this summer, the first of its kind, has been a very difficult one. I’m not unique in my anxiety for having the comfortable, intricate, beautifulinspiringwonderful rug I’ve come to love so deeply over the course of this chapter of my life ripped out from under me, but I think I’ve felt the pull particularly strongly. I’ve also lost quite a few people that I loved and love, in varying degrees and to various uncontrollable forces—first distance, then ungenerous and unforgiving illness, then irreconcilable differences of bagel topping and dog breed preferences. my world has been even more transient and transitory than usual, weekends punctuated by drives from my old home to my old home, neither of which I feel like I particularly belong to anymore. my weeks taken up first by a job clouded with exhaustion and headstrong disinterest, then by nothing at all, now by a conflict of interest—a place I love inside a place where I never wanted to land.

on the nights when I’ve fallen asleep, dreams of crying parents and misfiring deadbolts have awakened me, and those nights have been difficult to come by. I’ve felt the ennui brought on by the inescapable digitization of the world and the awareness that I’m not smart enough to be above it. that I’m not smart enough to even properly love the poetry that I love, to speak the language that I thought I knew, or to use the temperamental dishwasher in my own house. I’ve buried my misgivings about myself in lamentations that my friends have been scattered to different cities, so they can’t prop me up anymore.

I’ve shared pieces of myself with people more nakedly than ever before and with much higher stakes, and though I regret precisely zero of those risks, I’m learning it’s true that the harder you fall, the harder you’ll fall, and the latter isn’t something I’m yet accustomed to allowing for myself.

I haven’t yet accepted the death of a presence in my life that has been so large and multifaceted throughout, constantly reminded when the GPS winds me through the churchyard where she officially is now and when I pass her picture on my kitchen counter and when I keep on loving her wonderful family. when I remember that she’s the reason I had these phenomenal four years in this phenomenal place, and the reason I’m for now sitting comfortably in a job that I love.

and I haven’t yet accepted this transition into having so little control, so little trajectory. it’s a big life. this summer, as I said, has been very difficult.

but august, in time, will fade into september, and when it does I can say “last summer was very difficult." and I can remember how to stand up straight and that there’s a reason I have those city-scattered friends in the first place. and I can figure out that the lesson I learned is that risking a fall makes for a strictly irreplaceable, exquisite six month repose—not just a bruise—and maybe a new city-scattered friend. and that the death doesn’t erase the radiance of the life. and that distance is sometimes bridgeable, and that figuring out where to be takes a little time, and that nightmares aren’t there during the day, and that everything is, little by little, sometimes, usually, always all right.

she was more than just the stuff of storybooks, she was one. hair long and light and breast-grazing, star-gazing wisteria-eyed girl. a mystery on spindly legs. a fawn I looked at once and never looked away from. her lemon-meringue demeanor, breathy bubble-bath speaking voice and short white dresses, sandy bare feet and a crinkled, secret smile were all I saw and I saw them as many times as she would let me, new eyes for her driftwood shell every day. she wasn’t from where I was, nor was she going where I went, but when I said hello, she flashed her sunstorm smile at me and buckled my knees. I loved her before we even met, and I knew she would never do the same because she didn’t need to; she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything, she was freewheeling, she was everybody’s sunrise, she had that smile.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and she told me her name one day, as the horizon painted her gold and stood her still in front of me. she told me where she came from, and where she was going, the gift of gifts: unwrapping her storybook from linen scarves on the sand that evening. this big and beautiful myth shrank to size: she was real. she was flawed. she had grown from sadness, she was scarred, and for that she was more beautiful still. she didn’t need me and she didn’t need anything and, what’s more, she wouldn’t have it. her doors were closed because she wouldn’t need anything, she couldn’t need anything, she was scared of needing anything like she wasn’t scared of anything else, and for that she was more beautiful still.

but I wrote the book on living impossible dreams. as I came around more often, she fell for me right back—my far-off wisteria sunstorm was quiet against my shoulder, breathing in sync with me and drifting off wrapped up in me, driftwood-intricate and real as no storybook before her next to me. she needed me, now, so new to her and laying her bare, stripping away the mystery on her gazelle legs and casting a fearful desperation on her long light hair. instead of needing nothing, she needed me more than I was there, just like she was afraid of. she couldn’t get enough. wrapped up in me so tangled she couldn’t see the horizon anymore. she fortified her quirks so they could stand alone, they grew overbright, she became them, they became all she was. a pretty driftwood shell, a mystery covering nothing but the hole her heart hides in, scared into paralysis by its own fevered motion.

what do I do with this new shell? this new shell that looks exactly like the first one but isn’t—her eyes are still wisteria and her laugh still air-light to the untrained ear, but my hands are too strong to touch her without cracking it. what do I do with this storybook I wrote myself into without permission, this fawn that refused captivity but now can’t remember she was ever free? what do I do with my hands? do I make them weak so I can hold her or do I leave her to herself? what’s the end of the story?

