Stripped of her vices so she was left with only fingernails
to scratch at peachy skin.
Shards of crimson coated glass
felt foreign in my possession.
Nights got hazy and lines blurred
when her cheek had to be smacked free
from historic nightmares of older boys
and tainted orange juice.

We existed in shades of sallowly lingering gray,
between soft coos and forked tongues.

Straight jackets cannot clamp wild hearts.
Pulse points are really hidden under our ribs.
How could my arms be enough when the world has never been?
The caged bird beats its wings into a frenzy.

Vultures are monogamous.
Cragged necks looped,
it takes them years to forget.
Wing and wing in a nest of rot,
together they pick at sinew.

Fierce devotion in a hollow church
and no organs remained.

She will consume her dead lover,
spanned on an opalescent log;
regurgitate his remains into a baby’s mouth.

Born into the leftovers,
we become remains.

It’s graceless
the way I’m always shifting.

I stole a teacher’s book of poetry once,
pages dog-eared and marked up,
I thought it’d help me understand.
I haven’t touched it since that June.

One perfect summer--
I spent the first two weeks of it back in the halls of a convent.
I know my Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s,
nothing else. What is hubris?
2 years doesn’t get you far in any doctrine
unless you’re desperate.

You were the first and last perfect anything,
since lost in nebulous transitions.

“Why are people in the subway always in such a hurry?”
Said a girl who left her purse open in a crowd once.

Always trying to putty in voids,
selfish fingers sewing up breaks,
pulling out stitches before they’re healed;
Wanting to feel that scar later—hear the click between ligaments.
I can pop my jaw. It might fall out some day.
Juggle pride with martyrdom carefully.

This is the first honest poem I’ve ever written.
It's hard to know what to say,
when busy gracelessly somersaulting through stretches of time.

Don’t let me disappear.

I'm talking to pine trees
teetering on a brush fire--
they do not speak English,
needle whispers are of a foreign tongue.
Feet varnished by sap
clodden with traces and feel no pain,
You will not forget.
(It only rubs off with extra-****** olive oil,
a pumice stone,
boiling water;
I had none.)
Later
toes slick and raw,
hands fleshy red in heat,
the ungraspable fresh veneer.

I let my fingernails grow out.

The forest burnt down in my eyes.

I am split-minded
With quivering doubts,
Because that Other one
Slipped in through the back door--
Didn’t even knock,
Whisked me away to a cocktail party
Where everyone was murmuring about her last aberrations;
I knew it would be better to stay home.

I don’t hear voices—no,
We all sound the same.
She just hates to be bored,
Doesn’t follow direction well.
She likes to smudge all my
Self-proclaimed happy-truths
With bloodshot graffiti ink--

I never was a very good artist.

Always too clumsy-handed to
Make anything beautiful,
Or to clean up my own messes.
You are both delicate and
Extremely cruel,
And I am far too human
To be anything but weak.

In July
right after her name stopped showing up on your phone,
we climbed a mountain.
It was one of the hottest days that summer, and I think
we both thought it was a test.
Too much weight teetering on whether we could make it
to a plateau on that cragged mountainhill
and then retrace our steps on a weary car ride home
without airvent fans on full blast,
sending shivers down our spines to fill the silence.

Boots that didn’t quite fit, a cramp in my abdomen stopping me halfway for a moment,
we smelled like stale bugspray.
And I still felt the ***** of a mosquito pierce the forgotten spot
on the back of my neck.
Flushed from the waist up,
sweat pooling on the cleft of my lip,
a damp heart-shape on the small of my back;
your hand pressed a small pressure against the dip.

Never ones to let our successes cheer quietly,
we spread ourselves bare on a flattish rock.
Pretending to be naïve still, we soothed sweat-salted wounds with kisses,
while creating new ones until our kneesbackselbows wore matching rock-burn.
Something in the pinky-warm of my face made you love me again that day.
I know you never stopped,
but I also know you forgot what my laugh sounded like.

Summer 2013, we made the most of our rickety hearts.