The overhang saves my parking place
on warm nights, too dark for walking.
Green and alive, it juts out above the brick,
a shapely mess of twig and vine.

By noon, I unlock my doors to find
that it has littered my car with seedpods.

Each with five projections:
finger-like, with digits,
like your hands, like your fingers;
sliding off my body as I pull away.

In moments,
I am half-way home
and my car is clean.

My breath,
light and quickening,
candle flame flickering,
rose-scented sweat
     on my skin

Your fists,
clenched like iron grips,
backs arched to our tips,
bridging where we'll go,
     where we've been

But tomorrow,
in the sunrise,
with both of us here,
will you think about me?
or about her and everything?
The kindling you saw in her eyes
when she told you
if she wasn't his,
you'd be hers
(and if you not mine,
then her, yours).

When I grabbed at the sheets
and you grabbed for your jeans
Was it about your hurry?
or about her and everything?
Everything, everything, all of and anything,
anything that is not me.

Here we go again
with the delusion that the end
will justify our means.
We don't need to change
if our conscience is clean.

Absolutely apathetic:
Do nothing and you can't regret it.
A waste of time of yours and mine,
you realize, but you don't get it.
Absolute absurdity,
the lengths I'll go so nothing hurts me,
the things I know that should concern me,
but I just can't seem to care.
What's it matter when we're going nowhere?

There can't be a new beginning
when everything revolves around losing and winning;
it's more like time that gets away.
While my head is spinning
you try to hold my hand,
and, though my words are fitting,
you don't seem to understand.

Absolutely apathetic:
Do nothing and you can't regret it.
A waste of time of yours and mine,
you realize, but you don't get it.
Absolute absurdity,
the lengths I'll go so nothing hurts me,
the things I know that should concern me,
but I just can't seem to care.
What's it matter when we're going nowhere?

What are we doing anyway?
I started this morning just like yesterday,
but the world is full of lies and pitfalls,
greedy hands and worried phone calls.
I'd rather build my hell
and paint the walls.

So let's do nothing!
I don't wanna do a ******* thing.

We're proud and we're stoic,
but we pretend like we don't notice.
Life's too short to lose your focus,
or you'll end up losing your way
and start the same tomorrow as you did today.

Let's do nothing!

On grandchildren
(by accident)
I told my mother
and my father:

I'd not force
another life
without asking
its permission first.

I almost took it back
to tell them
it's okay and that
I know
I was an accident.

Fifteen cents in my pocket
feels like losing.
Each drag leaves me a dime
and five grams of coin,
a fiend.

An addict never gets his change
in ones.
Just fives and tens.

stumbling, stumbling
but standing back up.
doing things better but
having worse luck.
the ground moves me forward
while time races back,
and one-thousand diverge
from a singular track.
I am stumbling, onward;
my frame growing strong.
I am stumbling inward
though that shouldn’t last long
and from clumsily running
I will arrive stunningly
just in time, loving;
alright from all wrong.

I daydream briefly
and I think about
the softened, muted features
of a female, screaming silently
and tearing at her shoulder blades.
(who is she, who could she be)

the softened, muted features
of an abandoned cardinal mother,
screeching at the loss of scarlet lover.
(where is he, or could he be)

the softened, muted features
of myself alone and sleeping,
finger tucked inside a book
I haven't read about self-love
that I just like to tuck my fingers in.
(how am I, how could I be)

*I don't know why
I want to tell you
but I do,
I really do.
I think my heart
is in an okay place
and think that
yours is too.

We love ourselves so much
we program children.
The while, each day
we watch as we
become our mother,
mother's mother,
mother's mother's mother,

I was depressed and called it ~lifted~
(still get off on being cryptic)
Did my best to take it back
but found my love had been regifted.
Now, though, surely I have grieved,
I'm done suspending disbelief:
let's put this one to bed
and get some sleep.

Am I myself deluded?
No—I am myself, diluted.
Filtered,
faded
to occlusion
and remade
of dissolution
here, the farthest
in the future
I'd imagined
myself
being—

and I still want to love you
but I want to love me better.

I know you think I know the truth.
all truth, or so you thought.
I think you think I am the truth.
or was (but I am not.)
And I know you think I know that,
but I left it all unsaid.
The truth is I'm holding a bird in my hand,
but the bird in my hand — it is dead.

I am so impatient
but I practice
while awaiting
your 'I love you'.

I wait
and wait
and wait
but, here, today,
there's not one for me.