I wrote the book on living impossible dreams and sunstorms aren’t real. she smiles but now it’s only hollow. I can’t look at this beauty I destroyed. I walk away because I have nowhere else to go and I can’t watch her shrink. she was never mine. now she’s nearly nothing.

you stand on the corner of your just-gone home, dirt from below the torn-up asphalt making its way beneath your sunglasses, the distance between now and then something you can no longer stretch your knees and step over. your first love is boarded up across the street, succumbed finally to the burn of nineteen’s shallow pockets and standing in the way of a new apartment complex. you walk on, humming so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. it’s a strain on your ventricles, loving and losing and owning and letting go, when you’re here again. knowing the porch’s soft wood at number 18 while the door is bolted and a stranger’s boots line your closet floor.

it’s not all lockouts and dire prognoses. your tomorrow professes to accommodate a higher wattage than the sconces in your old room, and your visits taste like love and memory and breakfast, and his bed is warmer than your own because he’s in it, and he welcomes you home like that’s what it still is. it feels like he’s not wrong to say so—sometimes, you still belong there. cold coffee in hand from the farthest corner where they know your order still. an opinion on which pizza joint has better marinara. a favorite bathroom. an indelible mark on your old library desk. some of it is yours.

but some of it isn’t. some never was, and some has slipped through your fingers. you hum a little louder as the months go by and the boarded windows give way to a brand-new storefront—one that never knew you at nineteen—so you can’t hear the heavy step of all that’s taking your place. but you keep coming back.

you rise before the morning does, watch the black
sky go gray through the shower curtain
lacy shadows cast on summer-night skin
not ready to awaken, blue eyes half-mast to
squint away the fluorescent intrusion as your
mother butters toast for you that you leave behind,
your stomach sleeping too.

yawning, you thank god that the possums are
exercising better judgment as you hold
the wheel at eight and four, shake your knees
at every stoplight, sing billy joel top-volume
to stay alert while the clouds go pink and gold.

you join the real-world almost right away,
asleep before you hit the tracks at westport
tickets tickets tickets grabs your ear, but only just.

your coffee cools in its thermos, forgotten in the
new haven line haze, your nerves all perked up
fighting with the fog between your ears. your nerves
all perked up. your nerves all perked up. you try to
kick the fog to no avail. you all but sleepwalk
down the platform, you barely watch the gap.

hey, wouldn’t it be crazy if he came your dream-voice
whispers to your conscious yes it would be crazy your
conscious chuckles at the thought.

you trip on the overweight businessman’s pennyloafer
and you think how much you need to *** and you toss
your cold bagel in the all aboard trash can and you
think about how crazy you would be to hope to see him
and you hope your backpack isn’t slowing traffic too
much and your nerves all perked up your nerves all
perked up and you shake away the fog one last time and
you get to the end of the long hot platform and you—

hey wouldn’t it be crazy if but yes he’s
there and yes you
don’t know
what to
say but
yes your
eyes wide yes
mouth open
yes you don’t
know what
to say but

*hi,
I love you,
yes

crash crash crash was the calm smooth
hudson current
percolating like your
electric kettle soul
earl grey hands wrapped around

crash on the pillowtop
the closest thing to injury you knew
the still crash the
crash they bottle on the radio for you
crash lulls you to sleep
crash crash crash all you heard
all you wanted all you didn’t know—

mirrors shatter
mercedes tangle with birchbark
little quarterbacks forget their names at 22


hello?



he drops the phone
forgets how to
pick it up
you fall in line
try to
forget too

small pieces of paper stuck to her molars
she wasn’t from the country she said she was from
ex-PAT! her charming garbled R’s were
gone that one night.

we all said, J’ACCUSE! and she was like, what
because she wasn’t french.
she could’ve passed though,

if she kept her tongue quiet. I mean,
it moved the right way, at least.
and she was beautiful, if I may speak so plainly
and very susceptible to the cold—
blue-white hands tucked up into sleeves
when she sat hunched over with a hot tea listening
to a radio broadcast from 1970.

it was in san francisco that she fell in love
(not with anyone in particular, but that’s almost
always how it works, non?)
after 1970, but she hardly knew the difference
except that the cars were more aerodynamic
and all the boys had names like Blake and James
and Noah and it was harder to come by a bed for the night.

she had small lungs, the better for whispering, but she
felt like she was more grand than a whisper.

french girls could whisper and still be grand (ma chérie)
so when she packed up and erased the country, she took
a new name, more cosmopolitan, with her,

ma chérie.

what do you learn but how to close your door when it’s coming
what do you
what do you learn but how to only whisper, never yell
only let them see you when you’re pretty
only let him touch you when you’re cold

since the morning you allowed it I’ve taken full advantage of your loving me
I’ve watered my impatiens with your loving me
I’ve thrown back my gin and tonics with your loving me in mind

and I haven’t paid it forward
I haven’t paid it lateral
I haven’t paid
haven’t paid for anything
and they’re catching up to me
the barkeep thinks I’m new in town
the doorman shakes his head

and the door keeps revolving as he stays obsolete

I keep loving you inside my scarf
and the wind takes it
when february comes

you’re tall now and your elegant shoulders are
rolled back and your collarbone frames your diamond
pendant like a picture
you don’t always wear the athenian owl anymore
you’re a little past your own poetry

they’ll all say my
how you’ve grown
haven't you

one thousand four hundred and sixty or something like that
fewer days than words from whitman’s mouth
makes sense. he knows more than I’ve learned so far.

