I hear the roar of your truck engine as you wait patiently atop my driveway

I slide on my sandals hurriedly, slip out the door
Dressed in a loose, ripply top with my favorite shorts
Bouncy hair and glowing skin
Edible fragrances dripping off my figure, into your nostrils, in which drag themselves to the lobes of your brain, the taste buds of your tongue

And you
With your golden rod complexion, form-fitting black t-shirt, exposing the contours of your sculpted chest, loose Bermuda shorts
Complementary ball cap and aviators
The faint hypnotic smell of sweat and my favorite cologne that compliments your natural aroma perfectly

A playlist of songs reminiscent of old memories
Singing
Dancing
Laughing
Crying
Beats on my eardrums
"Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round!"
Our vocal chords stretch like rubber bands as we scream to these memories in motion

The beach is reserved for our use, or so we pretend
Together, we are alone on this small strip of land
I run to the sand, allowing my toes the comfort of such a familiar feeling
White hot, burning, tingling, relief within seconds as the warmth conducts and disperses across my skin

I unbutton my shorts and pull my top over my head, run to the waters edge in hopes of pleasure, alleviation from the gnawing humidity, liquefying my bones  
I submerge my head, fogging my mind, allowing complete relaxation to fill my entire being

I find you beside me as I surface for Oxygen
Beads of lake water cover you cheeks like melted snowflakes
You stand there, naked next to me, your clothes at shore

Your hands search my back, find the fasteners of my bra
1
2
3 un-clipped by your hungry fingers, which now travel to my hips
Tugging at the thin, lacy fabric covering my
innocence

Now, in your palm

And with your other palm you beckon me back to the sand as you say, with tender breathlessness,
"You're beautiful"
In which I believe you as I lie upon a sandy towel
As you carefully lower yourself upon me
As our fingers interlace
And our lips, thirsting for lust, bind together

We are one

We are love

I've wanted to draw Native American Art
On your etch-a-sketch canvas for two decades,
And now given the opportunity
This spectacle I'm immersed in
Disallows me to master the act of this ecological connection.
The water behind me whispers, slowly,
The words necessary to ****** me.
My fingers slide along the slanted planes of sand,
Memorizing each blemish
Created by the ceaseless power of Earth.
Every tree stump boasts the bust of a woman,
Tantalizing in its mossy negligée,
But ashen by the blade of an angry flame,
Stripping them of life.

Superior's Two Hearts tends to my
Earthen love affair
As a fishing lure guides its victims-
With careful precision
And a predetermined purpose.

I have meandered onto the patch of land
By following that drum beat
Of the blood-flowing waters.
Graced with the flower of fruit,
Blueberries, the crooked banks become
A whole cosmos of wonder embedded in soil.
So I fill my mind with the swirling waters,
And my stomach with the periwinkle nectar,
To finally pick up my pen,
Not to draw pictures of your beauty on sand,
But to write words of your wisdom on paper-
The strength you have given me to
Become something other than a blank page.

She must have heard the heartbeat bass drumming on my soul as she walked by,
In step to my own music.
The folk chords that created my favorite songs
Generated your will to march onward.
The car radio spoke the language that we discerned in an interstellar quantity.
Like morse code, we channeled our platonic love through soul vibrations that
traveled the ground up through our skin.

I wish I could cradle you as we breath in synchronicity with the pulse of the earth.
My steps will reach your pumping heart and it will long to be connected through the time of our music.
And I'd never need another soul to complete my harmonics,
You understand what humanity means and what connection gives
In hourless presents.

Don't you find Christmas a little askew in its purpose?
We remember a man who, born on this day, walked the Earth some two thousand years ago
                   By burning pockets with gift giving,
       Decorating a door frame with a $70 wreath which will die in two weeks,
           Stuffing our faces with high fructose desserts and fat filled ham
   Competing for the brightest tree (also going to die in two weeks) and the loudest outside decorations
                                                     ­                 Did we forget the homeless man on the corner who can't even buy a sock?
                                       Who would give anything for that one sock, perhaps even another sock
                   Why is Christmas a competition
                              What happened to Cindy Lou Who, who asked where Christmas was and why she couldn't find it
                                                      I seem to think that Christmas should be much the same as Thanksgiving,
       But I am the only one,
  As we continue to spend thousands of dollars each year's end
                                                             ­   And soil what God intended originally for these twenty four hours
                                            Maybe, just maybe,
                      Spend a little less ******* money on your family,
         And spend a little more time with them
                                      It's all that homeless man could ask for,
                                      Besides that sock

