i guess i thought that electrical charges could
somehow make up for the lack of
similar interests and complications
of heart strings and valve stents,
but it officially meant that i couldn't really
care for you or myself.

so, what if i wanted to be alone with my
head held high to view the beauty rather than
the
cold
and
***** streets.

but instead, i search.
i use my instincts to walk without
thinking
and swallow my tongue with a
scream in my throat and a
burn in my eyes.

yet, i still can find the room in
between my teeth to admit
i'd rather be with you.

You caused the cracks and creases in my childhood images.
The downpour of this sworn secrecy never quite made sense,
with your ***** hands folding up
and crushing my lungs into compact boxes.
Lungs in storage, collecting dusty atoms and rusting over,
fossils forever imprinted in my metal ribcage.

I lost my voice.

I promised I would never speak vowels, nor syllables.
But you never warned me how my suffocating
lungs would force me to split my vocal cords
in
two.

So, I spoke in soft rushing winds, knocking
the heavy air out of my aged chest.
I wasn’t strong hearted,
you focused on the limbs tangled together -

you brushed off the blood from the blows,
and I gathered the words and  
I went back to bed.

I covered with sheets of muffled thoughts and lead.

i woke up to nothing but
your dog displayed beside the
length of my own body.
i still felt cold even though
her body temperature was above
average and it was like she
had a prophecy to share.
you were two hours late,
and your father had worry lines
mapping out his features,
i knew it when i tasted the heavy air
and the sky was the color of
shady shelves with the books
cemented to the wood.
my hands were in knots when
the phone slipped back into
the pocket and i realized why
you didn't soothe my curling
thoughts that were on catastrophes
and so i focused on my heart beating
through my stomach.

i stood by in shock,
paramedics and state police
lit words under tires and
metal casings down the ravine,
i wondered how you got out of
the twisted seat belts and air-
tight windows.

the blue man said you were
as high as a kite,
and your father's lungs couldn't
calculate and then formulate
the few words to tell them
of your heavy lifting and
bleeding tongued sorrows.
i wanted to *****.

in the hospital beds,
rows and rows of numbers
that held contorted body parts
and tears of anger and fear,
i found you,
ready to transfer for more
opinions and observations
that wouldn't tell anything
about how your mind
actually worked.
just the basics, the nuts
and bolts;
doctors couldn't tell us
why you were so
upset when visiting hours
were through,
yet i could.
you said you thought you
loved me.
and i believe it.
but things are now tangled
like a gold chain necklace,
and now we have
to ease it out to get
back to straight lines.

we have to let things heal,
like the stitching on your
face and the trauma
gathered in your
backbone.

let it be,
you'll stand up straight again.

when i was young, i loved being alone.
i loved it so much, i used to lie to keep the girls and ghosts
out of my mother's head, like i could erase the
scribble marks on the piece of paper because i never thought
they could be permanent like the bloodline in our
family and the tattoos on your wallpaper skin.
i guess you could say my torso is a furnace, kicking on and off
when the time is right,
like the light of the strongest star circling the earth -
i always wanted to see the shadow against my feet,
we were connected by the needle but the heat just wasn't
enough to keep you occupied by the
lengths my arms could make.
you told me once that i had the body of the circus,
there was always something dangerous but sweet and you
couldn't stand to see one overpower another like
the smell that held onto your teeth
and how my temper could never flare when we were in trouble.
when i was young, i loved being alone
with the dirt underneath my toes as if i could walk cross country,
but really it was just my backyard, i just liked to pretend
that i had somewhere to go with a bookbag filled
with some gummies and my mother's favorite necklace.
i will never forget the quiz my mom had for me once i
got to phoenix and back before the sun hid behind the house:
did you see the alleys filled with bottles of cheap beer and
trash, could you see all the colors of the wind?
well, yeah of course.
even now, i love being alone
since the pollutions can sometimes get to be
too heavy, leaving me with little direction and a
map that read to follow the roles that have long been engraved
in the stones that my garden held so loosely,
so i won't accept an apology when  you never meant for it to be
this way, i want you to read to me
how sorry you could be if you would have known
the acceptance of being alone.

