"I love you, a lot.
        Don't break my heart, please.
                It ***** when people do that to you.
                        I did it to someone else to be with you so
                please don't do it to me because
        that'd ****, a lot, because
I love you."



It’s a two-way street, love.
        I won’t break your heart if
                you promise not to break mine.
                        You see, I’ve broken and been broken, so
                I know. But how you came is
        how you’ll go, so excuse me
for being cautious.

My mommy said I shouldn’t eat the watermelon seeds, that it would hurt if they made a home of my tummy. She’s a little loopy, my mama, and I don’t believe her sometimes, so I ate the seed and it tasted really boring. I swallowed the seed whole and nothing happened, mama.

My mom told me not to eat the watermelon seeds, that, in a few weeks, a small black tear drop floating in my body would hurt once it found a home in my belly. If it claimed my gut, it would throw out the food I tried to eat, greedy of the space, growing and swelling inside me until the button of my worn jeans would no longer snapped shut. She’s a little dramatic, my mom. I ignored fruit-flies swarming the chewed rind left on the counter, its sickly sweet scent swallowing the space of my small apartment.

My mother warned me never to ingest the seeds of a watermelon, that this little black tear drop once wedged into the sweet sponge of the fruit would one day decide the house it made of my torso was no longer its home. It tore its way from my body, strangled the sides of my diaphragm, round after round of reverberating contractions bent me over until the sweet clear liquid flowed from me. Then came the melon, my melon, that once found a home in my body – falling from me in clumps of sickly sweet spongey mush through shaking fingers into an unsuspecting porcelain bowl.
                             She was right, it did hurt.

You called me golden
Like, perhaps, I could be a California river.
But I, with my hooded eyes, never thought
I was soaked in sunlight or shimmering in wealth
Until I found you sifting through me
Marveling at a beauty I cannot see:
Telling how the sun makes me sparkle,
Bragging about the curve of my body through the hills.
The more you boasted, the more came to see
And now I know I am that swollen western stream,
A run of water muddied by your boots,
Scattered with pebbles of treasure
Winding south with the current down to the sea.
I am that western vein because I know
I give more than I take, and I know
I could never stick around for long.
You're like the others
Who held me in a pan and
Walked away with all I could give them.

I touched His hand and
He hit me.

I ran my finger prints
over His callused thumb
over the cuts and bruises;
between the towers that were His fingers.

He gripped my tender fingertips with death
and pulled me under with his clutch.
He spilled sea foam into my ears,
filled my mouth with His salty tongue.

I saw love in shades of green and blue
heard His voice in strokes of black,
split my lip between His teeth and
washed my mouth with a copper jam.

I floated with Him for a time,
watched the waves collide over my head,
counted the grains of sand between strands of hair and
listened to reality through the heavy static of a radio.

I touched God's hand but
when I came to, they only wanted to know today's date.

She is perched on the pier
a lonely mourning dove
rather than a stalking hawk.

Legs pouring over the red cedar //
toes playfully kissing the mist
of lulling lake waves against the dock.

She waits over the fish staring
at the drowning worm her father
pierced with the rusted hook.

Three fish // silver like new quarters
coming towards her //
towards this earth thing in water.

Every time they begin to kiss //
nibble // the worm // she tugs the
line and the creatures scatter.

She intends to catch one each time //
she flicks her wrist too soon each time
and each time she can’t catch a fish //

she doesn’t seem to mind.

I haven’t moved since the first time you kissed me.
Your lips drip laughter onto my chapstick,
filling the space between my teeth,
moving over my esophagus, slowly —
burning beneath my ribs.
This sweet warm wax, honey in my veins,
bubbling, hardening in my lungs —
squeezing the slightest sound of surprise, surrender,
from my diaphragm and I give myself,
relaxing in your arms,
to this feeling in my molten stomach.
My skin stiffens, my eyes glaze, my lips frozen
somewhere between a smile and a pucker.
Stuck in this split second, gazing at you,
encased in amber.

Blue as sapphire
groaning, shaking,
rumbling like thunder
burning my thigh tops
through the blanket.
The screen is dull,
flickering, buffering —

force shut down
the sound of Windows
reopening, singing —

log in again, eight taps
on the sticky keyboard,
reopen the YouTube tab
begin another vine compilation.
The screen is dull,
flickering, buffering —

force shut down
the sound of Windows
reopening, singing —

log in again,
sadistic taps on the keyboard,
open Dragon Age,
watch the title screen
flicker, buffer, freeze —

force shut down
the sound of Windows,
loud, lodging in my head —

log in again, first four furious,
the following: apologetic,
reopen Dragon Age,
slay an ogre,
freeze, sword raised
prepared for the final blow —

force shut down
Windows singing,
its melody, four beats long,
like a taunt or a tease —
log in, frantic eight taps, enter,
open Dragon Age.
I didn’t get the chance to save.