but I’ve learned, so far. let’s get a little saccharine
sometimes the mosquito bite on your brain lasts years longer than it deserves
and you can’t walk away till you’ve walked together for awhile

sometimes someone else picks you up at the corner and
you wish he would’ve been there all along and then you
realize thank god he wasn’t cause he’s
beautiful but there’s no bigger beautiful than the
beautiful you squeeze into your final days

and he’s beautiful.
you’ve lost count of the drinks thrown back that brought you
to all the doorsteps you never would’ve seen
all the mouths you’ve already sort of forgotten

and the nights with your legs resting on
the legs of people you love with more love than—

here is where you learned to say I love you
sometimes
and when you can’t, to say something else
squeeze a hand

here is where you slapped somebody’s shadowed cheek
and found the remote house that’s kind of home
and where you’ll have to go away
but not without leaving
a little bit of you
everywhere

this friend of mine was never good at smiling in pictures. he tried really hard, but it never worked. all gums, all eyes that didn’t follow suit. he wasn’t great at smiling in real life, either, except when he stopped thinking about it. I saw him smile more than anybody else did, probably, but not enough. and then, like all friends from a home that is dispersing, I had to go. he said I love you by the dam and he meant it like a friend and so did I and that day, before I lost sight of how much he meant it, the sun went down and neither of us smiled with our eyes but we smiled with our mouths and we knew it was all all right.

then I lost sight of how much he meant it and we don’t need to talk about those years, even though we still don’t talk now that they’re gone. I think he grew into his hands and his heart, and I think he found someone who taught him, really taught him, so much better than I ever could, so much better than even he thought that I did, how to smile. I think she loves him more than he meant it when he said it to me, in quality and in quantity of ways. I think he packed my secrets in a box on a shelf in his hometown closet or maybe he dumped them in the recycling bin, and that’s all right, and I’ve found where I feel right too.

and having not seen him in a long time, having not talked in longer, having not hugged him in longer still, having not known him the best or ridden in his passenger seat or punched him in the shoulder, having put so many years between me and my best friend,

the picture that I saw today, the first ever of his smiling eyes

well, the pine-tree fireworks light up better like that. mine did the same.

I. The Flitting



just like me to
be the one to lose my nerve
I don’t even think of you
sipping your coffee and yawning


           his honey-throat spreading imagined hospitality like butter
           on toast—the bard of Royal Street ringing bells of that
           known once and only, that forgotten bard of Montmartre


                                 e, e, e, e,
                                            e, e, e, e, e, d, c, d



I walked up and down and up and down
and up and down, wrought-iron
     balconies and
          hanging plants and
                circus clowns and
              cocktails named
          things like Aviator
and Little Josephine
     in my ribs.



           hurricane season came and went
           the apartment Jacob rented painted
           salmon by the new tenant
           I kept walking
           all I heard was jazz




II. The Splatter



I met a man all the way from Delhi
at the mismatched
butterfly-printed breakfast table.
He said

           “Where are you from?”

and I said a little town near Philly
and he said

           “Where are you going?”

and I said I haven’t got a clue.


He told me they let you
paint the walls with pen strokes
and they never paint it over.


He said to love thy neighbor ‘cause she looks okay
and when they ask what brings you here
to smile and tell them

“Well isn’t that just none of your **** business.”




III. The End



it was
          just
                 like
                      me
                 to be
            the one
         to     lose
      my nerve—





I step off the plane
humming in my best
imitation honey voice
a little drunk on airplane wine



it’s raining here
and I only remember
that one line

new york was first a big empty window-walled apartment
a trundle bed and Victoria
and finding that I can’t love anyone more than I love the
solitary solitary solitary train

next it was hungry circles with a
stranded little man
going too far to get back home

and then the  l - - -  of all our lives
maybe l - - - ing someone more
than peace at eight a.m.
irish cream ale in the evenings and
push-and-pull-and-push

and now it is
westward, higher, hypothetic
thinking where is the balance
between the train tracks and the
sweet sweaty bed

at the end

home is where the
dog died
where the carvings in the walls say
I heart ryan four ever

or it used to be

I could etch the rooftiles of the
abandoned hot dog stand in foil
from blindfolded memory I know these walls

I could drive drunk from 111 to 25
unbury the spare key where
hannah used to live
I could
recite the streets and pebbles between yours and mine

but they say you can’t go home again
you can’t go home again
you can’t go
not again

The bed was warm with the
body of—



Christ!!!


how can you ******* look like that
do what you do
drink all that **** whiskey
kiss your mother with that mouth?


that Jesus abdomen, I’m always forgetting to
sweep the floor, haven’t even been downstairs
in days



the body of a—



Jesus Christ!!!!



can you just
put a shirt on
so I can think straight

All right, dear—
open your steno book and
transcribe every other word:

I, I
                 missed, missed
                                                   you, you.