we all have sorrows as deep as wells,
but i'm tossing them right out the door.
maybe this is where i shed my old skin like a cobra,
but i'm hardly as vicious.
i'm only as dangerous as you let me be,
with my bones as strong as glaciers and
my eyes could swim inside aquariums
or the Mediterranean sea,
like i have gills that could let me breathe.
i could make a home,
20,000 leagues under or i could
touch land with my sun shining shades
of affections
with the complexions of new worlds.
and did you know, that there are more stars
in our galaxies than there are particles of
sand on each coastal line -
i guess you can say we learn something valuable
when you least expect,
like how cats have one hundred vocal sounds and
we can relate because
our vocal sounds
are endless. we can use our voices.
kind of like our opportunities,
expanding like water turning to ice on our
puddles so we can walk on them without
rain boots or umbrellas that catch our tears.
instead, we wear our thickness overlapping
our feelings and
i just want to be naked.
if that leaves me vulnerable,
so be it as long as i can taste the glass half full
on my skin.

i just want to be happy.

i forgot how blue your eyes were.
it's as if you used food coloring to enhance them,
and i don't know if that's true,
but they speak of cold breezes and tired days.
i could see the life inside of them,
struggling, juggling,
things weren't always so sick.
i could feel the color pulse,
as if your heart, (that is larger than the one
in "how the Grinch stole Christmas")
took turns with your grandfather's clock
hanging on the tobacco-ashed walls.
the depth of what you've done, i cannot compare with
a yard stick or the years i
cried for myself, over
the river and through the woods,
there was always another one waiting to take me.
you have something i wish i had,
strength to recover from the battles
on the sidewalks and needles filled with glory
and traces of your own blood.
the iceberg blue from your eye sockets are different from your veins.
crystalline. bright.
and if i could i'd take it all away, the desire
nagging at your fingertips and the
monkey
on your back.
but since i can't,
take each marble of faith and
save it for the rainy days
and rundown shading nights,
the minutes you need it most.

but don't forget to forgive yourself.

we try so hard
to fall in love
with ourselves,
that we forget
to live for something
more.

i think cavemen were beautiful
with their primitive actions to
sculpt bare rocks and minerals
into tools to reach out to hearts.
they had their own language,
like countries i've never been to
or tribes i wish to witness
because even the minimum
was pure and enough
to keep their thoughts racing,
to push them to feel life
through fingertips and dancing.
i think this earth used to be
beautiful, with gallons of
salt water surrounding
one entity, we were once
all connected before
we were able to take our
first gasp of oxygen,
before we could communicate
how the earth was not flat
and circulated to
let the light take over the
heavy and forget what
heat is during the
ice coverings for 90
shaded days.
i think we forgot how to
really let our blood
strengthen our bodies,
using complex chemicals
to ease reality because
we know we are wrong at times
and right when we can't turn
back centuries.
we breathe to taste our
own ignorance,
when really we should be
breathing to feel alive,
but the numbers don't
change and we tend to
only care for ourselves.

cavemen gave and gave and gave
until they couldn't breathe in the
light anymore and the energy
moved on to the next,
like how ionic bonds
result in a positive
or negative charge.
sometimes our structures
aren't so step by step,
but our feet can take over
for that.

it is our time to take over and
****** our ideas out for the taking,
but i'm nervous we won't make it.

i'm scared that everything we've known
will fall down to the mantle of our
beautiful planet because
my generation
was too worried
about the little
things.

I figured,
just an overnight amusement,
but I didn’t know it’d come to this.
An overview of your disarray and unconcerned nature,
I felt your heart slow its pace when you forgot.
I never forget.
I can’t say the same for you.

Tuck in the sheets before you go,
since I wish to clear the area.
If only it was that simple,
to wash this room clean with liquid
solitude.
Why did you come here anyway?

My personal accounts don’t count for much.
I guess I’m learning how to forget my respect on the front door.
I’m leaving it for someone new.
I just need to forget you.

Corrections spit at me in numerous directions,
hydrating my bone dry systems.
I’m not yours to choose.
I should have not been the one to hand this off.

But I was.

i woke up today to the world
drinking tea and chaos,
as if nothing has changed,
like the ground hasn't collided and
caused the water to rise or the
fact that the government just may not
care about us at all.
the debt we are in could last us a century,
and i'm not talkin' about the government funds,
i'm worried about how luck is never on our side
of the dead green grass but,
we can get through this.
i've never been one for religion, so
when i catch myself saying that i have faith,
it's feels like marbles in my mouth and
the glass is melting to form
a sculpture of how we could be
little or we could be big,
but only time will tell in between the seconds,
and that moment we know which we are,
i'll turn to you and tell you if the faith
is still crashing on my bad days
and i hope you'll stick around if it isn't.
if you don't stay, the earth may quake
close to a 8.5 and it will go down in history of
how difficult it was to piece back
my grounds.
so even if the world stops spinning,
i'll still spin it for you like when you used to pay
for my admission and walk me to my doorstep,
like there was nothing more dangerous
than leaving traces of my footsteps across my dewy
lawn.
i'll spin it like the beer bottle with the foam
settling at the bottom, just so i can see
something fluid move because
sometimes being fluid is more beautiful than being
solid since solidity only has one shape.
so once you tell me that you won't be there to spin my bad days
to good,
i'll leave you alone, like i would the dead
carcass of the deer we hit two days ago in your rusty
volvo but don't be surprised if you ever
wonder if i dream about you
and when the answer is
only every once
in a
while.

