Confession I: I want to be with you, not just around you. I want to lie with you, gently tracing the thoughts from my head into yours. I want to follow where your limbs go, with my lips, like a map or the north star leading me to your most beautiful valleys and mountains. I would collaborate with your collarbone and back to mine, allowing a skin bridge, a focal point, to show how inherently beautiful you are.

Confession II: I want you out of my head, but not out of my life. I have teased myself into a conditioned state, a procedure that no one should ever live through.  I tripped over myself, and then over you, and I just want you the feel some electricity gathered at my fingertips, nose tips, please just kiss me. Kiss me like you would with your bent out of shape, looking for escape, lover. I could show you a thing or two about pleasure and how to love another woman just as much as you could love a man.

Confession III:  I hope to apologize in the kindest manner, see some of your exposure – I’m trying to lift composure out of ten thousand gallons of saltwater.  I know you have collected nothing but bitter – I just want to be sweet to you.

My alacrity scares me,
like the electrical figurations in your head
that create valleys and mediocre love.
Sometimes, we love just to prove that we can do so,
because our lungs breathe effortlessly
while possibilities are fleeting
and slipping through our grip like
the missed first kiss and futile attempts
for you to notice me.
The concaves of your skin,
wrapped tightly around colliding bone and ligament,
the barrier against me learning you –
the twists and lifelines leading me to something
greater than your chest rising and falling
in the haze of the night.

I want so badly to believe in something.  I’ve stripped myself down from all the filth and cotton.  I have untied the skin and bones and ligaments to find truth of my structure. I don’t know if I belong in this encasement.  I’m out searching, coming to grips with my fingerprints.  They are my own. Do I deserve the skin enclosing my organs.  My esophagus burns with revelation, but my eyes still don’t sting. My heart is on fire, but yours hasn’t left its roots.  I’m out searching, coming to grips that I am grounded in these cells.

You spoke through light fixtures on Peach street,
gave my bellowing laughs the spot light on Sassafras.
I told you the voice in front of us was as
smooth as honey and you called me crazy.
I should have asked if you’ll call me maybe,
but I couldn’t rearrange my position or
work on my posture long enough to wonder
whether I was talking about the voice in front of me
or the one speaking into my ear.
So, we planned to go to New York City instead of
talking about warm, golden honey that thickens voices
and shines through your iris or the infectious
grin that gathers in your laugh lines.
Rivers of honey spread warm in my belly,
as we pass street lights on Peach and Sassafras
and I hope that you will call me tomorrow.

“May I have the knife?” I said,
as we were cooking with garlic and dough
in the heavily scented kitchen
where your mother grew up;
deep salty waters and high altitude slopes of
Halkidiki.
You set down the knife – just from good manners,
and slide it towards my floured hands.
“Why didn’t you just hand it to me?”
I sounded unsteady and young.
“Why, we wouldn’t want a knife fight, would we?”

Your nails stain my skin like Alaska,
grains beaten into my elbows from riverbeds
and the crossings.
“Have a drink with me, my treat.”
I remember you from way back,
listening to Dave Matthews Band
while we emptied out veins in the front
seat of my Volvo.
Revolting, we voted independent and
we decided to never come back to the night
where Alaska was even a possibility.

A kaleidoscope of plastic, drafted in the
layers of trash.  The sights of a landfill,
the smells of hell.
Containers filled with grime, broken recorders
in baby dolls, apple cores, a slew of condoms,
paper products, burnt out computer parts,
bottles that held night life, while diapers full of
tired mother’s yawns; light bulbs that quit working,
family photos that hold too much, dog ****.

The things that matter most are torn,
purged, and poignant with purpose that we’d
rather forget the existence.