Your words are all but hollow,
almost like another name—
you tell me,
'I'll be here tomorrow'
and it almost feels the same.

I use your urn
I use the heart shaped velvet box I keep your urn in
to prop my phone up during therapy.
A choice I may choose to examine.

I keep it in my “workspace”,
a workspace I neglect
until it is time for therapy.
telehealth with Sherri Steele,
a professional


It’s a place so hard for me to be,
to think, to straighten up.
Sealed letters, dried flowers, undeveloped film.

then I walk away when it’s over.


There’s a secret
I do not disclose


to Sherri
or myself


In lucid moments I can see
the shade you colored my life when you left.
Out of focus, still on my mind

a crushed, pale blue.

i am suffering from a crush we agreed upon
stephen
my face is red but i wont call it blushing

i want to burn you a ****** cd
whats my problem
stephen stop smiling
stop smiling at me

you asked for my hand,
with a ring made of paper
and then i kept the paper
and then i wrote the date on the back of the paper

i asked you not to touch;
you did so lightly when i let you.
just before you left
after you made my parents laugh,
you had already met my brothers
and they like you,
like you plenty.
and i like you like you,
plenty

and you like me like me,
plenty

i am suffering.

I know it's the last thing
that you want to hear
but he made me feel
like you make me feel.

It's not that I'm trying
to hurt you, I fear
though, that he made me feel
like you make me feel.

I need to know
what I'm feeling is real
so, "Get out of here,
do not bring yourself near me."

(I'd rather stay quiet
and cry myself out
if I'd otherwise cry out
while no one could hear me.)

You're fiddling with your buttons,
I try to speak but nothing's
gonna help.
You've gotta deal with this yourself.
You're fooling with your jacket zipper
and I can tell you miss her.
I can tell,
and I'll miss you as well.

The earth is moved beneath me,
I'm a world away from you.
The light posts are all crooked
and the road is buckled, too.
You tell me that you're sorry,
but there's nothing I can do.
It's time to move.

Your hands run through your hair,
they tend to do that when you care
about how you sound,
while your mind's running around.
You go to bite your lip
and I can tell that this is it.
You speak so loud
when you hardly move your mouth.

You don't turn to watch me go,
you always act like you don't know
what to expect.
Regardless, it comes next.
My foot taps on the gas,
escaping questions I can't ask.
They interject.
The light ahead only reflects.

The earth is moved beneath me,
I'm a world away from you.
The light posts are all crooked
and the road is buckled, too.
You tell me that you're sorry,
I know there's nothing I can do.
I'm sorry, too.

sitting at my job,
back in the lobby corner.
half-an-hour break.

no eyes fixed on me,
mine shift between the patrons,
coworkers, and boss.

when did these people
stop being happy? was there
a single moment?

or did it happen
slowly, creeping in without
much noise or notice?

tired employees,
uniform and all the same,
bleeding, same blank pain.

I have to look at
my blue socks sometimes to think
I'm any different.

What exactly does it mean for me
to wisely my time allocate--
abstain, refrain, to lie in wait?
What more, in afterlife, will I see
in living this life pleasure-free?
Have I opted out of golden gate,
if I, myself, do desecrate,
a Plan which may or may not be?

What precisely does it mean for me
to think instead I choose free-will?
Is there such thing as novelty
or is all written, so it shall be?
As the great end nears, I will know nil;
as I know not now, I will know then, still.

full to bursting —
all I want, and just as quick
as can receive it.

...and truly, can’t conceive of
but believe you-me it’s real,
life of late a lucid dream: all
déjà vu and vivid greens of
lush and sparkling everything,
there is a future slate so clean atop of
fossils pressed between,
and other treasures altogether
measure depths of dated things.


millennia many,
lifetimes aplenty
I’m blundering nirvana-toward.
transforming and crushed
back to life, back to dust
one thing’s certain:
I’ve never been bored.

hold my hands above my head
— a fun workout
make me wish that i was dead
— a fun workout
empty pencils of their lead
— a fun workout
deeply dig but lightly tread
— a fun workout

I finally washed my bed sheets.

But on Mondays,
I still water that ******* orchid.

That beautiful blue *******
blooms a new hue every week.

And every week, I am forced to remember
(how could I forget)
how I watered and waited
for a new you to bloom—

not one more beautiful,
not one more suave,
or more handsome, or clever—

but the one you assured me was ripening, quiet
like the beautiful ******* before me.
The one that would love me,
despite being lifeless
for giving you all that supports me.