so i started this new hobby,
where i try to erase "bitter" out of every dictionary i
find, but sometimes it doesn't always disappear and it
sits there with eraser shavings in different shades of gray
like the collection of Polaroids i keep safe in my desk drawer.
in this occasion i will just take my handy - dandy sharpie
to color it in to leave it up to the imagination
or trial and error, like new cleaning products for the women
who are dissatisfied with being homebodies, but
i'm telling them not to be bitter, not to be this six letter word
because
28,835 days is an awful long time to carry
such an empty suitcase,
and if some of you don't understand that number,
an average woman's life expectancy is 79 years of age,
so i hope i calculated that correctly because i'm not so good at
math,
but i'm not saying all of us are average,
since sometimes we break too soon and the bitter takes
over the sweet like the winter takes over the fall, and
sometimes we are so free it gives us a few more days to really
feel alive.
i just don't want to be bitter, because the dictionary is filled with
so many other words like laugh and lust and flesh and
warmth.
so i think this book can do without just one word.

i guess i'm just a dreamer,
i've always wanted to fly to the moon
and swim with jellyfish,
just to say i never was stung by the globes
of the water but someone always told me
to tread lightly,
like there was broken glasses that
could get me anytime, but
that didn't stop the birds from flights or
landings as electricity pushed through their legs and
the weather never stopped the wars we
all soon forgot about.
we are forgetful people, misplacing our keys
and hearts in the rooms where we felt the most in.

so when i go about my business (and the times
could go slow), i will reenter each
book to find each word
that could
someday
somehow
direct me to "i'm sorry."

I ache for warmth
from the sun,
from days to nights,
from you -
for the second time today.

your mouth speaks like fountains,
gray and cold and hardened by
the cement in your earlobes,
like when latitudes cannot seem
to find longitudes and
how nothing goes your way.
but i can't seem to place
your complaints, like the satellites
can search for landmarks,
how the light searches for the dark,
i guess you have worries
******* into a bouquets colored in
unfortunate crime series,
similar to nancy drew.
i always knew i read those books with
patience for a reason.
negative comforts you with
its energies and wide open
grace,
having its own race that will
love you and love you all over again
because you are uncertain anyone
else will but
i can't give you a stable ground to
walk on or an idealist world
you know you cannot have.
everyone else has learned to live,
working with the works and hands
they've been dealt.
you just constantly ask for it,
you aren't a king,
hardly a man.

things like this always take time.

we used to sit at your kitchen table,
with spices and leaves swimming in our mugs,
and talk about politics, the higher powers, and
disastrous events we spoon fed to our souls
so we could relate somehow.

(but those were silly conversations, just to get to the point.)

i  brushed the old leather straps of the
beaten ******* you found on your
thrift shop adventure and i could see
you had no sense of direction from there
on out.

i should have left then.

you stifled the surprise as honey ran down the dull, heated spoon;
i could almost see the glow come off your cheekbones when you molded your eyes against the grain of the coffee table.

you thought, but you didn't think.

so we talked with our dizzied eyes and danced with the idea that we handed each other nothing more than friendly gestures and unwritten secrets.

i just knew you didn't put your heart into it.

your body was the sea,
and i was the ship that wrecked in violent waves of rolling hills
and i finally found the path that led me to the explosions in the sky.
and they were so beautiful, but it wasn't the same without you.
i heard the orchestra build its wall of strings tying up the moon,
kind of like how i am ******* to you.
i saw the flickering of the stars, as though they were dimming
right before my touch -
like a heart skips a beat,
like the gas price jumps,
and the occasional glow
of a person you know
that has
stumbled
over love,
jumped over buildings to reach it.
and here it is,
velvet in my hands,
eroded like the skylines of ancient cities,
beggars grateful for a sip of water,
trees speaking to enriched soils,
with each bright light,
it shines a little more each day
until it is four million blinding suns.
and here it is,
in war zones and over your salty body,
flying kites and airplanes in
a game of tag -
you're it.
i almost blistered my fingertips,
i forgot how the skin could be so protective
like a barrier against
all bitterness, it can be shielded from
your pumping vessel.
somehow, my immunity didn't stand a chance
between your dangerous waves and
how small the north star looks from where you are.
my sails might be torn once i get through to you,
but i'm hoping the explosions above will bind this together.
the compass will tell me how far i am from the coastal lines,
the day i can finally touch the atoms
that make up a ghost,
but until then,
look up and you might see me there.

