The apartment is messy again.
A never-ending pile of clean underwear,
stained laundry,
and in-between pieces
toeing the line
between passable and gross.

it's not that it's bad,
it's fine.
it's enough to get by.
like wheat-based cereal
and watery coffee.

I guess this is our life together
jumbled and messy,
with piles of good intentions
and tomorrow projects
but that never quite find
their way
into a proper time
or place.

I look out the open window
for an answer,
a sign,
some kind of assurance
that this time is different
and this place is where
I'm finally supposed to be.

But all I see is grey.
No thunderclaps
or burst of lightening
or enlightenment
come to me.

You blow out
the lit candle
on the coffee table,
its smoke
curling itself
into question marks
that dissipate
as quickly as the rain.

Maybe tomorrow
will hold more answers
or more sunlight
I can use to see
our path forward.

But for now,
we'll go to bed
in crinkled sheets
and warm promises
for the day yet to come.

Somewhere out in another universe,
I'm 12 years old
and I'm sitting on my bed listening to something through
a hopelessly tangled white headphone string,
flipping through the dog-eared pages
of my favorite book while everyone is sleeping.

The sticky, syrupy air of summer floats through an open window
and nothing bad has happened to me,
no scalding words or hot fingers
etching their prints into my skin.

I haven't menstruated or fallen in love or  yet shrunk myself down
or any of the things that made me a woman.

I am warm in my white tank top
and the blue satin shorts with the printed clouds
wondering about trips to the beach
and sticker placements on my new notebook from Borders.

And I hope she's always able to stay like this,
that she never knows of the kinds of stains
that won't wash out of her white tank top.

And that every once in a while,
I might just catch a second of her laughing
from the room next door.

And another morning happens,
awoken by the oxidized groan and stretch
of the lumbering machines
that live in the dirt pile
in front of my apartment

there used to be a farm there,
and there used to be someone
in my bed and darker curtains in my room
but a lot changes in a year

there's still a tiny hole
in the corner of my bathtub
that greets the curve of my foot
every time I step into the shower

i can't tell if it's gotten any
bigger or not
or if the water i hear dripping
is from some other fixture
for me to look at another day

i know my kitchen sink still overflows
not with bubbles
not anymore
but with the dishes i've put off
for almost three days

i wish the men in hard hats
across the street would do the same,
tell themselves that they'll get to that
concrete patch, hole digging, pipe laying,
belt grinding, beam building, horn honking,
sound of trucks backing up
tomorrow
so i could sleep in for once

but they've got a job to do
and sandwiches someone wrapped for them
in aluminum foil
to eat at lunch

and i've got to do the dishes
so i can have a spoon
for my cereal

your floor is ******* filthy.

i can hear you in the background behind me
saying my name the way you curse
hold it in your mouth, hot
spit it out
watch it burn,
embers flying through the smallest gap in your teeth.

you stare hard at me,
maybe to see where the sparks catch
hoping one lands on my face
or in my eye,
whichever will move my gaze from the floor
to you.
but i can't.

i'm still looking at your gross ******* carpet.
it's all i can focus on,
a stained oriental with crunchy grey tassels
that i can only assume used to be white.

i'd like to ask you about it,
but it's not my turn for questions.
i'm not sure if i'll even get one
before the curtains catch flame.

so i sit there,
silent, fireproof
waiting for you to finish using
each and every wrong
ever done against you
as kindling
for the anger you feel towards me.

i think it upsets you
that i can't get burned anymore,
but you still sit
white hot,
ashen gray rings around your eyes
asking why i just won't catch.

you're breathing smoke from your nostrils,
but you're no dragon.
you're a book,
451 pages of relation
and situationships
and drunk texts
and missed calls
from cleaning ladies
and therapists,
angered that you
ever caught spark
from my ashes
and burned.

you're heavy today.

like the ropes you'd ask me
to pull up onto the bow of the boat.

that was last summer
when my knees knocked together
and my ac didn't work right.

the sweat still sticks to me.
the smell is strong.

like your scotch and
your tobacco and
your scent.

the warm one
with the sweet undertones.

the one you wore to every dinner
under your jacket.

the one in the half-bottle
that was the only thing
on the whole of your bathroom counter.

the one i think of now in this weird place
between remembering
the searing heat of your voice
and waxing poetic
over the veins in your arms.

and since i'm being honest,
i've always been jealous
of every glass
you put to your lips.

where they found
the soft of your flesh
i found the grit of teeth
and the sharpness of your tongue.

and for a second,
i almost miss that iron taste,
that tangle of ropes
and the hard spots on the pads of my fingers.

down on my palms,
the callouses have faded.

my hands are soft now,
but tough.

strengthened from the burns
of braided rope
and pie pans
and you.

made hot by the grip of july.

