Earth
    worms the color of
    bruised tongues wriggle
    out of sodden dirt and
    splay themselves out on
    gritty asphalt

To breathe.
    We bite our tongues as the
    sun returns to burn away the wet.
    Bodies shrivel from the
    desiccation until we can come out to

Air that smells like all that
    rainwater and blood
    evaporating to fill our lungs.

As if my insides are too pink
and new to reach inside of
and pull out anything of value.
As if, because my body was not
forged out of natural disaster,
it isn’t a world of its own.

Because I’m a fat ***.
Because I was already irritated.
The way you were hanging on me.
The work I need to do.
The food in my stomach metabolizing straight to my
thighs/hips/arms/face/calves/cheeks/***/waist/chest.

Who are you anyway?
My guts were black like charcoal and twice as gritty.

**** Sundays.
**** Valentine’s.
**** fancy dinners
**** new clothes
**** sleeping in
**** food anyway.
**** being nice.
**** being sweet.

Because you called me pretty
And I can’t stand the lies that are so sticky sweet
and make messes and gather all the dirt from the air
and somehow it’s still sticky and now it’s black and you can’t scrub it off.

Because you throw around things like “love” and “forever”
and “beautiful”
but they’re too heavy for me to catch and all they do is leave me with
bruises.

And bruises just remind me of fat.

Because you still don’t know that I’m
Stupid and fat and ugly and crazy.

Because you make it hard for me to feel bad.

Because you throw around things like “forever”
and this is the only way I can catch it.

I built you a home in my head
and in it I waited for you
day and night.
I wandered the many rooms I gave to you
and sat in the many chairs I set out for the waiting.
I watched out the windows of my eyes.

I decorated it to welcome you, and only you.
Every piece of furniture and hanging frame
was chosen so when you arrived
you would want to stay.

The light came and went,
I made sure it hit the rooms in all the right places.
Our kitchen was bright in the mornings
and the library glowed orange at sunset.

You didn’t come
and so I waited.

The weeks swelled into months
and seasons came and went.
In the summer it was airy and cool
the doors, propped open for you,
brought in the scent of grass and lemonade.
In the winter it was warm and quiet,
and smelled of cinnamon like your hair.

I waited and watched,
and you didn’t come.

Years rose and set like the sun
and the house grew dusty.
Paint peeled and the color lost its luster,
tired from years of expectation.
The walls settled and the floorboards creaked,
asking for you when it was only my steps.

The bed sagged into a frown
when I climbed in alone at night.
Even the windows grew cloudy,
muddling the light and obscuring my vision.
In winter the wind shook and it groaned with aching.
Still, the house was warm
and smelled of cinnamon like your hair.

Still, you didn’t come.
Still I waited.

One morning in midspring,
when the open windows brought
rose-scented air to rouse me from sleep,
I felt my bones were too tired to sit up
and resume the waiting.

The bed heaved a sigh in my loneliness,
curling around my aching joints and wrinkled skin.
I stayed there all day, listening to the house call for you
in all its creaks and groans.
It sounded tired like me.

I watched the way the light shifted from morning into afternoon
and finally to the peachy-purple haze of sunset.
Then, in the moment between twilight and night,
the house was quiet.
The light lowered below the windows
and all was dark.

A memory came to me
of a home I had built
with many rooms and many chairs.
Who it was for I could not remember
but its emptiness echoed through the halls of my bones
until my heart grew tired of waiting and finally
stopped.

Do you remember when I laid in bed with you and cried
because telling you about me hurt to do?
            But I wanted to tell you - because you deserved to know, because maybe I thought you would share yourself too, because maybe I thought packing you into my old wounds
            would finally heal them right.
And all that truth made me shake and the dark bedroom made me wild-eyed but
               your heart beating through my palm pushed me forward a step,
        a step of a step, and pretty soon I was falling for you.

        And I remember when you stood over me, revealing your truth about me.
And all that truth made me cry and the morning light hurt my eyes
        and you split my ribs and my lungs poured out at my knees
which were bruising from begging.
        But I couldn’t find you in your darkened eyes or your bellowing voice
as it gutted me and braided my veins in a knot…
          Some things I try to forget.

I dream of you and I imagine your face, your touch, the way you walk and
          hold my hand and we smile and you laugh and
I have you.
But sometimes the black comes down from the nightsky
          and seeps into my sleep
to darken your eyes and harden your grasp,
           just like that you flay me open to spill my tears and
I’m losing you.


          When I wake you are there, reaching toward me in the dark.

The bruises on my knees will fade.

River veins and the sun
for a heartbeat -
alternating with
the moon.

Rainforest tresses falling down
mountain shoulders with
redwood fingers, lithe and lean.