i feel like you stripped me bare,
gathered the rough edges and threw away the soft ones.
at some point,
the sharp points dull and then we can say we won't
have weapons to use upon each other.


i like-like you
and i hope you feel it, too.
we still have energy in our
lousy, late night bones
so lets do something about this,
get caught in a fire
and let it burn to our
temporal lobes.
i want to taste the
aftermath of how you once
thought too much
and read too little,
but i know we can only
ease into it.

let's take it slow.

And we were stuck.

This year, so skinny and diluted,
I'm surprised we made it this far,
with the acidic aftertaste and misuse of
love
and
devotion
of time.

But rather than tiptoeing quietly into this,
I'll pour another shot of burning
hope
or
something similar.

Tomorrow is just another sunrise,
(if you could call it that in Northwestern Pennsylvania)
that I will see once again
some other day,
some other year.

I have always wanted elegance in
a vintage photo book with faded perfume on the
cover, kind of way.
I want to step on the strings of a robust
cello to feel the taut, bendable life
give out - replacement.
I wish for the herbal remedy for the life
I chose so long ago,
the risks; highway lengths ago.
I never thought I'd gain much from
wishing against the bigger plan for me,
but I lost more than I bargained for.

you promised me mountains
while we dozed
in our sunday best,
even though we never touch
on religion.
i can hear your lungs like
thunder, it is sick of
this place
just as much as every
person who
just wants a taste
of summer with its
heavy humidity and
pregnant skies
daring to give birth
right on top of us.
some of us beg for
the rain,
the pollen covers our magnetic
skin.

that's how i felt when
you left for a sunshine
second.

our zones were tired and
nervous that we couldn't
hold on for much longer.

so i wait.
i can't tell you how many
glances down to my feet
it took to turn off the
faucet that was about to
bust out of my tear ducts
and nasal passage.
it was pretty gross.
but so was the train tracks
across my toes,
i'm pretty sure i didn't see
that thick metal
through the peripherals.
but hey,
i could have just blinked.
or i'm blind.
these eyes are seeing double,
as if i had a strong swig of
battery acid.
it's okay, my mama always said
it was best to sleep it off
my shoulders and
write it in my spine for
another day.
and so it goes,
i'll pull down the covers and
let this fossil bury
down in my
ribs
so one day, i
could read you to
sleep.

i could be a contortionist,
i would have bent backwards for a touch
of your cigarette lips and
i could unscrew my bolts to weld against
your plastic case.
your shell you carry is uninviting,
yet i want in.
i promise not to promise,
when you hold your
bird caged  bellows in,
the ones that left you long ago.
i will take your lion frame
and form it in
the comfort and shelter
i have discovered
in the gray weather systems
and your blue eyes.
i can't give you my lungs,
but i could help you breathe a little softer.

i won't give you my heart,
but i could lend you some of it's
articulation,
fascination,
like how your hand fits in mine.

i have never wanted to be so good to someone.
i could trace the outline of your fingernails onto my faced up palms as we
reached for each other,
slipping my thoughts into your back pocket,
and you'll hold me like a golden locket as
we climbed tree limbs into the heavy august air
to tangle our own until
the light turned us free,
like the spotlight on the faces of my
old high school choir -
my vocal cords were ready to bust at the
seams,
i just wanted to be heard and
you had the finest of skills in listening.
i could talk in miles or
explain in knots,
but the options were endless.
i chose to keep my tongue hidden,
as i feathered my lips on your unforgiven
past, not least but last,
the scars following your
arm.
i could see the matches
that burned
each thought on your elbows,
the love you misplaced
when no one gave you the
thumbs up or the acceptance letter,
that held back and pushed to
your toes.
circulate it,
and pump it through
your bones.
it will destroy the blame and
dispassionate habits,
like the way things hurt
and the anger towards the less than
pleased family who only suffer
because of their reputable
finished paintings might have
some water damage from
the storms.

i want prove that there is good in
the beggars and the pleasers.
there is compassion in the corners
and valleys of the longest of
highways.
it might be a far stretch,
but you gotta believe there's more than
just road signs telling you
where to go
and
people who can't love
anyone other
than themselves.
because even the lost ones
need love, too.