This winter, I find myself raw,
chapped and tender like the skin
of my over-chewed bottom lip.

My mouth is always the one
that takes the most damage.
I catch myself on my front two teeth,
both with cracks on the side
from where my face kissed
the floors of roller skating rinks
and the frame of my grandparents' bed.

The help me bite my tongue
in moments of assurance
and bite my lip
when I falter under the weight
of my own name.

I am not a carnivore, nor someone
who wants to take you in,
and scrape the meat from your bones.

I'm a woman, with pink gums
and a sharp tongue that stabs me
in the roof of my mouth
and hurts me more than any of the hands
that have ever struck my face.

It's not because I'm weak or submissive,
I'm callow still,
constantly falling in love with
every person I touch,
not yet cultivated enough
to give them the words
I once promised.

And even now,
I can feel the sticky
sweetness
of last September
run down my fingers.

It trickles dark red and wild,
like the vine-ripened
grapes,
hanging from the white
picket fence,
I see from my window.

It flows down my arms
and abdomen
slowly, slowly, slowly
sinking into every inch
of my skin.

It colors me,
tan shades
from the summer sun,
and white-hot highlights,
from toothy smiles
and squinted eyes.

But summers were never
my season.

They were yours,
warm and shining,
always pushing
for more light,
longer days,
and just a little more time
than originally bargained for.

I can still see that fence,
proud, weathered,
criss-crossing with
vines and
birds’ nests
and the remnants
of a season since past.

And as the
harvest comes to
an end,
and the placid
cool of night
chills my bones,
I’ll learn
to be content
with the time
that’s gone by,
and the autumn
that is yet to come.

Your eyes are covered in smoke,
skin ashen
with the four dollar packs
You buy at the store
On the corner of Drayton
And Hall,

But my god,
You still glow and flicker
Like the first lit candle
Of the night
Warm, wild, wonderful
before 10 PM even starts.

Your lovers are glass bottles,
some full,
some empty,
some curvy.

And some broken
Shattered in your palms
And the brick wall of your apartment.

But you take pride in
the scars on your fingertips
And the nicks
From glass shards,

Because even though they’ve toughened you
to the worlds outside
your window,
they’ve made you
all the more beautiful.

My knees always
get the brunt of it all.
Between bed corners,
light poles,
and the even sometimes
the gum-y underside of tables,
there’s a passport
of popped blood vessels
sitting on my skin.

And while the pre-chewed
peppermint smell and
sticky residue fade,
the bruises linger
like a supermarket peach.

Soft with warm skin,
darkened from
tumbles of truck beds
and clumsy stockers alike.

Still sweet, but
visibly damaged
from hands too unkind
to put me back on the shelf.

Maybe I’ll get chosen anyway.
Or maybe I’ll rot
in this ******* Georgia heat.
But I guess
I have to be patient.
After all,
the season
is just getting started.

Look,
one day,
it’s all
going to happen
to you.

You’ll wake up one morning
and skin your knee
for the
very first time.

You’ll jump
into your best friend’s
pool
in the middle
of winter
just to feel the
cold.

You’ll fall asleep
drunk
in someone’s
backyard
on cheap *****
that sticks
to your fingers
like pancake syrup,
and burns
like the hell
you’ll feel
the first time
you realize
he doesn’t love you
back.

Your life
will be full
of
laughter
and
heartache
and
temper tantrums
from not getting your way
at 5
and age 25.

But baby girl,
if you’re lucky,
and since you’re
your mother’s daughter,
you will be,
your life will be bursting
at the seams
with all the stars
shores
and peanut butter cups
your little body
can hold.

Maybe you’ll
grow up
and save
the world.

Maybe
you’ll slam
your car door
when you leave
and break my
heart.

Or maybe you’ll be
like me,
awake at all hours
writing down words
for someone
who doesn’t yet
exist.

But no matter
which path
you choose,
know that
I’ll always
be at the end of it
waiting for you
with sweets
and bandaids
in hand.

"You look like love,"
she said one night,
cold with the
whispers of winds
on old cobblestone
and hushed
footsteps
of snow-covered
boots.

He stopped
in his tracks,
the cherry of
his cigarette
pulsing
like the colors
of a spinning
satellite
lightyears away
from their newly-found
lives.

"What does love
look like?"
he asked,
syllables hanging
close to his face,
blue eyes
darting
from her lips
to her hands
and back again.