When I ripped the first bag of chamomile,
distracted tearing packaging,
and on the second water’s boil
and on the bittersweet lemon peel I
threw in on a whim,

and when I cleaned the dishes, not well enough,
your earlobes lodged in my mental faculties,
and when I emptied the soap so you
wouldn’t notice.

I made dinner—don’t write down that I
burned all but the potatoes, dear.

I want you everywhere; transcribe that.

There’s a vase in the cupboard but
let’s keep the flowers on the bed.

“Be careful walking home,” stout Patricia
told us through a mouthful of affogato.
“The wild boar aren’t out much this time of year but
watch for the porcospini,” she snickered
wickedly,
“the porcupines’ll smell the grappa on your lips.”

my head spun in the moonrise,
the Dutch husband having poured glass
after glass after glass after
at first we were consp—hic
conspiring to cover the taste of the mushroom soup
hic—
don’t stand up just yet

eighteen year old legs for ages and a sweet
American peregrina sundress stupor
dizzy for the first time and feeling the
Tuscan drought on my lingua and in my mani

when I tell the story I remember there being
two dogs asleep under the table
but when they tell the story they
insist there was
only one

*e noi non siamo di qui

the clink of red mugs with handles missing and
twelve-dollar bubbles chasing
silly lilting words down your smile-throat
closing your smile-eyes longer than a blink


I watch your adam’s apple while you hum, you
turn up the music, hey—
remember when we hadn’t met

it looked a little like
how it’ll look when we are gone, hey—
remember how soon we’ll be gone


but I left my shaky voice-for-leaving at the
bottom of the glass, I
promised to speak steadfast-slow, I
touch your callused hand and

the next I know it’s morning and
the curtains don’t work and
I don’t mind your breath and

I haven’t let go

the gnarled elbows of
that oak, wizened with
snow-crusts of
one thousand pretty winters
held me that day fast

august-limbed, i
stumbled
through the lavender
flashes of a crystal
sharp voice in my ears

ringing bells and harebells
purple, gold, spreading
tripping heels
where am i
where am i

shh, said the branches
on my shoulder blades

he was far behind me
seething to himself and
he could not see to follow
but years later,
my oak protector reduced to
rings,

i feel him still angry,
red—I feel him
want to find me

sea’s quiet tonight, iris and vagabond gray
salt coarse in our hair we can see it in the
last pink light

count the bubbles in the wake
sprouting from thin air and
imaginary whale songs

they won’t find us in the stern let me
look at your hipbones—I won’t touch
not yet it’s too quiet tonight

there’s orion, and there’s cassiopeia
stars swimming white fish in our
***-eyes

gulls’ heads tucked under wings
in the corners—goodnight goodnight
little gulls, dreaming you’re doves

even sirens sleep this moon
soft voices slumberous
smoky, hey—let me look at you again

under the velvet dark, sea in sterling drops
on our lashes, let’s take a break from steering
let waves and mermaids take the wheel

watch watch watched
me, watch you, watched your skin turn young again
the night change to early stories lost in
fall grass, august-headed unseasonable warm
and orange, and rose, and daisy-chain

watch your skin turn young again
in summer, not summer anymore but still
something that looks
a little like summer
windows ajar and knuckles *****, cracked
and red with god and icy providence
your skin, so young so genius so young
again

I knew your laugh one april I’d
forgotten it by may and I
remembered
forgot
remembered in june
your pulse in my eardrums when I
found your chest here and when it was in the city
me, under a blanket
in a time warp
in the metropolitan area but not
close
enough

san francisco wouldn’t have me like boston
lusted after lusted after lustedafteryou
bridges held by strings lusted after you
tonight, and that night, and the halves of all of our nights
that I didn’t see, all those mouths
hands
blue-green beds lusted after you
a different end oh oh
oh, I saw it coming

that warm thing that salty distance thing, sometimes
that’s why you leave that’s why
anybody leaves
winemouths, unrecollections
mouths sour
oh that’s why honey
anybody leaves

autumn heaven gave way to the winter couch
chests by necessity warm with the
warm beats of memory
multiples of seven on the parting finish parting palms
on leather
leather and a refuge fantasy
nineteen
or twenty

the shoulders of a soldier of the soldier of the soldier
that you should have could have been—

dreams and cheeks ready came, after
pulling blood and fingers and sons through slowthinking hips
sharp with the thought of your laugh and lips
broken record touched
sorry
sorry
sorrysorrysorry I’m
so
sorry—

can you remember?
the rains are a little alive the
living rains are a little memory of the
little sweet high
the little clocks
barely
waiting underneath the ghost of the second afternoon train

my bones were fragile in january are fragile in january please
keep touches brief keep touches soft keep touches to the city
only in the camera lens keep touches to the curtains to the kitchen to the
hy-
po-
the-
tic—
don’t make me give it a name
just be my brother don’t
let me give it a name
(four
ever
forever
sunset
stop me)

goodbye was to be navy and floor-grazing and in my own
words. that evening you were to buy me flowers for the first time
despite how adamantly I didn’t ever want flowers for those months
you were to know I was wrong that last time
I was to smile at you and cry in the bathroom for the knowing that was
it

but evening walked too quickly and spoke hell
the language not the word, my language not your word
I only understood the skyline
you only understood numbers
let’s make a deal, you said, as the sunshine made its last orange address

let’s make a deal, I agreed.

