reckless driver
and I kept riding shotgun

we thought
it wasn’t real life
we bled and we didn’t notice stains or
scars

how special, we thought,
to dream as two

your conditioner feels expensive
and you've arranged your books
by color
but in my small world
there is only a man
you didn't sweep the flour that fell
while you baked those cupcakes
I can't imagine him looking at you
the way he looks at me
and I'm sure you'd say the same about me

I was Harriet the Spy
to cope with your cruelty
thank god for that movie

Memories gaslight me anyway
whispering that I was wrong
and not good enough

writing you letters with my soul instead of my pen
life is poetry
loss I’ll never be able to reconcile
here in this human form
always broken
and not sure if I’m mad about it
every single guitar string broken now
dancing anyway

silver tarnishes
in the rain
I almost won I
had one foot over
the line
but when they took you I could not stop them.

Inside my heart there is a a dark place
a bitter place
where a doll-sized me lives
and she is sad and mad
and curses her God

She is broken to the core
her wounds run deep and purple red
she is utterly unworthy of love
she didn’t win the race

You can’t see her because she lives inside the dark place in my heart
you see only my courage and my loving heart
but I feel her
not when she screams
when she cries

I am never sure if the language barrier made the details of our affair easier to stomach or so much more painful
part of me high on the thrill
while hopeless love bubbled like magma at the base of an inactive volcano
your matter of fact words and that thick roll of duct tape you carried
ensuring no possibility of eruption

Trauma happens
when things that cannot happen
Happen
I sat on a bed of grass surrounded by a brick fortress
they waited until I slept under the sun
they came while I dreamed of sugarplum fairies and ripped out the bricks from the bottom to reach me

I could lose all of my possessions
and it wouldn't matter
I'm rich
because you fed me
meals and words of encouragement

I picked up your box of matches
their packaging promised deep green forests and toasted marshmallows on sticks
and even though I saw others tied to the stake
and even though I was burned badly in my child’s play
I felt that the long cardboard box with its deep red, sandpapered edge belonged to me

ancient wounds still break
suddenly and without warning
an earthquake whose epicenter is your heart

early mourning
but for you it's a long, late night
all the dishes lay broken in the cabinet
and I
pretended the shards would not draw blood
I washed them anyway

I prayed for the first time
though I once thought I'd done it all my life
I never fell to my knees
raised my clasped hands
reflexively
until your heart lay broken
in the cabinet
and I washed it anyway

Candle flickers
frustrated, I try to keep reading
flame smaller and smaller
why can’t I light this wick?
I could not see that the string had burnt down to nearly nothing
buried in a soft and lumpy ball of wax

Again I strike
a match and burn my fingers
upside down but
I scald them again
it took so long for me to realize
you were melting, charred

And then I was sorry and lost
blind without your light

early mourning
but for you it's a long, late night
all the dishes lay broken in the cabinet
and I
pretended the shards would not draw blood
I washed them anyway

I can still taste the watermelon
sweet with huge black seeds slipping
over the top of my tongue

When I dropped it
a thousand ants appeared
faster than I could believe
it was completely covered

Is that how fast your body burned to dust?

you were never mine
and I was never yours
but there was an Us
floating somewhere between the ace of spades and a subway turnstile
clothes off in the woods
we hid amidst boughs and branches
but even in shadows we still felt so naked
splinters in my knees
as I silently begged you to stop
hands by my face
smelled of flour and water

I'm trying to remember
what day it was when you left me

the last petal fell but you
couldn't see the fruit
I had believed that you'd sink your teeth
into its flesh and taste
for yourself how far
we have come

but you cast away the branch
when the blossom
was gone

I didn't know there were chapters
and pages that turned
yellow and ripped
or that one day it would all burn

I didn't know that petals would fall
or what snow was
or black dead night

I didn't know that truth would be an illusion
or that bricks could ever crumble

Sitting in the desert sun
a thick, smooth flower bursts
from its bud
jagged spines run
up its stem while I choke
on nothing but air

the unchangeable gingerbread house
rotted eventually
but you scrambled me eggs when I met depression
gave me a chair when I could not stand

words fall
like raindrops
from smoldering pages
down into molten rivers
and wash away
the dust