But he knew.
He knew from the first
time he shook her hand
and saw the
sweat glisten off her
brow,
and listened to her
listless stories
of how summer
never truly loved her,
that one day
he truly would.

She smiled,
lips cracking
from the dry air,

"It looks like an
overflowing sink,
fresh with bubbles
from soapy dishwater
left unattended
to waltz in the kitchen.

It looks like ice
cracking
to the sweet smoke
of scotch
and the divot
on the couch that
sinks our thighs
and the thought
of any afternoon plans
deep
in crevasses
we're both too sleepy
to crawl out of.

It looks like all
the things
the world
took from me
and promised
it would never give back,
but instead packaged
in a
candle
bright enough
to illuminate
all the dark places
and remind me
that even though
others have treated me
like a
flicker,
I'm truly a
flame."

It’s that time of year
when the air is unseasonably warm,
summer’s last push,
last bounce
on the trampoline,
before the street lights
come on
and her mother
tells her it’s time
to come inside.  

I tilt my head
and lean it back,
closing my eyes,
allowing the mixed smell
of tide water
and seat leather
to drive me elsewhere,
back to the river streets
and cobblestone houses
of South Georgia
where my journey began.

The warm night air
fills my lungs
with longing
and nostalgia
more than smoke,
and for a split second,
I’m there:

With the crickets singing,
and the salty spray of the ocean
from the thunderbolt islands
filling my empty places,
in ways
that no other person
ever could.

And I don’t feel
brave
or powerful,
or even beautiful,
I just feel
in control,
and that’s
enough for
me.


There is no wishing,
no hoping,
no dreaming
for a better tomorrow.

Just the contentment
of not knowing
which direction I face,
but the
understanding
that I am going
somewhere.

And for some
God-forsaken reason,
you keep calling me back to bed,
back to a time
when the ocean air was as warm
as the beers in our hands.

That was the night I thought
all things were
possible,
and for the first time
in a long time,
it felt good to feel that
hope.

I hadn't yet tasted you,
not the salt-sting
of your tongue,
and the bitterness
of your cigarette-laden
mouth.

You treated mine like
an ashtray,
giving me your embers,
flakes and burnt-out ends,
but only in the chill
of January air.

I was never allowed inside
to warm,
but watched from
the porch,
cold and hard,
listening to your laughter
bounce off ceiling beams
and floor tiles.

And even now,
when a lifetime
stands between
you and
me
and that beach,
I can't help but think
that those sandy shores
are more comfortable
than my own mattress.

And I will stand tall
through the bitter winds
and rains of this life
that have beaten on my bedroom window
since I was a child.

I know now
that the howling winds
and clawed branches
are not monsters
but my own fears
of failure
and the fright
of never again
finding the light
I've been missing all this time.

Though I am cold
and worn
and tired,
I stay awake,
keep watch,
and make sure the
candles are lit for
those who need me,
both near
and far.

For while the winds may screech
at my door,
there is a door for them
to scream at,
and that is more
than many can say.

I stand in familiar soil,
dry with ambition
left untouched,
and promises
left in the sun,
but never planted.

It’s not that I’m happy,
I’m tired.
I’ve always been.
The skin of my hands
cracks
under the weight
of a wheelbarrow
used to move the words
that have shriveled,
gone stale.

But still,
I plant
and I dig,
and I work the land,
planting the seeds
of my future
and narratives
promising myself
that soon
the flowers
will bloom.

When you’re seventeen
and drunk off of
poetry and
peonies
and promises,
you start to give
pieces of yourself away.

It’s easy at first,
parcelling out knees
and elbows, and
all the bits of you
the world has
taken for itself
on playground sidewalks
and crashed bicycles.

But when someone wants
not the spaces
in between your fingers
but the one in between
your legs,
wait.

Not for marriage
or God or
even the perfect person
to come along
because they never will.
And that’s okay.

Wait for yourself to grow
and to love someone
like candle fire,
a slow, bright burn
that makes the
darkness of night
seem less
frightening.

You’ll fall
in love
with people
like broken glass
that gleam under
streetlights
and cut your
hands
as soon as
you touch them.

You’ll sleep
next to lions
and cowards
and drug addicts,
some too scared
to touch you.

And some promise
to never leave
you in morning’s light
without a new scar.

Because they don’t
understand that you are
yours,
and yours
alone.

But remember
no matter
if your secret places
were found
or taken,
your light will
return to you
one day
when you least
expect it.

More often than not,
I find myself face down
on the floor
in some fit,
some tantrum,
some quarter-life
crisis
that eats up at my soul
and makes me feel everything
I never wanted to in the first place.

