Smoke wafts up from the lounge
among young bamboo.
I am standing on the balcony
backlit from a desk lamp,
cutting the ends of her hair.

The soundtrack of laughter
drowns out the news story
about the Japanese man
who ate a woman in France.
The French didn’t want
to deal with him and
neither did the Japanese.

He lives somewhere here
and has published too many books
for a murderer.

I wish the boy upstairs could see
us from his balcony in this beehive.

He never looks for me.

Danger be the man who bleeds the plights
of men of myth.
Don't you know that even Troy fell?
I do not throw pebbles at
your window in the night.
My eyes: yellow, unclouded;
mead and flowers drip thick
from my words:
banal and intoxicating.
Poppies blooming wild on timeworn cheeks,
Wine-dark hair in disarray.
Perhaps I have read too much into
the man who has read it all.
And perhaps he is only sea-mist mirage
cursed to appear an Adonis.

I made the ocean so that you would cross it.
It is only in this forced distance that
I am allowed to transcend this plain world;
in which I am bound to book
and you are bound to her.
Because in a land of gods and monsters
it seems not so strange that I am the other woman.
Clever sorceress who loves and lets you leave,
and with whom you know you might have stayed
forever.

Sail far, far away from me.

, I thought the pain wasn't so bad,
if it came wrapped and entangled
with an unfeasible longing and
remnants of sweet memories
which prolonged my desire
to be with him.
Memories
which were a curse in all their nature
and served to hurt me more
in the long run
but which I clung to
with every fiber of my being
because he was a god to me
and I had captivated him
if just for a moment.

I bit into you and
there was nothing scary there,
I had to let you go.
I've always loved monsters more than men.

We stood at that crossroads,

bathed in lamplight,

blind,

he never even knew this was the end of us.

He pulled me close, closer

than I had ever been held

and I knew

we could never see each other again.

Under the wash of night,

I had finally found a ship calling out to me.

Someone had heard my call for help.

Someone had seen me.

For so long it was I who left them:

where they stood;

where I could still love them.

But I pushed him ahead of me.

I stood there and made him leave me

before my heart could chase after him.

He tried to turn back to me

with one last

dream-defying grin and I

squeezed my eyes shut.

I saw him once more after that,

I missed him by just a second,

I did not call out to him.

Our time together was over.

He told me to sail to him,

and the magic words to say;

I vowed for her sake to never utter them.

This world keeps disappointing me
and I realize now how
lucky I was to have met you,
such a fateful night ago.
Of all the ships and stars
and silly obligations,
we were two fools walking
barefoot down the streets
of a lantern-lit overripe spring night.
God, the night never ended,
and you
never answered my questions.
You were perfect that way,
always let me think
you were infinite and
I, the cleverest thing you'd ever met.
You loved me so easily and
it scared me to no end
that I knew you'd left.

The song plays.
the air is hot, heavy, buzzing,
my head is spinning.
We wade through
sea of people
I am pushed hard into metal fence,
I pull out my camera,
he kneels before me.

God reaches out his hand to puny mortal girl and
I am Mary's monster.
I am electric,
I am alive for the first time.
Finally the fear does not eat me whole.

Both he and I know that I am living in that camera of his.  Sweet girl, trapped, knowing nothing but laughter and million-watt smiles.

I don't know if he will ever develop the film.

Those were some of my brightest days, no matter how flimsy the flame was. Late nights filled with friends and stars and empty baseball fields.

I refuse to forget her. Sweet girl who tried her hardest, supplicated herself to his every mood, broke her bones to make him laugh. Because those photos are the proof that I meant something to him once. That he was just as much a part of the memories as I was.

Even though we're strangers now, maybe you even loved me once, when I was sepia.

So, cut me out if you will.
Cut me out of your film, I do not much mind.

I had been her kind.
Neurotic and breathless like a dead girl.
The night no longer made me brave.

I tried to resurrect myself. I retraced my steps. I chanted forgotten rituals.
Anything to feel the warmth of Promethesus’ fire.
My voice was not my own.
Gravel embedded in wobbly knees,
I paid penance to a merciful god to bring her back to me.
Yet the sky remained silent.

I stood, screaming at the shore.
Yet His shrine still crumbled.

I climbed through ruins, and chased the sun.
Lungs burning for a glimpse of that old world.
I read Plath and bled out onto parchment.
Offering up every last valuable bit of myself.

Then on the third night,
the lantern glow spilled out from
a mouse hole carved into sandstone.
A sailor turned bricklayer
stood over the remains of my scaly skin.
He looked into my stormy eyes and
Begged for me.

Adoration without sacrifice.
How many had begged
to take away the fire that now licked at my chest?