I thought about throwing it out

but every week,
the orchid keeps its promise.

My parents have been together for just shy of twenty-five years—just shy of how long I've been alive. A favorite photo of mine is their wedding party.  My dad is stepping forward, smiling, and instructing a pause. I am cradled in the next photo.

They're still together in a relationship that's not at all like storybook love, but they downright could not function without the other. Where one goes, the other annoyedly follows. My mom puts out the fires and my dad takes out the trash.

Being the ******* child that tied them together is funny. As soon as I learned how it is that they love, I realized just how much they love me. But to watch them fight is so funny. Being half of each of them is so funny. To see and feel solutions and to internally diffuse their clamor before explaining how or why is so funny a feeling. I think they are surprised when I know things about them that they don't realize or share. After twenty-five years I am surprised that there are things that they don't know about each other or themselves. They bred it, and it's me. Then again, I am surprised each time I learn a thing about myself I did not know. But it's dad's birthday so stop being difficult and let's go to Red Lobster.

dreams suspend me
and render me breathless,
in transcendent bliss with you.
without tethers or binds,
so clear in my mind
is the freedom i've missed with you.
my heart throbs wildly,
from the feelings inside me-
for the things that i wish that you knew.
it's here in this place,
where i know only your face,
that i tell you i love you, and do.

If you think no one can change
then you believe this of yourself
and if you think this of yourself
then this is why.
Don't listen to the parts of you
that don't tell you the truth
should they benefit
if you believe the lie.

The heart is more
like bone.
Weight-bearing.

With more impact,
fissures show
the tiny ways
a heart can break.

Scarring over.
Growing older
makes a heavy heart.

He (is sullen and shaking
and sunken-in so
that he somehow seems shrunken
despite that he's grown,
but he) carries me dutifully
home through a storm
and my shirt may be soaked,
but my feet are still warm.

He trudges (begrudgingly)
over the curbs.
(I cry out for help but
I mince my own words.
I'm hurting him, heavy;
but) his arms seem steady,
intent and so ready
to hold me(,
I hope true, to the words
that he's told me).

(Please,) "Don't put me down
(let me down) just yet."
"Turn your key in the door
and forget about this."
(So I lie through my teeth)
"Thanks for bringing me home,"
(sooner you'd left me then
than leave now and alone).

Hope for you
is shattered.
Unflattered,
unimpressed.
Bit more than you
could chew
and so
you swallowed whole
the rest.
A year,
now in regression.
An obsession
would begin.
All my words
were yours to keep
when they escaped
the pen.

I had a dream about you,
so intense it had a score.

hours and hours on end
building and blending
and smiling at me
and for once,
I know how it ended.

You’re my sun.
You rise and I tingle,
Your rays spread and I sing.

my favorite part
is, I'm not sure
which of us was trembling;
maybe both.

I have looked into your eyes—
into your dreams and through your mind.
Watching you look over me,
I see naught but wasted time.

-

i am tinder, i am kindling:

i'll hold your fire
if you've got a match
with naught but a couple of strings attached
(also flammable)


i am quick and light and airy,
take on more than i can carry.


you, like reliable firewood:
must be.
you'll have to be sturdy,
or you will not trust me
that i could inspire,
for all to admire,
a fire: to light up the dark.

and though i have no doubt
you don't need my help,
perhaps it's not something
you want by yourself...


so imagine.
a night
with the dew fallen down.
if your light is low, too
while no one is around
then remember your kindling,
— i could warm you up.
i will give you some more
if at first's not enough.
if you'd want, we'd be roaring,
a knowing so well;
we'd reach up to touch heaven,
the envy of hell.
i give myself freely,
keep you blazing on
until sparks in the air
become ashes at dawn.


ah, we could rest then.
(get a good breakfast in.
cannot wait but i will—
burn all over again.)

You: a fire hazard,
and I am the glowing-red exit

whose handle you hold
just to be sure
nothing burns
on the other side.

But nothing can burn me.
What's burning is you,

on the outside
of the exit door.

Earlier, my brain bumped into itself.
and I mean, it was clearly an accident;
I saw the whole thing happen.
Still, none of us knew what to say!

you thought it all was real
like we were,
didn't you?
now the world's a bad trip—
like a page from your
sick hero's handbook,
without the lie—
and no connection.
you thought it all was real.
what's worse is i did too.