It's not one of those
fall down seven times
get up
eight
*******
Sunday morning service
motivational pat on the backs
that your dad gives you
when you fall off your bike
and scrape your knee.

No.
This is the fall where you
cover your head
to protect yourself
from your boyfriend's
fists
who don't mean it.

Where you wipe your nose
and mouth
and spit blood
in the bathroom sink
because you have dinner with
his parents
in an hour.

This is where
you get carpet burn
on your knees
and stomach acid in your
throat
as you try to drown everything
that tries to drown you,
night in
and night out
wondering why God can't
let you be.

There's a dog barking
outside,
and a chill in the air
that I can't put my finger on.
I can't see the moon,
and I wonder if she's okay.

I wonder where she is,
and if her boyfriend is
treating her right.
And even though it isn't
enough,
I sure hope he is.

There aren't many things
I get right in this life.
I light cigarettes just to watch
them burn,
and drink liquors
that taste like gasoline
to watch them burn through me.

I've never been someone
to love someone else
without loving
how they make me feel first.

And all the men and boys
and drug users
and *** addicts
call me a *****
and call me cold
because I can't love them more
than they love
the valleys of my ribs
and the lavender that grows
in them.

But the truth is,
that I don't think
I'll ever be able to
love someone else,
not like I love
sitting on the porch
of a chilly morning
or the crimson color
of paper cuts
from the $2 tattered novels
I buy from junk stores.

There aren't many things
I get to keep in this life,
other than my own scars,
dreams, and vices.
And I'd rather them consume me,
turn me into ash,
then be the dust
that sits on top of
books unread.

Everything tastes like whiskey,
that Tennessee sour mash,
80 proof,
barrel-aged,
leather seats,
and cherried cigarettes underneath
the wet August sky.

You're playing something Brand New,
or something about promises,
and jetpacks,
but all I can hear
is the creak of those
old wooden rocking chairs
where you kissed my forehead
and allowed me to be ****** up.

It was the first time I'd had the courage to cry
and drink wine
straight from the bottle,
no glass,
and it hurt
more than trying to put out a match
with wet fingers,
and missing.

And it's nights like those
that make me think
how your shoelaces
can't stay tied
when we're dancing,
and how the switch to
your ******* bathroom light
sits behind the door,
and ****** me off
at 2:30 in the morning
when I'm more liquor
than woman.

But you still wake up
next to me
in the morning,
and you still want to
touch my cheeks
and kiss my *******
like you're going to lose me
even though my intials
are etched on the tree
outside your bedroom
window
and my shoes
are by the door.

i called Jesus today to ask where He put my sweater
that was laying on the edge
of the brown armchair in the living room
but He hasn't called me back yet.

i'd like to think that maybe His phone died,
but i know He's ignoring me
because the phone rings twice
and then goes straight to voicemail.

i wonder if it's because i came home late last night
smelling like ash and whiskey.
He says He can taste how mixed up I am,
and calls me bitter
because i won't let Him kiss me on the mouth.

But i don't want him to know
that Sazerac tastes sweeter than His sermons,
even though it burns like hell.

He says i need to stop drinking, but He doesn't understand.
i need that fire in my throat. i need to be warm.
And He took my only sweater.

I wanted to be a poet,
so I creased myself into
a bright blue envelope,
addressed to the moon,
and asked the Old Man
His thoughts about how vast
mountain ranges are contained only
by the bones of his ribs.

And He sat quiet, opening His crusted,
ancient mouth only to ask
"Do you love him?"

I stared, doe-eyed and small,
as the stars dimmed their chatter.
My cheeks lit up like comet tails,
but He nodded His head,
shutting the half moons of His eyes,
not asking questions, or rhymes,
or reasons.

"Then why do you stare up
at the stars at night
when the brightest one
lies fast asleep in your bed?"

I always felt like I was on the verge
of losing you,
that I would forget the curve of your teeth
when you smile,
or the strength of your hands
propped up against my shoulders,
but that strength was never your own.
You just used it to see over my horizons.
You even said it yourself.

I was the one with broken fingers and spirits
that carried you through the shadows
of your valleys.

I was the one you stared at through salty eyes,
clutching your ribcage,
looking for your sister's heartbeat,
even though you could only find your own.

I was the one who laid next to you on the concrete,
starry-eyed and promise-drunk
looking up at the shooting souls
that tried to pass through
our atmosphere,
using the tails of their lives to better our own.

But I was the one who needed you
to make me better.  

I was the one who wanted
your January weddings.

I was the one who was your orchard,
your baby girl, your butterfly,
little wanderer,
the fragile thing you were so afraid of losing,
of letting go,
but crushed in between anxious palms
and phone calls.

