Okay so here’s the play
Look at my past
Look at who I’ve been
Look at the models I’ve had they’re ****** up
But look at my future and where I’m going
Look at how good I treat myself
Look at what I want and what I’ve been getting
It’s drastically different than the past

This is different too
And actually really good.

I will choose to go with the flow then
I trust my feet to step on solid ground as I lay my heel

"Why couldn't you just meet me for lunch?"
I want to send you in a text
But instead I delete you from my phone
From my computer

Because you won't give me a real answer
You'll lie something ridiculous and believable
Or you'll just ignore the question and tell me how much you crave me
And have me wrapped around your text

Of course you texted me over thanksgiving
What happened? You were with your family
And you looked around at them
And thought
"Carolena would make a good family
Carolena is a good woman and I should text her
And try to be decent"

Is that what happened?
Or maybe it's like Sam said
That he can't respect himself
So he can't respect me

Is that what it is?

Why couldn't you be respectful
Why couldn't you
Why did you have to rip the fantasy away?

You were so delicious
Your broad shoulders
Your perfect face

I could describe more but it doesn't matter
I'll never touch you again
And I have to let the part of me that mourns that die

It was all just a lie to think that I would
A delicious lie I told myself
And you sent me those voice messages
With your voice
I like that voice so much
I like so much about you
Except for I guess whatever trauma makes you such a ****
What happened to you?

I rack my mind wondering if you
Had a terrible accident?
What the **** was the issue that kept you from just
Meeting me in the day time

What a horrible **** boy you are
So manic with those adoring texts you sent
Then so avoidant
So dismissive
So rude

And still, still I crave the husky way you felt against me
The soothing slide of your skin against mine
The ask for permission in your fingertips
The charge in your palms when I granted it
The way you breathed me in
Like I was something you desperately needed
Your scent
Your hands
Your hair
Your electric skin
God I wanted to touch you
I wanted to see what the three years we spent apart had done to change you
Would you have laugh lines?
Would you be different in bed?
Would I look different to you?
Would your mannerisms remind me of things I'd forgotten?
Would we laugh at stupid things?
Would you still look at me like I could teach you things you'd never known?
Would you still look at me like I was a goddess of *** and life and pleasure and discovery and wisdom and truth?
Would you still reveal things about yourself to me that even you didn't know yet?
Would you still charm me with your utter wonder of the world and me?
Would you still make me adore you with the simple way you lean against a door frame?
Would we stay up late with a single lamp on covered in a pillow case?Would you lay on my ribs and make circles around my *******?
Would I get your hair in my mouth and savor it?
Would we finally get to say goodbye?
Would you pick me up so easily?
Would you overwhelm me with your easy saunter towards me?

I wanted
To know you
To love you
And I never ever will now?

What a sick joke.
What is this useless melodrama for?
The drama, oh my the drama it makes me feel like I'm 22
Pining like this

Those 3 years we'd spent apart when you texted me when I was in Paris have now turned into 5
And that time will keep expanding into forever I guess

Why hold a candle to fill the space between you and I?
Why do I do it?
Why do I measure the time?
I guess in hopes I'll see you again in this life
And that in the time between now and the imaginary then you will change and be better
But I need to blow out the candle

And I have countless times.
I have deleted you countless times. But give it time and you will text.
Give it a year, 6 months, you will text.
Why? Why do you also hold out?
Do you also suffer? Is that why you reach out?

I don't understand you and I need to let it go
But I want to understand.

What did you create in me?
That night that you squeezed me so tight
What did you give to me that I don't want to give back?
I want to read you these words and look into your eyes
And know how it effects you
I want to be special to you
I want to be your best friend
I want to know your secrets
I want to be a safe space for you and good god I'd love it if you would be my safe place too
I want to love you.

Maybe I do love you,
Yes, in so many ways I do love you
Useless ways.
I am fond of you and I care for you.
I need to pull out and blow away this honey-colored blob of goo that I keep in my soul for you
This honey-colored energy I can taste
It's so sweet and it makes my mouth water and it brings tears to my eyes and it tightens my chest and you're in it and I need to let it go
You gave me something so special
You told me secret things in the sweet cave of safety and *** I lured us into
"Some people have been married 40 years and probably never feel this way" you said to me
I made you feel like that
"If every one could feel this there would be no war"
I made you feel that way
My body, my *******, my openness, my apartment, my bed, my face, my neck and mouth made you feel that way and then you told me it
That was a gift like no other I've received
And we both sort of threw it away, huh?
Maybe if you had wanted to see me more I probably would have brushed you off like you did me.