I seem to be the only one that knows how to cite my writings anymore (O'Donnell).
Nobody but I understands the difference between APA and MLA
(Which in reality sounds much scarier than it really is).
Yes, citation is more than plugging a URL into citemypaper.net and copying, pasting, repeating.
Don't you ever want to learn to do for yourself and not through asinine websites that get it wrong half the time anyways?
Nobody cares enough to work hard, learn good... Excuse me, learn well.
Nobody gives two ***** about good grades and class rankings.
Just less competition for me, I guess.

But no, this is something bigger than that.
Why am I the only person who cares about where their words come from?
Where are all the people who used to fact check and actually think about what they say?
I just seem to wonder more than others the vitality of truth in words,
Of validity in claims,
And of proof in ambiguous pudding eaten without prior knowledge of its upbringing.
Is it really pudding? Well you won't really know unless you care enough to find out...
And who ever knows if you're speaking words of Gandhi or of Grandma anymore.
Giving a **** used to be something of importance,
Now put to the side with adolescent legend lessons.




I wish I could make you give a **** about this "silly" school project,

But that's not what we're really talking about here anyways.




Works Cited
O'Donnell, E. The Basic Principles of English. Mt. Pleasant:
        Elizabeth, September 15, 2014. Print.

These blue walls have been everything
Soon to be nothing

My possessions stay whole in my life
My persona is (mostly) intact
I still have the love of my cat
The feel of my soft blanket
The comfort of my books
And I can't comprehend why this doesn't give me strength

These grounds
O, the beautiful trees, planted by hands of the family
The flowers, the precious flowers
The graves of my protectors
Mikey
Jeffy
Chipper
The time capsule, planted for my enjoyment upon the day of graduation must now be prematurely returned to society

And it
Hurts
To hear my loved ones tell me this is petty, this is minute

Let me remind you of the gentle breeze on your cheek as you read a novel on the hammock
The crick that runs through our woods, the deer and morels that reside
The blackberry bushes on our hill, the view of the sunset few experience but us
Every night
The immaculate view of the heavens from our front porch
The sound of cicadas in mid June
The aroma of pine trees
The vibrations of frogs congregating in our swamp
The swamp itself, two to be exact

Have you even seen the second swamp?
I have
In fact, I've witnessed our slice of heaven repeatedly, I appreciate it
I love it
I live it

This is my ohm
This is my sanctuary
This is my religion

And like a conversion, this will be difficult
New rituals
New systems
New life
It's hard to respect the fact that this is necessary
In a way, it just feels
Frankly, unnecessary

As I lie in bed and think of all that I am about to
Lose
These blue walls feel constricting under the green roof, inside our barn shaped home
They feel sad for you, because

You will never understand the beauty within these 17 acres

We walked down the sidewalk with our eyes set towards the elongated skyscrapers, while we stumbled and lost our footing in gaping sidewalk potholes. Each extinguished and singed our disheveled sneakers.

A bird, perched on the stoplight, found my gaze and sawed in half the barrier between our minds with all eight talons, hungry for a sturdier connection.

The car horns synchronized their stammering chants and buckled our ankles like marionette horses. They escalated until we could see each vibration pulse from the windows, liquefying the glass and homogenizing salad vinaigrettes.

The waters, collected in the sewers, began to rush into their respective reservoirs and pool at increasing velocities. The excess bubbled up through the drain covers, costing our feet in fresh rain from yesterday's storm.

Every vent coaxed heated steam through its pours and the condensed warmth reached our fingers, yearning to steal the precious gemstones encased in our jewelry.

We were invited to become the new asphalt, to replace the neglected pieces begging to retire to the gravel pits outside of town, recycling them into new beings and begin again the birthing cycle of the city.