And then you realize
that no amount
of milky coffee and doughnuts
can cut the bitterness of loss,
but you have to learn
to eat breakfast alone
eventually.

One day, you'll awaken,
with blood shot eyes,
scratching at a five o'clock shadow,
even though it's seven o'clock
in the morning, and
wonder where it all went wrong. Where she all went wrong.

When the arches of her feet stopped
tiptoeing across the room
to kiss you good morning.
When the parallels of her calves
started making diagonals
when laying on the bed.
When the crook of her elbows
no longer wrapped around you
like the beautiful ribbon on the present you gave to her last Christmas.

Do you even know where that present is?
It's there,
up there on the shelf collecting dust
along with all the "I love yous"
and other promises that you stash away for cold winters nights,
when you crave her warmth,
and long to feel the chill of her sapphire-painted fingernails.

But somewhere between the cicadas of summer and the apples of autumn, you lost her along the way.
You lost the way her hair finds its way onto every surface of your house.
You can't find the way her nose wrinkles when she laughs,
even if you turn over all the couch cushions,
and look under the rug.

You check your file cabinets for the way her chest heaves when she sleeps,
and check in the pantry for the memories of her propped up on her elbows,
looking out the window sill at the rain,

But all that's left are phantoms of her amber scent,
and ghost-smiles that have all but gone stale.

And I would bite my tongue gladly
for just another taste of yours;
For the way my name glazed off your front tooth.
Each syllable sticking to my collarbones,
leaving red marks on both cheeks.

I want to smell the scent of your laughter.
I want to feel the waves of your sighing chest
kissing the shores of my spine.
I want, again, for you to hold the glacial angles of my jaw,
because you are the only one
who fears not
of the winter that lies beneath my lips.

And sometimes our teeth would kiss if our mouths weren't moving fast enough.
Your nails clenched into the clay spaces between my ribs,
hoping to hold on just long enough
to make an impression on me,
but I don't think you realize
how deep your divots run.

So let me carve my initials into the peaks of your shoulder blades.
Let me write poetry on your skin.
Let me cover you in the ashes of a thousand goodbyes that echo too hot to let go.

Just let me stay.
Let me stay amidst the oak and sage of your backbone.
Let me stay nestled inbetween the dusk and summer,
of what's to come and what's to be.

It's a somber feeling
when the winds of autumn come slipping through the gaps
under your front door.
They sneak in, like the smell of unsharpened pencils,
and slip on like new jeans bought for the new year.
It is during autumn
that life truly starts again.
Summer's sleepless nights
give way to the October winds
that make you twirl and dance in your kitchen
with windows wide open.
It roses your cheeks with the mornings of November,
warms your soul with the mouthfuls of coffee
on the August nights when your books have not yet been creased.
And as your highlight the texts
and the memories of friends' faces lit by orange fires,
remember that autumn is your season of purpose;
Its winds promise the turning of new leaves;
its day promise new adventures,
And its chill will rattle your bones
and awaken the sleeping siren
that summer always leaves forgotten.

But lately,
I've been falling like rain,
collectively puddling at the edges of your rain boots,
splash,
your boots bright red
like my cheeks the first time we impromptu'd to the beach
because we didn't have anything better to do,
and everyone forgot us anyway.
My pants were, peach,
or maybe coral,
but rolled up enough to see the sharped edges of my ankles,
because it was what I could afford to give you,
I had lost those trimmings long ago to the world,
even though it never gave me any of my pieces back,
and speaking of,
I still have white pieces of sand in my pockets,
and maybe if I poured them out on your floor,
we could have had a beach of our very own.
And I could roll down those pants,  you could change into your teal shirt,
and we might have sunbathed
in our own warmth,
glowing yellow and bright
like those little specks in your eyes
nobody ever notices,
but I knew they were there.
That's what happens when you pay attention to the details of people,
You find in them colors that are too hard to name,
but
if you have a color wheel and a pen, you can find out what they're called, and even if you can't,
you can make up your own as you go along, like;
Greasy-pizza-stain-from-the-little-shack-on-the-water-red,
and light-2009-Pontiac-G6-that-got-you-to-the-beach-when-you-had-no-p­lace-else-to-go-grayish-blue.
You can even almost mix these
colors into paint,
and hand them out in pamphlets to all of your friends and family;
"Here's the shade of green
the leaves were on the tree she sat on with me."
"This is the shade of pink
her lips were when she said 'I love you.'"
"And here's the shade of red
I saw when I heard her say goodbye."

When did you stop loving me, he asked.
When you started noticing, she said.

