I impatiently waited tables
trying to earn enough money
to keep my apartment
filled with cheap beer
and expensive drugs.

There wasn’t much else to do
in that stuffy little town
with one intersection.
The air was fine
as long as you didn’t breathe.

I watched my friends and neighbors
watch me from a close distance,
separated by a parking lot
and an eternity of sins
that no one wanted to talk about.

When I was 18,
I kissed a boy
and told him we were going
to get married some day.
He laughed at me.

I picked out a tux anyway.
It was white. I wanted to wear white.

I cast the muse into the sea
to wake her from a peaceful sleep.
This poet’s quill is void of ink;
it needs her words to strike the page.

She’ll fight the waves Poseidon sends
til Sirens drive her back to shore
to sip an oleander brew
and hoist the cup of Socrates.

Bring wolfsbane and a death morel!
Bring nightshade and curare too!
We’ll fatten her with woe and pain!
We’ll ready her for war and hate!

She’ll writhe and quiver, seethe and foam
until she spews her putrid verse
upon the blackened sands of time
from which men’s darkest dreams are built.

And when the gods are satisfied,
when Ares’ sword has slashed and burned,
this poisoned pen will rest at last.
Calliope shall sleep once more.

It ended before it began.

I think that’s how the saying goes.
It was for the best, I’m sure.
I’d have broken my own heart
and not let you pick up any of the pieces.

But before I hug you, wish you the best,
and tell you to stay in touch
as we part amid a myriad of clichés,
I have one grain of truth to share:

You made me feel beautiful again.

If Heaven does exist,
I wonder if a sun shines there.

It seems an awfully cold place to me,
locked away behind those pearly gates,
supported by clouds.

I wonder if so much whiteness is good
for the soul, for the eyes, for the mind—

surely, there is some sort of fire up above
to balance that below.

I wonder if I would know the difference
between the heat of His love
and the heat of what He has created.

If Heaven does indeed exist,
I hope it is orange and yellow and red.
I hope it is warm.

His whistling rises with the moon;
softened trills and murmurings
grow louder in the dusking sky,

drift across my ceiling, down
into my waiting ears.

A halo of satisfaction rings his face,
sweat drying on his chest
as he leans back upon my balcony.

I gather his things
and place them by the door.
I know this tune is not meant for me.

But I listen to it, still,
and dream of my hands
tangled in his soft feathers.

Who will sing me to sleep
when the nightingale is paired?

At high tide, the sea ejects
foam and glass fishing floats.

We wait for the waters to recede,
tiptoe around anemones and *****;
I spot a small green globe.

She says it belongs to a Japanese goddess,
her eyes plucked out by a vengeful lover
and cast into the deep.

I see only an old sake bottle
crafted into a sphere,
etched with sand and netting patterns.

Tomorrow, I will look for agates
while she searches for the goddess’s other eye.

She told me over dinner one evening
that I should switch to white wine—
less tannins and calories, she claimed.

I smiled and shook my head,
a vintage cabernet stubbornly clinging
to my bleached white teeth.

The next day I found a couple bottles
of chardonnay chilled in the fridge,
a note tethered to one’s neck:
Drink Me!

I did not.
Four months later,
we signed divorce papers;
she packed her things and left.

I drank the chardonnay that last night,
dizzied by the herringbone pattern
of the old parquet floor, and wondered
what would happen if I ate our frozen cake top.