It's hard to imagine The Close
No one has seen it,
No one will
But some find it easy to contemplate all of the ways to get there
Some believe it's never ending sadness
Others believe it's pure beauty at every corner

It's a scary place, indeed
To be in a position of constant fear of The Close

But I find it easy to fend off this fear
And I do this with *love

I want to free fall into the Mariana Trench.
I want to watch the world become darker and darker till light is not in the dictionary.
Forms of life will become less distinguishable with every meter.
Motel rooms and apartments litter the crevice's walls-"low" income housing-
Soup kitchens begin to occur less frequently-
Replacing them are drug houses and grimy gas stations with metal bars for windows.
Every creature notices my existence.
They dart their eyes just too much,
And I know they suspect that I came here to sleep. To be at peace with myself again.
To watch them, to hear them, to wander them.
In my mind, seconds melt like ice cream cones in July.
Minutes cut through the silence unnoticeably.
Time slips underneath me as the rug is pulled out from my feet and over my eyes,
And it covers my mind.
I remember nothing of past events,
They told me to leave all behind.


As the day grows darker into nothing but here and now,
My skin turns blue. I am the ocean in this divide of magnetic silence.
I am the fish who struggle to find meaning for themselves.
I am time which does not exist here.
I am the water whose stagnancy sinks me deeper into earth and beings of past eons.
My hair becomes the nutrients, the seaweed and algae that provide for the citizens of this primitive paradise.
My eyes are now seashells which house these forgotten creatures.
My arms stretch out towards surface and harden into coral shoots, but my mind is rooted into sea floor basalt and sand.
I will never leave.


                   An eel approaches me.

He welcomes me with a warm embrace too far up my body.
Not an under-the-arms hug,
A beating, lively hug around the neck.
It takes my breath away,
And so I cannot help but gasp with excitement,

And I find my peace.

The joint in your hand quaked
Under the pressure of your diagnosis,
Its flame slipping into the air,
While your last puff trickled into left lung.
At first you smoked for depression.
Now it was a cry to God,
A beg for mercy from lifeless feet,
A trip down a flight or two of stairs,
A fall in the shower.

I didn't know how you would walk again without your toes
Knees
Hips.
But I learned your condition is a silent killer -
it started with the smallest flakes of skin,
As Satan lit an accurate match to singe your nerves.

You told me you had MS
And I didn't know why your breaths became frantic,
Or your tears screaming.
"Mean spirited",
"Mouthy sister",
Was what I told my friends.
God was playing jump rope with his spinal cord.
Multiple sclerosis didn't roll off my tongue so quickly,
first attempts were stutters at best -
I had to grow up first.
And while I was lying about your health
You were in agony over your grandmother,
Dead for five years on a stained hospital sheet.

In the end she begged for death,
And we have years to go.

I wish that God would whisper to his disciples
The words no one desires to believe.
I wish that God would **** his followers pretending to embody his words in gravitating accuracy, that
They are preparing for the end when really they're creating it.
The apocalypse is now,
In production as we speak,
Taking its form in floods,
Extinctions,
Heat waves,
And toxic wastelands.

Too late has man found solutions for irreversible problems.
And too long has man found comfort behind curtains and blinds,
Sheltered from the singeing reality
That is what Revelation preached.
The apocalypse is now,
And we hold the torches
Scorching the grass blades knotted through our toes.
We hold the torches and feel the power wielded in our palms,
Realizing the undeniable capacity of energy in the burning branches in our hands.
But humans love fire,
And that remains constant.

She cries because it's raining
The makeup trickles down her irrational face,
And she wonders when the sun will come.
I tell her truthfully, when it's ready, though she rejects my input.
She is washing away down into the sewer with every breath,
The place she wants to belong,
With the only things that make sense to her: dead things.
Psychotically, the pistol in her pocket now rests in her palm with its most dangerous point aimed at the middle of my forehead.
And she asks me again when the sun will come,
But I give no response,
Because nothing I say will change her motive.
And she shoots me.

I wish dreams did not exist


The only place I could ever hope to escape you is the subconscious, and yet I can't.
I see you coming before I even recognize you.
You are a face not easily forgotten, yet you might not even look the same.
I can still smell your hatred from your rotten, putrified soul, decaying inside that marble sculpted coating.
The smallest memory, the quickest glimpse is a trigger enough to haunt me all night.
The vicious cycle continues, as dreams remind me more of your absence, and that remembrance catalysts more dreams.
I think that to be the reason you've never left me yet.
How selfish you are, to never let me go, to even grip tighter than before,
Like you want to **** me dry of all that is my own,
And leave me with nothing but an outer shell - all of the things inside that matter stolen under the worst intentions.