Give her chance. Meet her for coffee. You'll never know if you like the way her shampoo smells, or the way her nose crooks slightly to the left unless you put down $2.25 for a cup of burnt mouth and laughter so loud that the entire cafe wonders what kind of nerve you two have.  

You'll never know if you prefer her hands draped over your arms, or mine wrapped around your cheeks. While discussing spider legs and thigh gaps, the dead, the dying and the decay of classic rock, you might find that you like the way she tucks her hair behind her ear, but hate the way she inhales through her mouth and sighs with the flits of her eyelashes.

Maybe she's the Wednesday obituary. Maybe she's the Sunday paper with all the colored funnies your inner ten year old desires.

Maybe she's your glass of wine. Maybe she's your shot of whiskey. Or maybe she'll flow through your body like ice water. You've never been one for alcohol anyway.

Give her a chance. Meet her for coffee. Watch how her *** moves in her jeans. See the gleam of her little chiclet teeth when she smiles.

But don't think about me. Don't remember the way my hips curve. Don't think bow of my lips or the Cupid's arrow that once punched you so hard in the mouth that you smiled for an entire year of your life. Don't put that white paper cup to your lips and pretend that your tasting the way words dance around my tongue.

Go out and love someone. Love them for their mountains and valleys. Love them through their stormy nights and sunny mornings. Love them like you run. Full force, breathless, exhausted to the point of happiness. Chase after them until your lungs and legs give out. Just don't give up, and don't give in. And don't forget that I loved you first, but you loved me most. No matter where your feet or heart take you, that will never change.

Coming of Age

I spent two days with you in a bed made ***** by breakfast crumbs and tears and sweat from last night relearning the way your body contours when it sleeps.
I know I was getting too close, but nobody gives a **** about what you do on your birthday.
I had forgotten what it was like to be yours. You picked words like apples from the high round bits of my face with your teeth tucked behind your lips. Crisp and sweet like we thought it wouldn't be.
I know that every good day has it core. Even the peach of your mouth has its pit, but our roots run deeper, freer, from orchard blocks and white picket fences.
We planted seeds even though the soil was rocky and dry. Like vines, we intertwined, even though our souls are parched and tired.
I'm turning green, like the sunflower stems on my dusty window sill.
Your evergreen isn't planted in my yard, but your roots run in it.
Yesterday was hard for all of us,
but tomorrow promises rain to wash us clean.
They say to never plant before a rain because the water will sweep the seeds away. Carry them into the next garden, next county, next life
but if you're too ******* afraid to start again once everything's been flooded, you're never gonna grow.

Nothing broke my heart quite like that time I read what you wrote to her.

It was from two years ago, but it still managed to strike quick like a bullet, even though the barrel was dusty.

If history repeats itself, then I'm the same lips you craved on different person.
You said so yourself. You can't breath new life into old love. Your lungs will collapse before hers start.

You've never been good with words, but I didn't know you weren't good with laundry.

Your words were still wet with her tears before you gave them to me.

You should have left them on the line a bit longer. Maybe the lye of their syllables wouldn't burn my face when I try to bury it in your shirt.

Do you realize what you say when you scream I ******* love you from your rooftop?

Who's ears will they reach first, hers or mine? Because where I hear a promise, she hears and echo as bitter as the wind on that rooftop.

That's why my hips curve in all the question marks I could never ask you.

In two years, will you mail someone else the screams from your piece of sky?
Will your heart still beat in time to that ******* song that you always play when we're in your car?

I'm tired of seeing blood under my fingernails because metaphors and ethers and ink marks can't stitch you up fast enough.

You need patience, but all I can give you are poems about winter, and the spring grasses that follow, no matter what.

You need guidance, but I give you comparisons of how the moon moves the sea, but gets jealous when she kisses the shore.

You need love, but I offer you poems that flow like water and taste like someone else's mouth.

My river songs can't fill the canyons she's left in you.

He kissed me like he was afraid of my mouth. He knew of the knife I kept hidden between my teeth, but he didn't know I only use it when my voice gets loud and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.

I can hear my heartbeat now, but that's only because my hands are palm up next to my face as I lay back on the bed. I stare at him, left eye, right eye, and back again, but I can't tell which one is lying, or if they're even lying at all.

It's funny how someone can look at you and make you think back to the time you were seventeen and freezing in the back seat of a sedan because you knew how to take your clothes off, but you forgot how to keep yourself warm.

But you're not seventeen, and this isn't January, and you don't have to wonder if his finger tips want to keep you or if they just want to see how long they can stay on your ribcage without getting burned.

Either way, he kisses you again on the mouth, and once on the cheek, but not on your collarbone because he isn't sure if it's his to take or not.