Now I know why wolves howl
And the point of climbing mountains you know you'll never summit

bed of thorns
sinks deep
below the place your thoughts reach
you beg and you don't know what you're begging for
but I know

moonlit tables clothed in moss
tiny sparrows hopping
among the bread crusts you put out
yarn twists rhythmically
into all the blankets that kept me warm
but I can't keep you warm

Failure spits a hot odor
that's me in the bed of thorns
that's me with the key
on a ring where all the others are charred black
and only one is clean

That small satisfaction that comes with weeding tiny shoots shortly after they sprout
an exhalation

Left unattended they’ll grow thick, gnarled, thorny, and impossible to pull out
fingers bleeding
healthy, white flesh exposed on a broken root left somewhere deep in the earth

sandcastles at the water's edge
master craftsmen
build indefinitely
I use my hands to hold back
the waves

the day came
that I could not see you again
I couldn't beg
or bargain
because there was
no more you
but you were my world
so there was
no more world

I saw you on a bench in my new upscale neighborhood
muttering unintelligibly and I
walked on by, pretending I hadn’t seen you
wondering if you’d recognized me even with your poor vision the way you do sometimes because you know my shape and the hot pink of my favorite sweatshirt

We aren’t in the beach now
where love and wine and money flow freely and music is the official language
no, this is the real world where I’m a loose feather floating up and away on the breeze you’re an apple that’s fallen to the earth

If only I had sat for a moment
I meant for this to be in sickness and in health
I thought I was better and you were worse but my eyes shifted quickly away from your silhouette so now I know we’re both suffering from separate forms of the same illness
I’m sorry

every wound on the soul
is an amputation

you look at me
and your eyes are like reigns
a fisherman's net
and I am like a marble statue
that is suddenly sand

she falls for him as he falls
from reality
or rather straight
into it

I remember you
from back before our time on earth
I have already heard all of your songs

fingernails black
and blue
aluminum foil wraps legs
her heart stops
his goes

I wanted to climb into the warm bed
but I saw dirt on the covers
and stick insects scattered
when I turned them back
he told me, it’s fine

you can’t go home again

but the nights you held me
burn like wildfire
and I am the hiss of steam that escapes
when a blackened branch breaks and
crashes into cool water

Have you ever
picked up bricks
from your own foundation?
And stood in the rain
as it fills up the rivers that sustain you

Have you ever lost someone you love
long before they can afford
to lose you

And you can't understand
why the bricks are so heavy
or how to hold them without
slipping
into the abyss

When I left the thorn bush was a tiny thing
but so strong and well rooted that I never could dig it out
and when all the ships
stopped sailing
it grew so that when I came again it blocked my way in
and you and I watch each other through the branches
but I can’t ever be with you again

blue lilacs by the roadway
you hung your tattered cowboy hat
on a post, said a sweet goodbye
I wonder where its soul went

I didn’t come for coffee
I should have
a short hello before a long goodbye

I will always love you
and the white straw hat you bought me on that drive into the redwoods
when we ran out of gas
and we didn’t even mind

You’re the neighbor I don’t want to know
Keeping mostly quiet but always on the other side of my wall
You’re the great teacher who pierces me in places I didn’t know could break
You’re the dark side of a bargain

You bring us in and take us out
Give us breath and blood
Shepherd us back into an unknown I don’t want to know

All we can do is pretend we are stronger than you
That you didn’t ****** us unwilling into once upon a time
That you won’t ever drag us out

It’s sad to think of you alone
when you entered this world in an embracing cacophony
backseats overloaded with backward-facing long-legged laughs
and beds snug with warm bodies and late-night mumbles

from father’s house to husband’s
and evenings spent looking, talking, eating, smiling

I remember how you told me you’d be alright
I hadn’t yet learned that it was time to change places
I didn’t fill in the gaps where there had been color and music and sweet-smelling coffee
You told me you’d be alright.