open up your soul and let me explore your heart.
when i'm walking in black caves instead of traditional red ones,
i promise to fix the cracks and tears and impurities life has put there along the way.
and when i get lonely and i start to miss your voice,
i'll find my way to your head
and visit your thoughts.
i know it's dangerous there,
like i'm walking straight into a tornado
with your insecurities racing by me to get to your eyes
and your confusion darkening a corner of your mind.
and with your loneliness walking by itself to it's room,
with its black eyes and pure white hair,
pale skin and lips that have never smiled before
you can't help but think about the thoughts running through it's own head
and how scary it'd be to walk through there.
maybe that's why it's so lonely,
everybody's scared they'd never walk out of its mind.
and when i can't take the chaos anymore,
i'll run to your spine
and count your vertebrae.
and when i get bored there,
i'll walk to your hands
and think about what destruction they've done
when they broke that mirror
and when they wrote that poem that hangs in my room
and after i have my map of your body put together
i'll leave it in your heart.

he watched the sun
the way she watched the moon

grey sadness
longing for
warmth
to heat his skin

pale golden clarity
missing the greyness
cool
across her skin

won't you stay
he would whisper
watching the sunset
won't you hasten
she would murmur
watching the sunset

i wish you would leave
he would
tell the moon
never leave me
she would
implore the night

then one day
as the moon
bathed in the pale
flickering sunlight
he stumbled across
a sleeping figure
and she was awaken
by man's clumsiness

i'm so sorry
he said
i forgive you
she said
voices
mixing in unison
the sunlight
the moon
hovered together
for a second
before they fell apart

footsteps
receding
leaving
left and right
forever
will never be the same again

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.

some nights it was yes-
terday

others

I lose what tree
it was

in retrospect-
ive light
circles

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.

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

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

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

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