stumbling like sugar like horses like homeless like
muscles literature-fixed and all brown-bricks
grandiose and unready. grandiose and unready.
grand. ready. no—

so—

stumbling through the seasons through the ceilings we became a mid-march anachronism
nothing to lose
nothing to lose
nothing-to-lose
nothing
nothing to
lose

nothing

can we just stay till the dawn
it’ll be fun we’ll be fun we’ll have fun you’re fun
taste the minutes melt like rock sugar
watch the dust pillow from the middle
only human
fingertips feel the shakeshake and the desperate tears
in fabric

honey pearls
tiger hearts
scratch-blind highway floods
mad july
that july

where were you
where are you

and where am I

midnight taffeta calves, your mom’s rose-gold
diamond pendant resting between *******
too-long hair tamed, fastened at your nape

this peculiar impasse between pretending you’re
prom-young and you’re midtown-gala-elegant-old
you’re a little both, at twenty-one, and a little
drunk—fourteen-dollar champagne, picklebacks
and the desperate paradoxical preservation of this memory

you can hold your cloud-head up beautiful still
so you hitch your dress
runrunrun behind the Rhodes
crouch down in the thorns with every-elegant-one you love
twenty-one, desperate, ebullient, ****

and ****.

stand up straight again, glowing, sage
check your coat and dance
nobody’s the wiser

you tell him things like
hey I’m drunk I’m ha ha ha
come join me, it’s
ra-vish-ing

he thinks you’re
just so **** fun
and he thinks you're
ra-vish-ing

but sometimes he says
no
he’s elsewhere
got
things to do

and if he saw your cheeks, those nights
he’d think twice about the others

cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
on the smaller softer couch blinded like I
wouldn’t have it anyway else
clean glasses for the clean beams
clean left hand for the coffee
solitary where later I will not be

the year of the paper-cut slows to a trot when I squint
***** rug through narrow iris pure white in the meantime
the year of the paper-cut giving way early to first-aid spring

break, break, break they kept saying
cat in the windowsill I cross my legs
say back no, I will not

quiet melting from the gutter
quiet trilling from the guitar
quiet sunshine on my knees
quiet sidewalk waiting patient
for quiet
warm
feet

I hear your voice echo on the walls of the Tiffany box—

hello hello
hello

hello

—with that southern-belle cadence
you spoke with always, like when you
told us we never had to knock, just
come in through the garage

on my graduation day I opened it for the first time
little silver teardrop on a little silver chain
delicate, like all of you, except your fingers
delicate, like the line you’re walking now

your robin’s-egg antique pickup gathering dust as I am miles away
sheepdog going deaf, legs shaky when she stands

I only allotted for that one loss this year.

on new year’s morning when we all
stomached the black eyed peas for tennessee good will
hung over and sweet-heavy with cinnamon rolls
and decadent, permanent, big hardy love
I spent my wish on the usual

and hey, maybe a couple more years for the dog.

hello hello

hello

hello

hello?


your lilting voice echoes every time I put on that necklace
and feel you, savor you around my neck for every
wine-drunk dinner and every nantucket porch photograph—


god if I would have known to wish on that

years of words on paper, meticulously folded, filed,
un-forgotten, found and re-found
so often as to tear the edges, smudge the ink
un-escape back into, trapped on the ferris wheel of
spotless rosy memory, broken-record memory, memory,
memory,
memorize, become

words on paper
words on palms
words and touches and sharp intakes of breath etched
and etched
and etched and—

now, we use disposable cameras
look at what’s in front of us
we’re starting to
remember how

how many stories can we pour into our
summertime beer steins
how much before the foam spills over
into real-time

there’s no numerical answer to that, let’s state plainly
bubbles geometrically become one another, shrink
and multiply and turn amber-red in the august nightshade

and dogs skitter under basketball hoops, couples play in shadow
fathers sneeze and industry marches on
under our noses, outside our windows, between our ribs
how many stories can we swallow
before we’re drunk on the skyline and the view to the next

does it matter?

that one brew is for sale only in midtown
and sometime I might go back, drink it with you not there
watch the spinning hexagon floor tiles
and I’ll write you that I had it, and it was
all right

how many stories can we fit into the new year
stuff into the hamper, hide in creases of the couch
like quarters
like hands on knees, yours, yeah, the soft elegant spider-hands I
wanted on my knees since the first day—
two perfect hands

how many stories can we write on our palms
as reminders, how many can we fit between appointments

the ending’s not so important, is it—
bubbles join together, multiply, change shape
go hexagonal, spin
touch, remember, forget, divide
always even numbers

just shy of eleven
shy of prime

but amber-red in august
like that first time

the gold lion cub flanked by his father,
soft chest for shelter and memory, like I thought
you might remember me

what is there, though
what ever was
I clench my heartstrings without trying when you pass
raise my voice so you can hear all the fun
I’m having without you because I miss you
I miss you I miss you but that’s just it

why

this cerebral museum I’ve kept of you, you
so brilliantly and always tear it up
remind me why I shrugged away your
irish spring forearm every time

why do fools fall in love and why does
non-love stick so stubbornly to the teeth
why are you still here
why were you ever
a forearm pushed away is all you were even
on the best days but

like you know my clenched heart aches to remember
you as you should have been
always the bull in the china shop,
always the beggar for a sad farewell,
you shred me

and then I mend, and forget
again, and again
just like I did when you were here
why are you still here

if I could just stay torn and the
rose-gold camera lens could take itself for what it is
allow a bit of real into my memory of you
your freckles
your venom and too-tight grip