And the saddest part?
Whether it's through seduction or shear abuse, you will always shatter my heart in the end.
Kissing, touching,
Screaming, torturing. They feel no different now.
I never save myself,
Perhaps I'm waiting for that story book ending I never received.
Perhaps I just don't know how to not let you hurt me.
Most likely, it's both.


I wish that dreams wouldn't exist,
Because if they didn't,
Then you might not either

It never showed its face, never once gave me a sign of nearness

So why can I now touch it, taste it, understand the meaning of its appearance?

I question whether it's healthy, the fact that my mind has so quickly steered me toward this wall.
                           And the word wall does not give proper definition...
                           It's more of a path,
Where this path leads, I must answer in time.
Because time heals all wounds

If life were a wes Anderson movie
My wallpaper would be faded 70's vintage.
I would live a hard life and love an impossible woman
Who would shower me with misguided affection.

If life were a wes Anderson movie
I would have the knowledge to complete
Completely useless tasks
That would somehow be useful in any given situation,
Like chiseling a canoe out of a solid oak tree
Or weaving a hexagonal basket.
My eyes would constantly be filtered
With a color so vibrant my skin would glow chartreuse yellow.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
My happiness would exalt and spread to those around me.
My stories would fill pictures and paintings,
My walls covered in obscure posters and murals
that no one really knows the purpose of.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Bill Murray would be my father,
Best friend,
And lover.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
Nobody would understand my purpose
But everyone would love my presence just the same.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king and crown those around me my subjects.
My crown would be encrusted with the Latin phrase,
sic transit gloria.
I would be king and grace my subjects with timeless tales of ages past,
of tear soaked laughter.

If life were a Wes Anderson movie
I would be king.

What does the painter do?
    When he finds his home empty
    Night after night after night
    An empty fridge
    An empty bed
    An empty heart

What does the window washer do?
    As he tends to his helpless mother
    A sponge bath and blended dinner
    To quell her terminal aches and cries

What does the mechanic do?
    As he beats his wife out of alcoholic rage
    And she prays for the husband she married to reappear
    But he won't come,
    Not until too late

I love ignorance
almost as much as I love that distant smell of rancid toenails,
but not as much as I love the sound of crying, ill-changed babies,
nails on a freshly cleaned chalkboard,
a violent and exhausting ***** two stalls down,
or the jaw-work of someone gorging on a steak,
swallowed down by their tonsil constricted esophagus.

I'm okay with receiving a D on a test.
An F would never make me want to convulgely cry or scream
WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!
over
and over
and over again.

Perfection is the last thing on my mind.
I never feel the need to sketch a circle,
I just half-assedly drip it into the paper
until it portrays and eighty year old man's forehead.

I swear I haven't slept with a stuffed animal since the fifth grade,
because I always had the company of ten to twenty friends
at any given time.
I never felt pressured to look good,
wear makeup,
straighten my hair,
and do the skinny jean thing
even though they look like crap on my engorging thighs,
because everyone loved me as is.

I was never picked on,
I never had to try to make new friends,
but most of all,
I was perfect.

Paddling my ****** canoe down the whispering waters
With my fishing rod in hand,
I acknowledge the persevering tree buds,
The attention seeking trilliums,
Dazzling all eyes and intoxicating logocentric thinkers.
The perch and bluegill aim to impress my lures,
And wish to give my martyrdom-like worms salvation in the highest sense.
Into the ocean I proceed, jumping ship to swim the length of my beaches,
My spaces of leisure and relaxation.
The May flies clench my shirt in their microscopic fists,
Dropping me cleanly into the nook of the reading tree,
Where I monkey-swing down through the branches,
Onto my napping hammock-
This I cannot call my own, but I act as such.
Yet before I drift,
And the sun begs for bedtime,
I climb, dog leash in hand,
To the top of my mountain,
Where I coo our Star to sleep
And bid the moon good morning.
But too quickly does my rule end of these kindled nights,
As another power swoops up under my running shoes,
At the same time blanketing me in my parka,
My cave until the kayaks hum and vibrate again.
My mountain sheeted in snow,
I resort to observing this complete different beauty
Through the hood of my oversized coat,
While from above my ski poles click into their fitted sockets on my hands,
The only way left to triumph over this land mass I call my own.