And for some reason, you fall in love with him. Not for his lips, his fingertips, or his breath on your skin, but just because you want to belong to someone for a little while.

You want to let him think that he can map your caverns and carve initials in the mountains of your spine and maybe even let him believe that he's at home in the sea waters that stand between you, not knowing how deep they really are.

"I can swim," he says.

"But can you drown?" I ask.

My mind keeps me up with poems,
but my fingers won't let me write them down.

Four years later, and I still sit up in the same bed at night with salt-stained cheeks.
I wonder how many lives have been lost in between these sheets.
how many loves are still embedded in the fibers of the comforter,
how many rib pieces lay stashed in the pillows from those horrible, heavy sobs.

You know the ones,
Where the fire dies in your hot air-balloon lungs, and they collapse in on themselves.
You can’t say anything, or feel anything but the crushing weight of your self inflicted silence.
All you can do is gasp, and gasp, and gasp for breath, but nothing comes out. It never does.
No one ever knows how much your heart bleeds for the people you can’t stand.
You offer them olive branches, while they offer you bile, and spit poison into your eyes with each syllable from their God-forsaken lips.

Do you remember when Jesus loved you?
When His face shined upon you, and He kissed the top of your head telling you that the light you possessed was greater than the shadow it created?
He was right.
But you’re afraid of the dark,
and have to turn on every light in the house just to make it to the bathroom.
So what good are your heroics if you burn yourself from the flame inside you?

You were supposed to be great.
You were one of the chosen ones,
the Lionhearted heroine
with a heart meant to fit inside two people,
but it was stuck in your small frame by mistake.


You can’t dance to a heartbeat that powerful.
Your bones know how to waltz,
but they’re old and tired from the thousands of dances
from the thousands of lives before yours.
You understand, don’t you?
Your hips just don’t curve like they used to.

But when the song ends,
and quarter notes turn into full rests,
maybe then you’ll get some sleep.
We both need it.

At the center
of everything
there is a beat-
of a heart
of a drum
that carries all life.

It all moves,
fluxes, and flows.
a waltz, then a foxtrot.
It doesn't matter,
it's all the same-
                            same life force, same song.

I, too, hear that music,
and so I dance.

I'm not sure
if I love very many things,
but here are the few
that I can remember:

I love the taste of dark chocolate
in November

I love the silver of the sky
just before it rains

I love first sips of coffee
from new mugs

I love the taste of oysters,
but not as much as pesto

I love that one song you'd play for me,
about the boat sinking

I love the kind of soft sadness
that reminds you of who you used to be.

I'm falling for you
so much faster
than I could climb.

Why is it
every time I try to write about you
my mind
blanks,
and the typewriter
resets
to the next page?

I write my best poetry
with my mouth
on your skin.

Little did I know
that I would spend
the majority of my time
trying to write a poem
as beautiful
as you say I am.

You used to be my favorite novel,
but now when I read your pages
I get paper cuts.

Press your palms against mine,
do you feel that?
That's you
warming me up
and me cooling
you down.

That's the keys of
your fingerprints
unlocking the chest
of my ribcage.

That's me leaving my coat
at the door,
and you
wrapping your arms around me,
because you are
the most comfortable thing
I have ever worn.

That's the crescent C of my body
nestling into the cat's cradle
of yours,
my claws grazing
your two-day-old whiskers.

That's the flecks
of your freckle-covered shoulders
jumping ship
to make me captain
of the vast oceans
that roar and toss within you.

You are a lion,
beautiful and proud,
fierce with your tongue,
and strong in your gait.
King of the jungle
that lies within this dark heart,
and my stubborn head

Which constantly buts against yours,
but only so that my eyelashes
can kiss the apples of your cheeks,
because I can never
get enough of your sweetness,
no matter how hard I try.

I wanted to write a poem
to tell you exactly what I felt,
but somehow the page stayed
empty,
and I couldn't have described it better.

I want to carve my initials into the parabolas of your fingertips.
I want the etchings of your ribs caged against your flesh tattooed on the back of my hand.
I want to study the Braille of your tongue with my mouth, reading my name over and over and over.
I want to kiss your spine,
read books about your heroics and cowardice, write poems about the curve of your hair,
- stop
right there, I want to sketch you,
stretch your smile on a canvas,
capture your blinks, bends, and the Cupid's bow of your lips softly,softly,softly in pencil,
shhhh.
Let the cursive of your sleeping body tell me to stay,
nestled in the dip of an l,
the stout roundness of an o,
eternity, forever,
v's sharp trajectory calculating the distance to the moon and back, remember?
And the way two e's lock together,
pinkie swear, with all my heart,
I promise to love you
everyday, and twice on Sundays,
And only like you on Tuesdays,
but when the calendar becomes a measure of affection,
Who's to say what happens in a year's time?