I could grow a mane and lose the shadow of the lion's chest
rest my head on something better
feel the sweet African sun before extinction comes

you are shattered, so it goes
and the imperceptible adhesive from the
fallen framed photograph you
somethinged her—she was not in it—
she is on your hands
not in them

so it goes, the candle on the sill unlit
unstill
until
wax burns
fire goes
you are
never start
something
will end
never light a fire
never have a friend—

time makes a stopwatch of you
a spasm
a podium of her, all your something
stuck to your fingers

tiger eyes searching yours hey
hey
I love you—
it’s the twelfth time and you’re barely awake
I love you too, you hardly say, like a robot to his jawline

hands on yours those hands you loved
they’re too hot now oh
oh, my god just let me make my breakfast
I don’t have time right now

hey
hey
hey (you don't have the time)
hey
I love you, he doesn’t ******* stop saying

you miss him when you slam the door

sumatra drips like crocodile tears in
the four-cup *** just half-emptied by nine
big and bought on faith in un-lone-li-ness
drainpipes eroding from her miscalculation

swallowed black and quickly
her white teeth uncompromised so far
her step-by-step morning still clockwork

but when she was eighteen she watched the
cream like squid ink clouds turn it
the color of his summer skin
drinking up the baby hangovers to the
last drop

hello, sweetheart in the lightbluejeans, what’re you thinking of
whatever happened to gumdrops and thankyou notes and long skirts that say
‘I am a forward thinking woman’

how your eyebrows in self-photograph are the spitting image of your grandma’s
and how she never had a funeral and neither
did
you,
but you’re
****-sure not living anymore, not since the world-bruise and the ankle-bruise
and your protruding soul-bruise (your soul is in your hip bones; it bangs on the doorframe
when you walk into the kitchen every time)

you don’t remember the year but there was one
when you knew it all would be beautiful
for you
how could it not

back up to that long-gone January. that evening in your best friend’s car
when you choked on the phone that it physically hurt to listen to the sharp voices
no matter what, but especially when you knew what you knew and you *******
knew what you knew and you couldn’t
forget
not that January

not that May, when you told him you’d decided to be better
not that December, when you told somebody else
not ever—you were better but you wouldn’t forget
not ever

you set your course on what you didn’t know—what you didn’t know
would never, never hurt you, and

your best friend said go. he said do what you love he said
no one loved like you and you had
a smile and a way with words and the world deserved you and your
big, big love
you were full of love
you were love

and then he left—your big love wasn’t the kind he needed and you survived,
but a little less wholeheartedly because you were missing a little bit of it
and you saw that sharing the whole thing was
what everyone said it was
after all

you were a little smaller the next time when
somebody else told you what you were—beautiful and big and
worthwhile—so many times that you said what the hell and you
kissed him
and he took that kiss and turned it into red
red
red wine
and you had no heart to tell him you preferred white; he had you already
you had him already
and no one would go un-
bloodied

and what do you love? your best friend that day
assumed you had an answer—so did you
but what the hell was it,
you ask through the *****-fog
what do you love?
do you?

and now
what’re you thinking of, honey
how the next one and the next and the sunglasses future
is cracking summer ice, not stone, and you’ll
kiss but not say
iloveyou
it will be misty and gray for you
you’ll plan on only what you know in sweatshirts and quilts
and you’ll shut the shades

and even this January
not forget

not since the world-bruise
and your own

Growing up in Poughkeepsie, the
barbells of unfaith always shook her
wrists when she lifted "I
will be gone from here soon enough"
over her shoulders. "I will love
like crazy."

Grown-up in the city, she
swallows hard in the marble mirror
and thinks "Maybe today
will be the day," but
it never is, and she ignores
the petulant inside voice saying
"Unfaith is unfaith but
so is dead-eyed
companionship, so unclench
your fists"--she hasn't yet.

some nights it was yes-
terday

others

I lose what tree
it was

in retrospect-
ive light
circles

the world's at home, and it's from taming one star to another till it's light.

once upon your voice I walked on eggshells
wrote on eggshells with infinity and refuge
you’d drink a fifth
of anchor steam, and refuge
we’d talk all the doors closed
refuge.

the fault lines, beautiful in
their unself became the weave of things
your skin radiated a reddish copper glow of
the ones behind
floating like in your stars
red and gold—
he’d change your colors.