For me these seasons progress too quickly,
Yet been it this way for centuries.
Mother Nature shows off her powers as she extinguishes my campfire
With a wintery gust of thinning atmosphere,
And little do the birds complain as they frantically scratch at every remaining frost-lacking beetle.
Life goes on just as planned
While the Does and Coyotes huddle for warmth in their newly knitted sweaters.

There's a point in life where examination and reevaluation is necessary.
When you feel as though you've hit not rock bottom, but the bottom of the rocky depths in below freezing oceanic waters
Where only eels would prefer to thrive.

And this place is when gay movie *** turns you on due to lack of ****** ******* in your own life.

I have reached the ocean's floor and am slowly drowning in a mixture of embarrassment and shame
As I watch my dad's eyebrows raise while I
Too intensely stare at the TV screen.


I understand if you judge, but for a moment just remember that all you ******* have a **** to go home to.
Then give a girl some sympathy.

I know this is right.

I know that soon, you will run again, pant with excitement, and retrieve hundreds of tennis ***** with your comrades.

I know, inside, I'm ready. I understand it's time, I can see it in your eyes. They are weary with age and eternal fatigue.

I know that I don't want to watch the days go by as you progress, progress, and suffer. I know you will thank us for the burden we will relieve.

I know that I'll miss you. I know that all I remember is with you, and all you remember is with me. But I know those memories will carry on, and not pass as you will.



But I still don't want it to happen

I feel unsafe
In a building with closed doors, you are always there
There's no need to run, hide
There's no place to go
You always find a way to seep through my skin, infect my thoughts

Too long have you chiseled at my soul
Brainwashed my mind
Siphoned my happiness out through my pores

Now that you're gone, things are better
But I feel as if you took something
Ah yes, you took the memories
Stripped them of me, destroyed them with your toxic waste
I can't retrieve them
Ever

It chills the marrow of my bones,
Rattles my empty chest with a whooping gasp.
We live in a mindset clouded by falsification, washed over by an image of perfection.
With their blinders on, the sheep will follow forever-Their shepherds will lead until there's nothing left to lead to.

There will come a day when the birds no longer sing, and their throats will no longer resonate with the comfort we cling to tightly.
I fear for the world, the Earth. I hear its cry and try to help.
But I am only one person.
I fear for the children and lovers, blinded by ignorance

There will come a time where forests may smolder to nothing, and the leaves will no longer rustle in the wind.
I long for a renewal, a second chance.
I may never live to see one,
Our planet spent to nothing more than a piece of astrological garbage

There will come a time when everything will go to nothing,
There will come a day when everyone will finally see what we've done,
And that day will be one day too late

It's hard to dwell on the idea that, in fact, it is over
After so long, the thought of us being separate beings once more was laughable
When I laughed, you laughed
When you cried, I cried
We thought for each other, we fought for each other
We were each other

And as I am forced to give back your things, it feels terminal, the fate of our relationship
Before, I felt as if this was just temporary
Our love was just under construction
But now I see that this is not so
Demolition crews have now moved in
To destroy all hope of repair
To eliminate all evidence of past events
To annihilate all memories

To love so much
Feels impossible to love you more each day

Yet everyday,
I do

I never liked it when you called me Honey.
It dropped each letter and froze my throat shut.
It shallowed my breathing,
cut off my fluttering circulation,
swelled my eyes closed.
It propelled my heartbeat,
calloused my skin,
inverted my fingernails.
My vision bled,
you laughed at this,
and through my head rang your shrill cackles
as giant gongs infesting all sound.
You thought it was silly,
my transformation,
my drunken anger,
when you flashed your canines at me,
you Monster.
Only the most wicked can kindle their hatred into someone else.
Only the most cancerous find humor in other's tears.