Or maybe you realized you had given me too much
Maybe you saw how badly I craved just a bit more of that from you and it was too much
Maybe I was too much
Too intense

Then later you sat at the edge of my bed and I did my favorite thing to do that I've done with so few
I sat behind you and wrapped my knees around you and caressed your back
And supported you so you could lean on me
And feel safe and still like a man as I adored you

I want that all again
But I want it with someone who respect me and themselves
Someone who is my match in so many more ways than the ways that we matched each other that night

The night we first had *** was the anniversary of my failed, traumatic marriage from the year prior. You were bright eyed and bushy tailed and made me feel really alive. And I was at the peak of my spell casting. Maybe I tricked myself and spelled you and then looked at you and spelled myself thinking you were the spell caster.

And I've given up that kind of spell work, I cast different spells now.

But still my eyes water if I think of the way your hair fell over your eyes. Every single thing I did to draw you in marked you the way I hoped it would. Maybe that's what I liked so much. That my magic really worked on you. Each flick of my hand, each little performance of mine had you doing exactly what I wanted you to do.

Each careless-looking swipe of my hand to clear the space where you would have me wasn't careless it all. It was calculated to make it look like I had thrown caution to the wind, for you. And you believed it and you believed that you really had that effect on me. And then I even began to believe that you had that effect on me. But I was the master from the beginning.

I'm still the master I guess.

I hope the undoing of this spell has begun. It feels like it has. It feels like a loosening of the vivid memory of your hair and your hands and your mouth and eyes and voice that sometimes has my heart in ribbons, my angst at an all time high. It feels like its sliding away and I hope it is. I wish this candle would melt down and blow out.

Feel good
Be natural
Look good
Never again will I point my foot to elongate my leg to look like I’m sexier than my self with my ankle flat

Afraid
Of a good feeling
You see, it always goes wrong
Afraid of I don’t even know what
Because I’m too scared to look through the door.

Enamored
By this weightless feeling
That’s evaded me for so long
Such an immediate
Intimate
Thing

I forgot what the feeling was like
And the power it can have
What if you wreck my life
What if I do?
What if I forget all my plans
And abandon myself again
I’ve done it so many times
What if it happens again with you

Feeling pathetic and these emotions that well up inside
Triggered by this feeling that should just feel good
But it’s doesn’t feel just good it feels terrifying
I’m shell shocked
I don’t know what this means
Now suddenly my age matters to me
My desires are foreign to me
I’m scared to lose myself again
I’m scared to be torn apart

But so so so so so so so much more afraid than I ever thought I was
I had no idea I was still shaking
I had no idea I was still wailing
I had no idea I was still this girl in the dark
I thought I was doing so much better than I am

But how can I say no to me and yes to me at once?
How can I deprive myself of this maybe good thing
How can I offer myself this maybe bad thing

Where are these feelings from?
Me? Or you?

If I’m honest
And I pretend that I’m calm and cool
I’d say they’re from me
But
You like me too and now mine have doubled
Maybe
Or maybe they were already doubled
Who am I.
Where did this girl come from again.
This slick emotional heap that I’ve shamed for her passion because I thought it was sick
But now I’m feeling something I don’t want to resist

Yes we’ve been here before. But maybe we haven’t, I don’t know. How do you know the difference between what you’ve always known and it’s many many iterations and something you’ve never known that could appear the same?

Is this how I felt before? Last year? With the orange and black and the blue?
I have no clue. I was different then and I’m different now but also I’m exactly the same girl with exactly the same fears
I don’t know
It’s a lot but also isn’t it not so much?

Confronted with fear and in realizing I’m more afraid, more traumatized than I thought.
Its gotten so bad before.
How do we go slow? I do not know.

I can learn I hope. Or maybe it’ll all be okay and it’ll all work out for the best. I just don’t want to suffer in the middle, I will work hard and try and be smart and good but I don’t want to be hit anymore. It’s already been so bad, and the more I heal it seems to get better.

I can’t even hear for the fear.