I had faults, but we did not
and you did not, but he
talked like next year with you
and this heaven curdled—
I wanted to *like heaven and so I
breathed the doors closed quiet
drank my own refuge in the dark
that you didn’t ever count.

let’s count the darkness now
the sun is what I love and I can see it
hiding in the things you said—
“we were back burner anyway”
—I want to like heaven
and so I dress the shore, waiting
but if it’s coming it’s slow
and I want to like heaven.

so I go
taming one star to another
till it’s light.

two bridges only went down in the fire
my architectural catalogue was largely unscathed--the
ones with the most foot traffic these days
standing tall still
but two went down.

first my most recent design.
in the city I just left it stood alone and imposing and
gray
weather beaten in so few months
and weak--not my best work, though
I gave it everything when it was commissioned.
I thought it might crumble some day.

one other was lost--the first tall one that I'd built
and the first unexpectedly beautiful
ornate thing I was ever proud of.
I hadn't been back in years when I got the call. no one-last-photo of
its sunset or one-last-drive across its bumpy surface.
just a clearer view to the skyline
--takes longer to reach now, the traffic on 95 is a real *****.

years since I'd been back
but I wasn't quite finished, not
forever

when the milk light steals into my eyes—hey it’s grownups’ goodmorning
—I let your elbow go and then I pull it back again, soft metonymy (i
sometimes remember
when you’re awake, and abashed I keep it quiet
how you’re my favorite part
—of what?—not applicable, but this morning I remember
when your eyes are closed, and I let you feel how much I
feel you in my ribs when you’re all around me)

the punctuation of the days was always mine and I
couldn’t breathe as well without keeping the dark
for me just me
and still my eyelids weigh me down a little but
I don’t mind
hey goodmorning

on Orion's belt, she spends her wish
though he hangs there, unfalling, why wait,
she wonders, why wish on empty air
(she forgets, though, that even Orion,
brightest warrior, isn't really there)

and she dreams in most conventional
metaphors, and she scolds herself: her
unconscious architect
would not be commissioned for the
Golden Gate Bridge, or anything, if you
know
what I mean

when she closes her eyes (awake)
she sees the colors like his synesthesia
though he kept his finger paintings locked away
and his fingers without prints
never there (he's never there)

and good mornings come in pairs
and nights look unempty (don't tell
her what they are)
why wait, she wonders

god forbid you wait

Let’s go back to 1.
To start again, to meet you, to seventeen, to yellow
and hugs, to hammers and strings.
Nobody knew me then, and I ****** up
told them the true story.
Let’s go back, and I’ll tell you a different one.
It started out a prepschool fantasy. I had a
Great Perhaps, and you
(were there, probably)
And then I ****** up, my friend.
I’d like to revert to 1: a second round
I’m ready, now.
Hello, nice to meet you
Would you like to have a drink with me?
I will say yes. I will be thin again for you
And when you touch my arm
I will not shrink
from you.
Let us. Let me, at least
Revert to 1
and promise
(I do—to do better now).

On money-soaked leather, we’ll make angels
no I’m sorry—we’ll make amends
I will talk breathy and flutter my eyelashes; I will be Daisy Buchanan
a rosewater anachronism that needs no cigarettes and no pretense, only
Attention
(I stood at, when you said goodbye)
There will be no end. There was no end. Not a goodbye.
On rust-red rooftops we will soliloquize
(about what?) (it doesn’t matter)
We will throw lit matches and watch how fire makes its mark
And we will separately wonder where it goes
and—are you listening?—we will watch the sunrise
and I will tell my daughter about that day when she is older.
A prepschool fantasy. We will drink to the word “contraband”
and it will be 1966—the rich kids’ 1966, the whitewashed one we pretend we are ashamed of.
I will be Daisy Buchanan, and thin again for you.
Let’s go back to 1. I would love to
try again, and better now.

I remember vaguely speaking of water tension when I spoke of you, when I realized the amount of our time I spent in pajamas and that that was bigger than just I-like-pajamas, it was also getting inside the bubble on the penny so as not to feel the contours of the water so much as each drop grew it into more fragile, and more fragile, and more fragile, and it defied the middle school science experiment when it never broke. it never broke. when it happened in my eyes it always broke and when it happened in kissing it always broke but the big bubble that we were in never broke. I thought that was good. we defied science, I thought. but the thing about water tension is that it is tension and it never went away. until now. I don’t feel you when I see you now. I feel that you feel me but it doesn’t matter. it broke. it was just a water droplet on a penny.

I was older than you called me by my freckles when we met, barely
stretched over the cattails lazily in sweet winds imperceptible usually through
the hot water air
at a parboil

your cigarette-and-sunscreen, cigarette-and-sunshine smell and feel I have you
now as I walk eyes closed down the autumn street
no all smokes do not smell the same, I miss you—

the world in your departure is static for the most
ironic twist of you thought, you thought that I was beautiful
I wasn’t, not while you were watching, not till you
were farther
till I was older, barely

oh if all smokes were you still
if all the suns were you
if I weren’t beautiful and you were looking
oh

in the hot hot hotbox where the
interlude first dug in its feathered heels
(the *******), now, it being
gone with the wind, the wellsprings
reflexively engage because the wind
is hot and here I'm not unused to you yet
and I sure don't miss you but here
I nearly want to