If someone tells you I love you,
Run them through triathlons while holding your hand.
Make them listen with their eyes closed to your singing voice,
When they tell you they love it watch for the formation of sweat beads at the edge of their hair line.
Have them catch you off a twenty story building
And then drive you to the hospital.
Wait in the ER for five hours without a cell phone to play games on,
Make sure they kiss your fingers while you cry in agony.
Starve with them for five days
While you survive off of nothing but salty tears and tender knee hugs.
Watch your favorite movie with them fifty times in thirty days.
Go out to your favorite restaurant five times in one week,
And most importantly,
Loop your favorite album on replay for 78 hours.
Buy five dogs and walk them through miles and kilometers of bike trails.
Have every single argument possible
Until you run out of things to disagree on,
Then bring every issue up again the next morning.
Get drunk together and say every possible ****** up thing that you don't mean.
File for a mortgage.
Agree on how many kids you both want.
Go through the loss of a family member together,
And convert to separate religions.

But most of all, make sure they really mean it.

When you held my hands in your lap
your stare tattoed eyelashes on my wrists,
they're still bleeding.

You used inexpensive words to tell me
you never wanted to make me cry again,
I'm still sobbing.

My soft-petaled wings faded and crushed
as your last kiss fell from your lips to my cheek,
I'm still wilting.

For three months I held up my green-bean spine
with a meter stick, a lifeless statue of sprouting stem,
I'm still dying.

When I called you I know my hair slipped through
the phone speaker, and you could smell my skin,
You're still yearning.

But it's been three years now, and you no longer
care for teenage laughs and the discovery
of thigh and shoulder kisses,

Yet I'm still writing about
what a beautiful thing to have loved,
what a terrible thing to have said goodbye.

I want to
Smell
Touch
Hear
See
Taste
What love is
My slate has been washed clean, a picture not clear anymore
The lines are smeared
The image is faint

I recall it going something like
"Indefinite feeling"
But what has happened to this definition that was once held true
Because this word, indefinite is definitely false

Where is this thing called love
Is it inside me? This I am not sure of anymore
Once it was so obvious what love was
Once it was quite clear that love was forever
Once
Once

Things are different now
Because nothing is indefinite anymore
Not like when we were children, playing games and laughing sweetly
When recess lasted eternity, and nap time lasted much too long (eternity)

Recess is over
Or maybe recess never existed, it was merely a mirage
Maybe love never existed, it was merely a mirage
Maybe
Maybe

So please God, tell me what love is
Help me justify, understand love
Give me love, give me nothing less than your best love
Please
Please

Today was a necessity.
I think,

I hope you understand that someday it will all make sense.
I dreamt of the perfect world with children of ours running in a green field with a dachshund along side.
There was picture perfect walls of glass and my library that you discouraged, but cared enough to allow me.
There was the gaming room that I discouraged, but cared enough to allow you.
And each morning breath was an inhalation of your skin, so bare and intimate.
My hair would wrap around your fingers playfully and our legs would hug under blankets from when we still were virgins together, in multiple ways.

Those dreams pass quickly as does the pendulum of the clock.
The seconds quicken as it deceives us into believing this will work.
It was good at what it did, and we fell for it.

There was no time to change my decision, for the better.

Perhaps someday we may walk with our hands joined once more, but until then,

This is absolutely, irrevocably, necessary.

I know exactly how you’re ******* your new girlfriend.

I know you’re going to play “Sing for Me” by Yellowcard in the background. I know you’re going to **** on that song like we never danced to it at prom, like you never learned it on acoustic for me, like we didn’t make out to it under my lit Christmas tree.

I know 9 times out of 10 she’s going to initiate and that will **** her off.

I know how long it’s going to last you, how you’re going to try so hard to old it in but in the pit of your stomach you know it doesn’t work.

I know your glasses are going to fog up and get smudged with face grease and you’ll need to Windex them afterward.

I know you’re going to say “I love you” to her right after. You’ll mean it, but regret that you do. Soon you’ll need to fix that.

I know you’re going to eat a bowl of Raisin Bran once you’ve dressed again.

I know you’re going to talk about this time until the next time, and she’ll give in just to shut you up. Also because she really does love you, and wants to please you.  

I know you’re going to beg she sleeps in your clothes without underwear before showering, and she will if you reciprocate.

I know you’re going to talk about *** like it’s divine, like it’s balanced on a pedestal located in the most untouched corner of Eden.

I know you’re going to treat all of this like a chocolate fountain, infinitely filling and never squandered.