We stared at the ceiling, blackened
from the absence of light,
air chilling with every breath from the A.C.,
moving closer and closer
because we thought it was what we were supposed to do, but
our electrons were sending spark signals
before our bodies even thought about touching.

Like iron and sulfur, we synthesized
moving into each other's lives,
leaving our pieces behind,
swapping stories and secrets
in the cover of nightfall,
with roaring laughter,
our heads making permanent impressions
on their downy and memory foam petals
in the garden of wishes
we created.

And I followed you to your room,
and back again,
through the drug cartels of Mexico,
to the blizzards that lie beyond The Wall.
You, my greatest adventure
showed me what lay beyond the door
I was always too frightened to open.

You earned a doctorate in my mannerisms,
becoming an expert on each temper tantrum, each shining grin
that you always brought about
on the gloomiest of Wednesdays
when I ran out of milk for my cereal
and overcooked your mac and cheese.

You embraced every flaw I had,
came to love every scar I accumulated,
thirty-eight in total,
from the others,
almost too numerous to count on ten fingers,
that left me with a sewing needle,
and a bottle of Elmer's glue
each time.

And I thought I loved you then, but
not like I love you now, because
now I wake up next to you,
I make both of us coffee, and
push open the curtains
to let in sunlight. And I wake up next to you,
I don't hate Mondays as much anymore,
Because through the valleys of your sleeping lungs
I found where I belong.

Can't you see her standing there in a white dress
that stops right under the pit of her arm?
Its white lace stark against her dark figure,
looking so inviting, so tempting,
so much so, that you want to put her on your tongue,
and taste her.

So you put her up to your lips
head first, and taste the sweet
bitterness on your mouth .
While she's resting on your pout,
you strike a match,
and light the end of her pretty, pretty gown,
breathe in deep,
take her in,
crave her like nicotine.

You're hooked,
on her and her white dresses, and the way she takes on your stress,
and makes it her own.
You puff and puff on her until she is close enough to warm your fingernails,
but carefully, you wrap her in another white gown,
before she goes out,
so the bright cherry heels on her feet
keep on dancing.

To your fingers, for holding what they couldn't keep.
To the eyelashes I peeled off your cheeks wishing for something better.
To your lungs, for caging a red sparrow with clipped wings.
To the fingernails that tried to scratch off the chips on my shoulders.
To your lungs, for making them forget what air tastes like.
And to you, for only giving you ash in exchange for cigarettes.

I wonder if my lover truly knows me.
I wonder if he knows that I'm made of sand,
and will slip through his fingers
if he lifts me too high.
                                    I wonder if he knows
that my caverns
contain oceans
that get every sailor drunk
each time they kiss my shores.
                                                      Does he know that I'm made of sugar?
That I'll crumble under the slightest touch,
but that he shouldn't be afraid
to stick his tongue out,
and taste me?
                        Does he understand
an entire field of dandelions
exists in my head,
and scatters my thoughts
every time he exhales?
                                        Can he see that I collected my eyelashes
from fallen pine needles
because I thought it would make me
beautiful?
                   Does he get that I'm not beautiful?
Nor that I'm not magnificent,
or something to be desired?
                                                Because while he's made of marble,
I'm made from sandstone,
and sandstone gets her marks,
from whichever way the wind blows
that afternoon.

I need someone who feels
with wildflowers,
and speaks
in the tongues of streams.

I need their cheeks
to sprout dandelions,
and let them grow,
even though others say they're weeds.

I need their mouth
to taste of earth,
and their soul
to hold the heat of the earth's core.

I need their ribcages
to contain mountain ranges
that can puncture my diaphragm,
and remind my lungs
how much they like the like the taste of air.

Whispers hello as the first streams of sunlight
inch their way in through their black chiffon veil,
gleaming on our garden of stale breath,
and down feathers.

Whispers goodnight as his proud freckles
become the constellations outside my window,
and the moon stretches her arms
for another night's work.

Whispers sorry after his words became feather-lances
jousting through my arguments until my armor
was askew and torn
at its paper seams.

Whispers tales of tomorrows and fortnights
to come under illusions of rich greens, blues, and yellows
he will finger paint on my forehead
like a warrior.

Whispers goodbyes, sweet and forlorn,
as he realizes promises and paints will not keep the morning
from snatching his prized possession from his cotton laced roost,
leaving him alone with just the rays of the sun
to admire his tail.