I turned bated breath on my blind eyes and tick
tock
tick
tock
august strode away. august bloated on july and june and
god knows what because august is a bit of an alcoholic,
if you’ll please be discreet about that—we don’t want word to get around

the curtains drawn and folded, I balled my fists and white
knuckled touched chests and abdomens and shoulders but never doors;
somersaults between my ears and over
and over
and over
hardwood against your cranium
you feel it eventually
or I do

and then august screams a marissa-by-the-pool scream but not aloud
and she doesn’t talk to you she doesn’t
talk to you
she’s got nothing to say and you
you
you’ve got nothing to say and

everything is better now it’s so much better
but she doesn’t shake hands for more than a two-count now and
you don’t feel your heartbeat in your ears, usually

to feel the beginning, and end
you take note of how lucky
you are on five hundred threads
and the beer in the fridge on your
parents’ blind-eyed tab
and how just this last time
you can drink coffee before bed
or not come home tonight
or see middle-america with
only your own blessing.

you do not
take note of the broken storm window;
what’s it to you?

I was a creature of spring and autumn; I made no bones about being temperate
even-tempered, even temporary, alive only as many hours daily as the daylight
sinking when the sun sank, sleeping early like a child, sleeping till the dark passed
staying warm under the down until the dawn, where I woke if there was color out the window
but there wasn't always, and on those days I slept.

There was a time that spanned awhile when I thought "alive" to be synonymous with
to not-be-dead, that to die was to stop breathing; to stop living was no different.
I was only alive between the hours that the graveyard gates were open, and even less,
as the grayer days and I never made our acquaintance, as I had made my acquiescence
and my peace with the perpetual proverbial graveyard shift.

I misjudged the patterns of the wind one morning and arose with the milky light
and, tricked by the mild breeze, was caught in a flurry on my long walk. It was cold on my skin
a shock to the system, to my lilywhite hands and my overwarm blood. But my god
it was the most beautiful thing my oft-closed eyes had ever had the pleasure to take in.
And the not-quite sun went down as I watched, and the snowflakes turned to stars, and hung there
weightless, like me, and I was all-at-once electrified and new and I thought childishly
to perhaps stay here for the night, and forever, and watch the seasons change extremely
because it seemed a shame to resist extremity now that I knew the meaning of, and was,
wholly, inextinguishably alive.

the lazy dark curls on her
young shoulders were probably
unkempt and
her young laugh overloud
and her bluefire eyes
a thin veil for her
bursting and unkempt
young heart.

that's probably why he
never wrote back, she realized years later.

I remember my teenaged phantasm and I lace soft boots to draw
tall grass and sand dunes and hothotsummer,
a pair of teenaged lips on my teenaged lips in sundown,
the little wreckage of the family behind walls invisible from distance,
and the perfect quiet of strong teenaged hands, the I-never-want-to-leave only
in that we know so certainly we will
come fall—
the beauty in the shooting of the star
and not the star.

I tilt the rearview, sweater on, and leave to you.
I picture the soft reeds and pebble beach with-you-near-you and I think
how I could take you there and live a baby flame fantasy with a flair
for the dramatics and more fallapart than meets the eye or the mind’s eye, even.

I could kiss you behind clapboards
like goodbye is on the weekend
and cry to Cassiopeia that why-does-good-always-*******-go-away.

But it doesn’t always, not just yet, and so I leave my young Hollywood vision
to my young Hollywood visionary and I take your hand to pass
the quiet sad beach at miles on miles an hour, because I want
you for longer than the starry summer
and Dad’s averted eyes.

he wasn't much on saying so
but it made its way onto birthday cards
and deathbeds

the long thin fingers of a girl of twenty-four
wrapped tight around the handrail of the L-train
bright-blue-eyed but for the temple bruise

                   he loves me
                   and the mess I made

everything tattooed (everything everything)
invisible on her cheeks and in the hollow of her shoulderblade
her lower lip and wristbone
but for the temple bruise
darker by two shades

          a four-in-the-morning-night cottoning her tongue
          not-the-first of many and her long thin fingers
          white-knuckled

          little joys to light on the handrail
          not his warm-hot-ice-hard chest
          or his loud voice (woulda been real handsome
          if his eyes weren't so cold)

but for the temple bruise

                                                         ­   i
                                                           ­ fell
                                                            in
 ­                                                           love so many times that day
                                                            t­he first sunday of its kind--not drenched
                                                        ­    in imperceptible airdrops

                                                       ­     the red-brown beard of the business suit
                                                            ­and the freckles undermining the punk-rock
                                                       ­     vibe of the dark-eyed fox-girl

                                                       ­     but the thin white knuckles
                                                        ­    and the temple bruise

                                                         ­   --none more than her

we laugh twice--

first loudly; of course
they can't hurt us

quiet, freeze-dried smiles
nervously after
what if they hurt us

it’s just one

letter in the box (that you checked
and checked
and checked
till the fountain dried up
on your pen-tip).

I waited--
bated breath and newsprint
on my knuckles
--to tell you what I knew now,

but you shouted over the
first syllable
and never heard the rest.

patiently I watch the red flag
rise and fall with daylight--
bated breath and newsprint on my knuckles
--for your word.

some days I feel it coming
comeoncomeon

it’s just one