And you haven’t been home, so you don’t know that the first place we made love is demolished to rubble and stone. You told me good things last forever,

But I know you lie. Yellowcard told us “no looking back when I am gone”, and for a year and a half those words were wedding vows.  

But you’re obsessed with conclusion, and feeling,

So you’ll leave her, just like you did me,

To feel again, because these love affairs are nothing but alcoholic drinks you choke down to numb.

You said don’t look back when you’re gone, but there is no forward from here.

I found my mother outside in our shed
holding her trowel in May.
We walked to the farmers market
and she told me where vegetables come from.
The morning was spent planting seeds and bulbs
close to her heart, my future siblings.

Mother taught me the painstaking birth
of cabbage and watermelon.
We were impatient in the kitchen
while we stirred soup and noodles,
peaking out the kitchen window.

I started planting trees for distraction.
Mom told me
I would hammock under them in time,  
shade my forehead in leafy kisses,
turn my novel pages with soft breeze.

Father watered the tomatoes to relieve
mother from the neck-breaking June sunlight.
She watched through the doorway.
Each night, with baby monitors wired through
cracked windows, Mom waited to pick
her devotions from stem until they were ready.

In August I saw my grandma smile
in crow’s feet happiness
at life that she held in cupped palms,
covered in placenta dirt.

I watch our arms sew together
under gravity's needle.
Our fingers bloom roses
as our blood shines and spins
together on our now single palm.

Mother watches from home
through her crumbling telescope.
She sees us suspended
in half kiss. She waits for impact
of hips, her fingers moist,
slipping off her eyepiece.
She wipes the sweat from her lip.

When I feel her gaze on the soul of my foot
I know she is watching with
cataracts and bifocals.
I am the same age a when I left her
while she cries dust on
her cracking refracting lens.
She can't look away at my stuck body,
rigormortic, frozen and unfocused
in her left eye.

She sits down and dies.
I have just begun.

In the dark we marked tattoos of
disintegrating constellations
on our rib cages,
our fingernails filled with ink.
We were told they would last
forever on 19 year old skin
when carved on the night where
each fallen brother of Sun kissed
our mid-August goosebumps.

The weight of our bodies
cut into the grass.
We came back the next evening to
watch these human Grand Canyons
sink deeper to Earth's liquid center
underneath flashlight flickers of an
approaching thunderstorm,
each bolt echoing on the hearts
of Lake Michigan fish.
The trees fell inside our craters
as we walked backward to my car,
fearing for our lives, but
immobile from each reaching meteor.

Perseus fell through Earth's granite throat,
parabolic melting of night sky.
Collapsed Big Dipper and Ursa Major
illuminated our chests
over shadow of dying white pine.

And what did happen,
Mr. McLean?
What happened when the music died?
Did they sing "bye-bye"?
Or perhaps something more tragic took place.
Did they cry?
Did they, themselves, die?
Not a tear shed, not a sound made as she, with grace, spoke her parting words.

For what good is dancing if there be no rhythm?
For what good are instruments if they do not fulfill their purpose?
What will the birds do?
How can we define a beautiful noise, "like sound to my ears"?

I think it wise to overestimate the sanctity of those harmonies we cherish with such intensity.
Practically a religion, we tithe our money for its funding, we congregate to listen together, and we recite its verses akin to a scripture.
Forever remember the day it died, remember it as a fallen war victim, as a martyr.

Only dying for what it knew best,
For what it was, and for what it did in others

Honor her with silence, for singing is no more.
Remember that it died with pride,
Remember that, as it sang its final note, it echoed,

                                     "This'll be the day that I die"

Love not found under bed sheets,
But found in the heart,
Spread thinly as the beach sand
That dirties my feet
When we ran into the woods.
Connected by fear
And our hands
As we stumbled upon safety
In a city of giants undisturbed by society,
I felt your thoughts sweat through your fingerprints,
Siphon into my blood to pulse through my body.

And when we lit campfires for our lungs
You tucked me close to your knee,
Your elbow resting on my femur,
Rushing your thoughts even faster still to my heart.
I felt your love nest at the base of my brain,
And I was reminded
That I love you,
How you love the thought of loving me,
And how much that will never matter.