Bumblebees swarm under
The orange rind, bedside
Lamp flits, claws clench
A steering wheel, speeding.
Almost there, almost home,
You’re so close to finally
Understanding, almost.

Burning crown of golden glory, crusade
Cascade down my corpse like water, toppling
Wobbling pillar legs, eroding away

Cliché shoulder chips. Scorch scarf this thin skin
Therein a conversion of faith. Baptized
Eyes, lashless from rapid oxidation,

Imagination draught, greyscale landscapes,
Escape the reaction zone, relapse in
Collapsed dead space. Swallow the prophet whole.

Cajole the gut advice, heed it to heart.
Hot bleached skin, remnant of fever, frail ash
Dashed in the heavy summer breeze, tumble

Crumble under fingers, over myself.
Sulfur-lined lips ignite epiphanies,
Key-locked doors welded shut now ashy piles.

Smile of a statue spilt on veneer
Near the window. Husked corpse of cheap incense,
Scents of lavender, meekly melt away.

Ashtray of a grave, taste the bitter burn
Return again to bury my mortal.
Laurel on the pyre, you sing the hymn,

Swim within thin chapters of a dead flame,
Claim the blame of scorch scars and disappear.
Hear the fire eat. Smell its heat. Consume

Perfume of a personal breed, discard
Charred temple walls. This body, like incense,
Thence an ashen husk, molder from my touch.

Early morning,
Jupiter and Venus
meet face to face,
frozen, a second before
collision. The sky glows
a burnt orange, an echo
of the collision that
could have been.

Closer than the
band of my ring,
lustrous like the
diamond on it, still,
they long to close the
365 million miles.

Jupiter and Venus
lay next to each other
on a Queen. Jupiter
slumbers, rumbles
quietly next to Venus
while she counts the
fluttering eyelashes.

Early morning,
Venus and Jupiter
are 17 arc minutes away,
seems like an arm’s reach,
but he is so far. Lost
in a dream, frantically
fastened to her waist,
she counts his heartbeats.

Floating beneath sown lights,
between the sounds of
the sleeping city and
the hum of the heater.
She gazes upwards,
finding faux constellations.

Venus wakes Jupiter
pressing her lips to
the soft skin of his face,
dawn light pours red
through the blinds
as Jupiter and Venus collide,
for what feels like the first time
all over again.

Love doubled is desire
desire doubled is madness
here i am with my chest aflame
ears full of saltwater, eyes
only see one thing upon rest
blue eyes, freezer burn, black
crystals chipping away at my nails
i want nothing more than your touch
but the river is between us
and we are both chained by pain
invisible and sharp and lonely
i am ready, i desire, that which
does not want me, a feeling
strange and ill-fitting

It is heroic to attempt to stop time
To pick a moment from a tree
Like a ripe red apple, sweet and shiny.
It is heroic to bite into a moment
To break the seconds with soft yellowing teeth
Taste the bitter, brown, grainy bruises.
It is heroic to keep eating away the seconds
To consume the glances, grazes, gazes
And transform it into something nourishing.

Who cleans the killed from the road?
Who takes the broken and buries them?
Who stops the traffic? They’re not always around.
The skunk is nothing more than a dark spot
Along the intersection before the interstate.
I watched it wither away over three months
Each day becoming less recognizable
Each day sinking lower into the ground
I think the tuff of its tail snapped off
And rolled down the *****, into more traffic.
Where were they? Why was this one not moved?
When I am run over will you scrape me from asphalt
Or leave me to bake in the summer sun
Until I am as nothing as now, true nothing,
Flattened and forgotten and forsaken?

The fastest way from point a to b is a straight line
but the blue line on the gps is never straight --
i got lost in the steel city once with a dead phone
and no gps to get me home
i had to do it the old fashion way
reading and listening
until it started to look familiar
until it didn’t feel so lonely
i got lost in the steel city once
not a single soul around
save for the sound of cars and sirens and trains
i thought leaving the city was bringing me closer to b
i thought leaving would be less lonely
but the thing about loneliness is that it never goes away
it just changes shapes.