The tide goes out,
And finally I can see the flotsam at my feet.
How sweet their gaze and sweeter yet,
the stutter of their pleas.

Why did you come here, complicated man?

The sun had not yet fallen when my name
came tumbling from spiced mouth.
You've never said it before,
You must have known what I am.
Allegoried Calypso and Cressida and Dulcinea,

How did you find me?
Know to send two syllable plea running over wired bridge,
straight into aching ears,
over chaotic revelry and muted sorrow
you let me drip from wrought iron balconies
drank me up straight.
You chose the city of tragic love to make
sweet girl hiccup her penitential prayers.

Perhaps I never learn,
to stop making gods out of men but you,
you make it abhorrently easy.

Twice you called out for honey girl and I screamed
alongside the brass to drown out the swell of cinnamon voice.
One more time and I would surely sink.

Do you sing so sweetly knowing nameless girl
was violently trying to put the mist back?
Because each careless wink and wolf grin
shorn down grey forest of poorly concealed intention
and weak resolve.

You called my bluff, licked coppery maw,
laughed at the familiar futitilty.
Many a sweet girl have tried to ride scorpions.

Only when I run from you do you wail from silvered moon, comefindme, donotloseme.
You know I am trapped by my own fate.

You become my darkness, abashed devil
and now I know you dream of drowning in me,
la fuente de la juventud, lion man.

I want you to fall for me and I never want to find you at my feet.

I spent two days crying over a boy
who couldn’t even admit that I was ever something to him.

Two nights crying my tears into a river
in a city that didn’t give two ***** about me.

A boy that wouldn’t hold me and couldn’t let go of me.

I was a flower, wilting and dying under his touch
because he just couldn’t bear to ******* cut me off.

I blew through that little coast town so fast I never realized you didn't love me.

I wasn't the other girl for once, not that I knew of at least. I was just a blip in your timeline, somewhere lantern-lit and overripe. Wooden stairs and open ceilings and terracotta tile and *** and coke; I was Eden beneath banana leaves.

I have not loved anyone since the spring.
I'm beginning to have my doubts that I will ever find that perfect matchstick moment again.
But I'm throwing myself into everything,
trying to scare myself into love again.
What we had wasn't love but god
in the movies that's everything that love was made of.
I don't mind being a bad memory.
I don't mind being that Katy girl.
Because I ******* know we had something special
and I could have loved you forever.
Let me be that complicated girl.

I'm sure she's beautiful, Hubble.

I am tired of chasing straw haired boys,
Who smell like earth and stability and everything that should be good for me.

I hurl myself like a meteor at them,
crash headfirst and they insist I am more fire rocket than girl.

He picks a girl who looks like him,
And I insist it is not because I am not straw haired.

But it eats at me, persimmons drip just like strawberries.
Why did you pick me if you could never even love me?

I am still learning pigs from men
and men from gods.
He was sweet today;
he said my name;
the curse is broken;
I am over him.

He is steadfast in the belief that
I cannot write him into my stories.
He has told me already that I confuse him.
A man is a man is a man.
Maybe I'm mad but that's ok,
because the orchestra in my head does not sing your name anymore.
Close your ears to what you do not want to know.

It's been a year now, I have not changed. A sweet sailor told me once that poems were the only art form that allowed, demanded this much melancholy and I am none the less tragic. You would have laughed in my face had you seen him and I. Soft, silly boy opening up into bloodied lips. Pressing flowers into his hair, contritely convincing myself I was not the monster you wrote me out to be.

I won't tell you that he couldn't love me, that I could never keep him.

I'm sure you already know. That's how the story goes.

We were but two ships passing in the night sky. While I spent too much time staring at him and wondering
why I had never noticed him,
he never saw me because I was not what he was looking for.

We were two sailors setting different courses,
sailing different seas.
I would go the ends of the earth for what I sought and
the ends of the earth would always come up to greet his shining face.

But I could not change him, I could not change any of them.
He will never see how I see and
that is how I must leave him.
He will be beautiful, yes, but he will never be like me,
and it becomes so hard because
in those moments, when we meet
and the dim light of the moon spills out on us like a meeting too clandestine for two people
who barely know each other,
I forget all reason and rationale and I want to break down into everything that he has ever sought after,
whatever that may be.

I am so angry at the aftertaste of his devotion. He lit a candle with the intention of us, the flame will go out in a week.

Others have knelt. Looked at me with those big tearful eyes.
Gazing.

He trembles like them. He murmurs like them.

Yet he does not worship at my altar.

But how can I expect him to? A man who has so fervently forsaken any god?

When I came home
I brought two kilos of yuzu tea
Instead of all the letters I wrote about you.

In Japan they say the yuzu is theirs.
They say the same in Korea.