It’s okay

I have been having
Good days that I work for
And I patiently await the return of
the middle moments where you look at the wall
While you’re taking a ****
And think
Man
The wall is pleasant
And I feel good

My little Christmas cactus is growing
A lovely slime mold
And my dads cancer is spreading
From his esophagus to his lung
I guess that’s the way of life
To grow
But the slime mold will coexist
And make the Christmas cactus happy
The cancer won’t coexist
Won’t make his body happy
It will eat up the life
He forfeits
And he still won’t call his grandson
Who so badly wants to hear from him
His grandson, a 19 year old, fully formed, passionate gift from the universe
In his late age
And he won’t call him
It’s prolonged and prolonged
It goes on and on
The breaks from treatment
Only make the cancer worse
And make the treatment worse the next time around
He refuses to stretch and get a massage
Refuses to let his muscles
Be coaxed into relaxation
But who can blame him
Everything *****
His body has turned on him
No vices linger near to take the edge off
Poor darling who is anything but a darling
Spewing vitriol
Seething disdain
Or silent
A small smile of something like escape when a bright red cardinal flits by
Free

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.

Where you that great?
Is this pining merited?

Unfortunately I’ve realized it doesn’t even matter.

Because to me you were a meteor.
To me the pining isn’t even a choice.
So many other things I would choose.
But it just won’t soothe.
This ache I can’t shake.
It peaks and brightens and sharpens it’s teeth when I think just for an instant that I
Wish
I wish
That I wish

Only for you. And you are not.

I loved to watch you eat
You were like a gopher and a very silly shark
You would take a cute little bite
And then rub your fingers back and forth
and very politely lick only just the very barely inside of your lips
And sometimes if it was a very good bite
you would straighten your shoulders a little more
almost like a cartoon soldier coming home from war
It was a delight to watch you eat
actually
And then sometimes so satisfied
Your pronounced brow would hitch downward
Tugging downward past your eye
Looking at the mushroom like a pirate
or a very sneaky antagonist leopard
in a cartoon about leopard
rivalries.
A quick "Mmmm" would mutter from your mouth
and I enjoyed you nearly as much as you enjoyed that bite

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.

I want to write a poem
And I suppose I will write it about you
Your name is still saved with the last name Romance in my phone
When I think of you I think of
You pouring sugar into your whiskey
Before we went out
I saw you through the little window of your cabinets in that dim orange light
I think of running around drunk and having so much fun
The way you lifted me up on your hip there
By the river to blubber something in French to your friends still gives me such delight
Years later and no one has managed to pick me up like that
Make me feel like that
And then she leaned in and kissed me
Did you watch?
I didn’t expect it at all
Then I left you two in bed
I was still drunk as I rushed to shove my clothes into my carry on
Nearly fell asleep and
Missed my flight to Lisbon
But we had so much fun huh?
You have this way about you
Where for a moment
You make me feel like the most special woman and girl in the world
Not just you but everything around you
The world
The tree branches
Your leather jacket
Your scruff
The breeze
Your scent
The night
The dewy grass
Your lazy lips
Your careless hands that
Suddenly become anything but
Everything wends
It’s way into giving me all of you
While you look away
And it’s divine
You made me feel
Like both a fly on the wall
And also the star of the show all in one moment
It was perfect for a classic avoidant like me
But we expired early

In another life I suppose you're my husband
And we have some French Jewish babies
And you make me cover up when
The very Jewish repair man comes
And I don’t do it
And you get angry at my disrespect
And I love it
So we have ***
But you get tired and don’t finish
I make a good dinner
But burn yours just a bit
And you slap my *** on the way to the shower
And I muss your hair
And you kiss my stomach
And bury your head between my *******
And tell me I’m a good wife
And I tell you I know it
And then I lay down with you
On the couch and we watch a documentary about bears
And I kiss your fingertips
And tell you I love you
And you tell me the same
But the marriage inevitably goes up in flames

Not when you cheat on me
But when I finally break down and cheat on you
And you can’t get over it and it makes you such a pest
And I leave you and miss you all the time

And when we’re old and
We’ve gotten fat
We finally get back together
And the kids are relieved

And we live for a long time
And you always make me feel like a fly on the wall of your life and the star of my own show that you don’t attend

