We do not say
what we mean, because
what we mean is so heavy
and gravity is so real.
We are not strong.
We cannot utter the words
that press so heavily on our tongues
until they gag us –
instead, we savor those
artificial sweeteners as
every day we grow thinner
and make no progress
toward lifting the weight of truth.
It bides its time in that dark corner
listening to the tales we spin
laughing at our efforts to clothe ourselves
with lies.
Once in a while it pokes out its head
timidly
but we are too prone
to smacking its ugly head
back into submission
and talking louder, louder, louder

This existence is but a breath
vapor drifting past the lips of
life:
a Secret kept obstructed,
eclipsed by perennial paradigms
mutinous Mobs snuffed
out by the wind
a broken Hourglass, the
Sand seeping through the
cracks in the door
the Dust on the floor,
flattened by footprints beyond
differentiation
a Conflagration quenched as
soon as it catches
by the swelling tides of time.
Whether we're cursed or
self-destructive, our
affinity for chaos will
unravel our transcendent, twisted cataclysm before
we ever know our
beginnings and endings.

I found you first
in meteors splattered against the
skin of the barren night sky.
I found you  
in the grains of sugar
liquefying joy on my tongue.
I found you next to me
my bleary eyes opened
I blinked
you vanished.
Now I search for you
ripping out every page of my favorite books
stripping away the keys of once-grand pianos.
Now I search for you
I pass the days lying in the street,
looking for a face like yours
through the windows of
cars that drone mindlessly by.
I don't sleep; someone must
scrutinize the sky
in case you make your fiery homecoming
but every second without you
steals you further from my memory
and sometimes, with my eyes closed, I wonder
if you were ever really here at all.

Why do we fall in love
with emptiness?
Why do we chase the void?
Somehow, nothing
is more comforting than something
sinking heavy in your stomach,
a reminder that
gravity binds us to the ground.
Maybe if we were filled with air,
we could float wherever we pleased,
refusing to relinquish control to the earth –
but something sits hidden away
in the nothing,
begging for more,
whispering that we will die if we don't
stuff ourselves up to our necks.
And we oblige; we
like the allure of weighty things
so we pack them in,
stretching our skin, and we
fall flat on our faces when
inevitably,
it becomes too much to stand.

Brilliant Annie,
with dried watercolor on her left thumb, and
charcoal smudge just below her elbow
who are you painting now?
Heart-shaped lips and
round, rose cheeks -
I've almost forgotten the sound of your voice -
what do you whisper in your sleep?
I remember your shadow perfectly, Annie,
I spent years frozen there,
I know its curves and the way
it moves when you laugh.
I'll admit I hated it there,
but I could never quite keep away from you.
Lovely Annie,
with guitar-calloused fingers
and songs tucked beneath your tongue,
who do you write about now?
Maybe you write about me,
like I do you,
maybe I appear in your dreams
and touch your hand,
like you do in mine.
Sweet Annie,
do you still put your index finger to your nose
and smile when you're listening?
Do you still go to concerts of bands
you barely know?
Do you still push your glasses up the bridge of your nose
and tuck your hair behind your ear
when you're thinking too hard?
Of course I shouldn't be thinking of you,
Annie,
after all these years
I'm hundreds of miles away
and you're probably smoking in a parking lot
thousands of years from thinking of me.
Beautiful Annie,
you probably don't even remember me
but I could never forget you.

Only if she isn't the moon,
roped down from heaven,
if she doesn't keep time
for your symphonies with her step
if she leaves you as you were,
instead of fever-stricken, breathless, burning
if you forget her when she's gone
and remember how to sleep without her
then you should let her go.

I find myself lost
when you move,
a drop flung
from your tear-soaked sleeve
to sizzle on the hearth.
I called my mother yesterday
to tell her I'm falling,
but not in love
just sinking in syrupy fascination
while you starve hollow farther
below.
I stir pity and romance
knowing we’re both lying purple
aching to feel love that doesn’t bruise
and I've been too scared to believe
it could be you.

Happy makes its tracks
searing, one hundred and twelve degrees
shower streams to skin
and from the corners of
my eyes to my jaw.
It gathers in droplets atop the
jaded pink tiles
that droop along my bathroom walls.
It condenses in distance
between us and words,
and splashes from my cheeks
to kiss the floor.
It bounces off my bedroom wall,
echoing,
slurred like dying art -
it hits me, head on,
brings me to my knees and
burns the carpet below.
You make me so happy, darling:
I'd never lie about that.

In silence, my words are swelling
pressing against the sides of my skull,
dying to spill
from the corner of my mouth
or the ducts of my eyes.
But stuck to my palm
is your sideways glance,
rendering me listener
as you drink in my thoughts,
quelling my quiet anxieties
before I part my lips.
Of course, you’d never know this,
so I owe you an explanation
as to why
sometimes
I stare at my hands,
smiling,
and don’t speak.

His voice rolls steady across my
skin, mimicking
the hair that curls so shyly
at the base of his neck.
It flips my stomach
and screams sight into my eyes,
and it takes everything in me
not to cry like I've never seen in color
before.
He tells me he doesn't dance, except
I can see it in the way he moves, when he
laughs or smiles or says my name; I know he
does
so I promise myself I'll
dance with him someday.
And with his hands pressed to my heart,
he gently erases the
grey skies from my old
paintings, rewriting
the ends of all my poems
and brushes his signature
on every one I’ve yet to write.
He
softly shines on my tired garden,
turning it greener than his
eyes as he
breathes my next breath
into my lungs. And I slowly realize
for all the years I knew him and did not love him,
I was seeds, in soil, shadowed, and
to love him is to see the sun.

Melancholy coats cars like pollen,
smudging windows and mirrors,
making vision hazy
dripping from faucets like
incessant spacey teardrops.
It hangs just in front of your
eyes and
curtains their shining irises; it
sneaks through your lips in
whispered goodbyes.
When you leave, it
holds my cold hands
and plasters traces of you
to every square inch of my imagination.
At night, it counts
the ceiling tiles, then the floor
and listens in the morning
to my dreams from the night before.
Melancholy swells for miles between us, keeps
a seat empty next to me, and always
hopes for you.

I.
Pink light
cascades in ribbons from the tank
to land surreptitiously
across our faces. Its glow
hides the creeping blush
rising in my cheeks
as I notice, in the glass,
your rippling reflection
staring at me.
So I try not to smile,
holding our gazes clandestine for
a minute longer, just to let
the jellyfish think that
we’re admiring them.

II.
From one eye,
a turtle studies the warm-blooded couple,
a girl, fingers cold
and a boy, palms sweating.
Their image bends and
warps; their muffled laughter
joins the glugging rhythm
of the pseudo-ocean.
Holding its breath, it settles into
a front-row seat
for its favorite exhibit.

III.
You point out a pair
of angelfish gliding blithely,
two lovers floating freely.
We were fish once,
you tell me.
Yet here we stand,
I reply,
with our feet stuck to the ground,
only able to dream of
breathing underwater -
what kind of progress is that?
And you just smile,
silently tuck your arm
around my waist,
pull me closer
and wordlessly answer all of my
questions.