Bronze desert chest and trim valley waist,
with an iceberg smile and sunset peach cheeks.
Meeting those fiery volcano lips
and feeling the tremor of the earth’s plates
shudder.

Your eyes were always the ocean.

I feel it starting, like a prickle down my spine.
My rubbery lungs expand and push
against my ribs.
Organs start crawling
up my throat
leaving a hollow cavity
which I must seal.

My heart is pumping faster
but the only thing to get my blood moving
is to fill my emptiness.
Hands shaking I scrawl a haphazard
paper chain to keep me from floating away
as my love looks on concerned.

“Can I fill it with a kiss?
A caress? If I whisper to you
will my words fall through your ears and
weigh you down?”

But anxiety
is not like drowning
and a life preserver won’t reign me in.
The only thing to do is wait
for me to compress my lungs
and talk my insides off the ledge.

Let me close my eyes and breathe,
give me room to reassemble.
I promise I will come down soon.

When I can concentrate enough,
the Earth starts shrinking
until its mass rests on my pen tip
and I can write the blood back through my veins.

The evening slips away
like fireflies through fingers.
Your eyes turn from the color of sand at twilight
to the indigo-blue of the ocean at night.

Our easy laughter sinks into
soft whispers
as the sky shifts from peach blossoms
to hushed velvet black.  

Your touch is no longer just soothing warmth.
I can feel the buzz of electricity
when your hand hovers nearer.

As stars replace the sun and those
lyrical night insects relieve the birds,
my heart changes rhythm to match your own.

Soon, the moon dangles overhead
and we run out of words at last,
our still lips meeting with sparks
that set the night ablaze.

When my mind wanders to thoughts of you
(it so often does, you know)
they aren’t the most obvious daydreams;
you are never on a white horse,
shirtless on some sunset beach or
feeding me chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Instead I dream of the littlest things
about you –
the sound you make when something excites you,
your reaction to a joke.

Things that shouldn’t matter
pop into my head as I wait in a line (you call them queues):
the way you drive
how you eat an apple
the temperature of your skin.

When I can’t be with you I pass the time
conjuring the smell of you –
not cologne (you don’t wear it) –
The way you smell when I wake up
in the middle of the night
to nestle closer to you.

I love just to sit and remember you,
from the weight of your arms around me
to the way your hands move
your lips too, how they form those
three splendid words.

I could spend hours imagining you
entirely
and when I come to,
shaken from my reverie,
I could spend hours more
counting the goosebumps
your ghost has given me.

Thick
Black
Ink
Oozes out
Seeping from
A warm, dank cavern.

It sticks
Blots
Stains
Spitting
And spurting
Out of control.

It gushes
Floods
From a cruel scowl
Onto pure
White
Cotton sleeves.

The flow will not
Stop
And the white is soon
Stained black by
Malicious
Words.

Sometimes I catch you looking at me
with a certain sort of gleam.
I can't tell if it is hatred
               or love.
Worse, I don't know which one scares me more.

I am done with you,
Those little orange bottles
And your needles
And your glittery powder
Everywhere.

I am done watching your bones grow
And your skin sag
And your soul peel
While you sit encircled in
Perfumes and
Smoke.

I am done waiting for your eyes to open
Wide enough for you to see
What hurt you managed to cause
By not lifting a finger
Or saying a word.

And soon,
So soon I didn’t see it
As it flashed past my heart,
Anger is welling and
I am screaming
Crying
Flailing.

My rage is pulsing
Against glass walls
And those walls
Are cracking
Against my skin.
The jagged shards
Leave jagged slices
That leave jagged scars.

And I won’t be done
Until they heal again.

We wake to skies of groggy grey
and struggle to wipe the night from our eyes.
Rain pelts the windowpane as I burrow into you
and ask with a tongue still warped by dreams
if we can stay in today and sleep off the world like a bad hangover.

We could turn the bed into a boat
and use the day to travel the seven seas.
Our pillows could be rocket thrusters on a spaceship
trailing asteroids through the cosmic void.
We could go spelunking under the comforter
and scale mountains with the sheets.

I could try to convince you it’s just the weather,
but the truth is I just want more of you – all of you.
I want every adventure from our bed
to a jungle, to a mountain range,
to trips to the grocery store and
making pancakes in our pajamas.

So let’s sleep late and lazy and
make our bodies into puzzle pieces
because today, rain or shine, we’re playing hookey.

All I have now – all that is left –
is a handful of mementos that your fingertips lingered on
long ago; magnifying glass, old college notes...
How can that be all of you?
And I was given a sweater, itchy wool.
I never saw you wear it but I am told it was yours and so
like a child with a blanket I clutch at it, desperate for something.
It makes my skin crawl.