you read me  like braille.
connecting the dots and then crushing them down,
as if they didn't exist,
i'm just a selfish girl.
i heard your favorite sonata
colliding between your headaches
and headphones,
but i wanted you to listen to me instead.
i could tell by the language your body
created,
careless,
brittle even,
but you'd never admit to such
an inclusive map like the one
you picked up on your last
travel through the desert.
and once you got back to
Pennsylvania, you spoke of
how sometimes the nights were
frigid and how the sun bloomed
always, like the day i
reached the level of
vocabulary words
and the attraction
i found between me and
some boy.
i didn't think he'd stick with
my indecisive storm watches
or the fact that i loved the
way shooting stars meant
nothing really.
they were just strikes through the
sky that caught nerves.
so every once in a while when
i catch you speaking
in temperatures,
i guess i don't have the right
furnace to burn through it.
maybe it's selfish,
but i have my own thoughts to
cool down before
i tend to yours.

i have been trying to do some spring cleaning,
like brushing out the cobwebs in my head,
but i always get stuck in the intricate silk and the thought
that i could be something.
i could be.
with each particle, i spin a new letter that fills a
good part of my curriculum -
the ABC's of love and Compasses 101 and
intro to new culture,
just so i can prove that i'm well rounded,
like the tip of my tongue,
like the merry-go rounds,
and the pupils behind my eyelids.
i know there was always a glint of worry
radiating from my mother's
half moon smile,
daring that i won't make it.
she never wanted to curse me,
so she spoke of opposites -
opposites attract (but we both know that isn't true.)
but this isn't about her,
this is about the days and nights i gritted
the enamel off of my molars to
pull myself off the bandwagon,
i've never really been into Natural Light beer,
(some call it Nattie Light),
or the fact that not being focused is what
i should be focused on.
this is about the one night stands with
Microsoft Word and my book of notes completed
with equations i knew i could never understand.
this is about the the day
i found
i could be the person
i never thought
i would be.

my thoughts could run a power plant.
the electricity could sprint through telephone lines
in state lengths and i'm not sure if they would
stop there.
sometimes i feel lucky, like if i could dance enough
i could stop the earth from spinning like a halo and
whirl it from north to south;
maybe then i could find you again.
sometimes my thirst is so much,
my tongue flattens out to parchment paper and
i'm just waiting for your signature to guarantee
some water for a later date.
sometimes i can feel your heartbeat from
wherever you are, causing my own to hiccup
and man, do i hate the hiccups because
sometimes it hurts so much that i
retire to holding my breath.
sometimes when it works
i sometimes scold myself to
make improvements, not excuses
and with that i could almost
turn off and leave this position for
someone else.

Chapter I

I once was young minded,
vulnerable with wide tooth grins
and fluttering words,
binding soft skin with liquid
metals - like gallium,
clustering in my ribbed fingertips and
letting love level in my lips.
I turned old the day I watched
rough bodies portraying the new style
of
***
on a vhs tape, and he
gave me a shaking milkshake to
turn off my developing
voicebox.

I always wore this barbie nightgown
that had tears from the nights before,
but that's ancient dust that folks
flip past in encyclopedias.
as he knelt down to tie my veins
together in little bows,
I untied after each loop was set in
my bones.
his acidic fingers braced my eight
year old metal frame,
so I broke the nuts and bolts since
I wanted to see if he was
a part of the human race,
I wanted to see if he could bleed
iron-richness that kept myself breathing.

Chapter II

he was beautiful.
his philosophy branched in
segments and he tasted of
earthy tones, but sometimes
he couldn't smile easy and
I felt his love only in acts of passion.

The football game stuttered in
pure vertigo,
as if my body was still
positioned in missionary.
he held me in concern, his arms
laced as protection from myself.
as a survivor, his words felt like
whiplash or lagging from too much
flying in the high altitude.
I needed to forget, float, forgive
and begin the process over again.
I would never see the shades of love
from anyone other than from him,
his words used to brand me.

Chapter III

I drank too much.
I wished on meteorites,
lead-filled, hoping they wouldn't
fall on the tent.
my luck was never strong enough.
I felt as if a wildfire was singeing
my dysfunctional limbs.
I wanted him off. now.
and my tongue was made of
parchment paper. crisped.

I woke up ten after nine.
my body repulsed me,
throwing up the last of poisonous
alcohol I left stranded the
night before.
I devoted that I will never sleep in
a tent again.

Chapter IV

I am finally free.
I still have energy in these
old bones,
and I want to put them
to good use.
so I'll walk for centuries to
find truth and trust.
I use my voice to tell myself
I am  more profound than the
surface film those insignificants swept
on my skin.
I found my voice again.