And in this imaginary other life I don’t grow very much at all

I find romance in my body
Dreams laid in my skin
Romance in the shapes
Colors flushed or pallid
Textures, sensations of my body
Endeared to myself
As my hair touches my face
Like a lover might
That grainy golden mood of night
That escaped so long ago
Greets me as my eyes learn
About the mind they rest beside
From my own collection of books
The way I would study
The literature on a lovers nightstand
I study my own
Wonder what clues I can learn
About myself
From my bedroom
My art
The state of my bathroom sink
The temperament of my cat
The art of my feet
I am learning myself
With curiosity and tenderness
And feeling privileged to know such a woman
The way only I can know myself
No stranger's hands ***** my waist
Or feel the delicious weight of my *******
No familiar smelling human
With a nose I know
Slumbers in my bed
And finally I am not lonely without them
The sweet, warm smell of my *****
Doesn't make me wish someone was inside me
Nor does it make me want to be inside me
I just appreciate
My many states
My phases; waning and waxing
My sameness
The many updates to my mind
That allow me to experience the realness of this sensation
The realness of my stomach on my bed
The realness of my fingers as I type
The realness of the craving for chocolate on my tongue
I am content as I adore myself
No need for someone else
To come adore
I am safe in my body
In my good good body
I am safe to sense myself
My bathroom sink is clean
And my cat purrs beside me.

She has returned
This time wearing all the trappings of an overworked, domesticated woman
Cuts on my hands
From hastily, angrily chopping vegetables

Is there anything as sensual
As the ripe, full grapefruit tree
heavy with that orangey pink fruit?
So full of readiness to be eaten
That the grapefruit falls with a
Wet slap to the moist earth below
Moist earth that feeds the roots
That alchemizes the rot
That supports the weight
Of the tree and her grapefruit

All the other necks I’ve kissed
Were nostalgic
Because they reminded me of all the bodies of the necks before them
Because all the bodies of the necks had minds inside who needed things from me
But this ones needs no thing
No adjustment
So when I kiss this neck
There’s no click in my brain
That says
Oh this is like the one in junior high or 19 or your first days in LA
There’s no bucket of grainy photos stacked behind this neck
It’s a new neck
Memories are stacking up though
Of just the one neck and the one body attached to the mind inside that needs nothing from me
That has no adjustments
Lacking nostalgia and pain

Something that could have been terrible ended up not
And
That
Is
Just
Fantastic

Someone calls and I think it’s you
Someone texts and I hope it’s you
And of course it’s not

Because you’re not thinking of me
Most of the time

You only think of me
When someone doesn’t satisfy I suppose

I text you and ask you
And I don’t think you’ll respond

Why why why do I do this to myself

Why why why is your disrespect not enough
To make me turn away and forget

I don’t want to forget you
Why?

I ask and I ask into the ether why

I never got enough of you
I always wanted more
When I think of you
A softness comes over me
I've never known before

Maybe it's been long enough
I can admit what I didn't like so much

Sometimes you were too much the
social justice warrior for my tastes
But only 1% of the time
The rest of the time we were aligned

Will I ever know a magic like
The magic it was to know you?

It feels utterly impossible I could meet
Another woman who filled me in so many ways
As you did

For 1, I don't see how she would ever be as beautiful as you
This future she
And the history
We built
It wasn't such a beautiful history was it?
Of hurting the other and taking years in the middle to heal
Then avoiding each other
And keeping the cards close
And never saying exactly what we felt
And the values and ideals,
The laughter,
The chemistry,
The freedom,
The emotional maturity,

Ugh, here I am making myself cry over you again

How did I love you so?
It overwhelms me again

I think part of the overwhelm
Is that I still can barely wrap my head around the fact that you wanted me too,
loved me too.

Sometimes I think you could have been better to me
Could have considered me more
The way I considered you
I think you could have been kinder
Softer
Less selfish
More honest with yourself and in turn with me

but that's often how the poly people I've met tend to be
That's often how I was

Countless lovers I know felt the same about me
I could have been kinder,
softer, more considerate,

And I would be now,
If I had a lover to dole out those kinds of things on,

I wonder if you think of me still?

So I look on your instagram,
You haven't posted in a while,
You didn't post for Christmas, or New Years.

I wonder if you are still with that guy?
Is he still jealous and stifling?
Christ, I hope not.

I wonder if I'll text you. And I decide that I will.

Because I love you so very much.

I've got oceans
You've got boats
I think your solar plexus is also open

My favorite poets
Are the ones who don’t know it
The pedestrian texts
From people who love
Who’s love has made them artists

I am learning to be free
I am learning to stop giving into the feeling that I am being watched
I am learning to lose myself in the present
I am learning to stop trying so hard to be anything other than what I am
I am learning to indulge myself in my every whim
Why not?
I’ve gone my whole life not indulging, judging, chastising, trying to fit, trying to be everyone’s cup of tea.
It didn’t work and I didn’t like it.
Now I think I will just be.