At your funeral it was so cold
and my feet were so numb standing in the snow and I thought
“Won’t you be cold there?”
I stepped forward and asked the funeral home director
for a yellow flower please.
I laid it on your coffin and hoped it would at least remind you of warmth.

I am told you are still “with us” and you “live on in our hearts”
If this is true I will lend you my heartbeat
and pump into you some of my blood
and my breath going in and out and in again and again.
My lungs can be strong enough for the both of us
since yours were not even strong enough for you.

When I look at you
You send shivers
No – sparks.

The air is charged with them
Dense.

I can feel just how much of it
is between us –
(always too much)

And I want more than anything
To cross it –
Wade through the ions
to you.

To only stop when my lips
Meet yours
(the only way I have found
to get rid of the air)
and you take my breath away.

A blow is delivered with
Closed fists
To my temple –
Where I so often came to worship.

Stained glass has been coloring my vision
For too long.
The pure light stings and I must
Close my eyes.

Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hollow is your name.
Kingdom come
And I am done,
On Earth as well as Heaven.

Your house is forever standing with
The steeple reaching out
To grasp at nothing
But raindrops and clouds.

Tossing and turning
In my bed –
A pebble.
Slowly I am rocked by
Waves of dreams
Until I am no more than sand
On the shore of my pillow,
Gritty between the sheets.

With the dawn
Tide rolls out.
All manner of sea creatures,
Each more complex than the last,
Rest on my chest as I breathe
Deeply and try to recall
What it was to be a stone.

Abandoned shells,
Beautiful but
Empty
Lay between my fingers.
Shards of glass fall into the depths and
Wash up
On my toes
Sharp edges gone.

I cannot decide if I like
These things
Or if I would rather return
To being a pebble

Are you a breeze that ruffles the hem
On my dress as I pass?
Are you the hurricane I cannot escape?
Is silence the rain you leave
In puddles at the steps when you walk in?

Would you come back to me if
I ran through the night
And became covered in the inky black sky?

I am less than the butterflies in my stomach
But I think I could be more for you –
If you promise to be the sunshine.

Already you are a perfect chord
While I am just the harmonies.
Where ever you go I follow.

I am only the seconds falling off
The watch hanging on your wrist
Somehow you still manage to tell the time
And wake me from a dream.

All this because you are the gun
And I – the bullet heading through the glass.

A man once asked me to tell him three things I knew to be true
I said:
“Lightning always comes before thunder

The sun will always rise in the East

And I love someone with all my heart”

His response was:
“When the storm is overhead, lightning and thunder come at once

When the Earth is no more, the sun will not rise

And one day time will bring the storm and the end of the Earth and all you knew of love will die.”

I told him “Sir I may be naïve,
But when the storm is overhead, I will have someone I love to shelter me.

When the sun no longer rises, I will still have the warmth of that love in my heart

And when time brings the end of the Earth, I will die happy knowing time could never bring the end of love.”

He said, “Does the truth mean nothing to you?”

I replied, “I love someone with all my heart. This is the only truth that matters.”

Dusty
Boxes
And worn out
Trunks.

Rusty
Locks
With missing
Keys.

Broken
Furniture
We used to
Love.

And so many
Clocks.

Those gears
Stopped
Long ago.
Somehow time
Kept turning.

Nothing was
Lost.
We kept it
All.

Put it
In the
Attic.
Let it
Gather
Dust.

Think of it on
Stormy
Nights
When the
Wood
Creaks
Above our heads.

In the morning
When the sun
Comes out
And the grass
Smells
Faintly
Of rain
We tell ourselves
We will go
Clear
It out.

But life moves
Quickly
With the
Spinning
Sun
And soon
Night
Returns.
We are

Too weak
To get the ladder.
Too weary
To climb the steps.
Too fearful
To find
The keys
And go into
The dark.

I found a poem
Itching under my nails.

I tried to scrub it off
but it was a stain
with a pulse.

I kept it and
Named a feeling after it,
but it wasn’t enough

Or the name wasn’t right.
It knotted my tongue
And caught in my throat.

Then finally I had to scream
But the only word that came out
Was you.

Did I crack? A fracture perhaps. When I was little I would watch the storms from my window and was told not to stand too close. There is a break. The X-ray missed it. Rain splattering onto concrete and bringing earthworms from the dirt. Did you know they drown if they don’t leave the ground? But above it for too long and they shrivel up and die. Will I leak now? Water and blood trickling from a fissure in my surface? There is a formula to see how far away the storm is. Seconds corresponding to miles between a flash and a bang – simple math. The pressure could build. Maybe I will explode from it. In the fourth grade I sat next to James Strow and learned that thunder was warm air rising up. An unstable cloud, turning on itself. And now I cannot find my pieces.