The plastic lid on the fish tank locked you inside with Death-
A cold, liquid murderer.
You breathed in His saliva through your gills.
It gummed your mouth and jaundiced your eyes.
I watched you suffer through quarter inch glass,
While you, an inmate, wished to die
From poison oxygen on our cherry floor.
I rested a shoe on top of the aquarium lid
To prevent your suicide while we slept.

I dreamt that night of you
dragging me to the bottom of your cell
With your chapped fins and rotting
sucker mouth grasping my shoulder,
Gasping for clean water.
You forced me to inhale
Death's unforgettable stench
As we did you.

You were dead the next morning,
And I never got to tell you sorry.
Instead I shoveled your carcass
Out from the blue gravel
Coated in your corpse.

So you came down to me:
     at my feet, not the wax
     leaves of the wild blueberry but your fiery self, a whole
     pasture of fire
Louise Glück*

There was flutter of worked cotton hem
between fingers. Ring of cicada click in birch tree leaves,
muffled by swish of grass in breeze, matching

the wisp of sandhill crane feather on fern.
Skin sliding over fragrant sweat.
Sweet waterfall of hair in your hands, fluid in the heat.

Echoing flap of fat trout tail bounced inside the valley,
Scales skimming lake water. Our knees shook
above the foot-bridged creek.

Low groans of swaying trees, aching
in their old bones. Guttural tones.
Your palm shivered on my heart in the haunted noise.

Beneath all our sounds, the under-ripe
blueberries thudded to the ground.
Our love pounded best when they were still green.

A thought sets off tears
A smile creates sobs
An "are you okay" breaks you
And nothing cures the sorrow you feel
No person
No object
Nothing, leaving you with sadness
Sadness that shrinks you into a fetal position
It feeds, infinitely hungry
A stomach never fully satisfied
And you wallow in this pity that can't be ridden of

The damage is left behind
Not an angel's handyman could patch the hole left behind

Guilt
Anger
Pain and
Fear
This is when everything fails
This is where everything fails

Falling into hell and farther down than known to man
Because of a trip that could have been prevented
But was provoked by someone other than you

That, is where everything fails

There is a place I recall
Where flowers of neon fluorescence dripped fragrances of deep passion,
The kind only received in love.
Letters were not ended with
Sincerely,
My deepest regards.
Christmas trees became disco *****,
Beckoning dances of slow satisfaction.

I seem to have lost the light.
My friends around me teeter toward it,
Yet no longer do I step forward once without two steps
Back.
So faint are the feelings of warmth.
I wish only for luminosity,
But perhaps tomorrow.

How could you love yourself that night
When garbage dumpsters lined with arsenic created fragments of lifeless skin,
As it held her in place while you shoved all your self-worth inside something so personal,
As each damaging push And release roared with a decaying boom that awakened sleepers from the metallic snare drum rolls,
As you crushed her ribs and memories that she clutched in her balled palms.
Her flower petal eyelashes wilted with tears,
Her fingers whitening from aching pain and struggles not quite powerful enough.
Her neck screaming as she bangs her head on the moldy sheet metal for distraction.
Her mouth sock-stuffed and muffled,
Saliva soaked and injected with the shrieks you refused to hear,
Because you pretend this is pleasant,
This was begged for.

When the heart strings turned to cage bars locking you deeper inside
Self achievement was smeared inside her like hot tar, tainting what forever was
Supposed to be hers.
You tossed her to malicious canines, while she folded over herself into a puddle of weak vertebrate.
So next time I see someone slouching,
I'll recognize it as your slimy mark left in a spinal cord-severing chop,
An inhuman knot tied shorter than the original nervous length,
And a marionette stance that walks in a crooked meter.
When I see a sweater, tattered and ragged with compostal decay
Lying shameful on the cold asphalt
With a print of moisture underneath
Too precisely shaped as a woman kneeling in her own agony,
I'll remember what I saw that evening and walked by
Too quickly to notice.

Next time my index finger will already be on the 9,
My thumb impatiently on the 1.

I like to drop pebbles into water,
watching them turn and swirl in the waves,
while they transform from a stagnant object
to one with a chance at life,
to cute craters in the foreign objects of rivers,
to carve an indented home into sand and clay.

I let them slip from my fingers to be pushed ashore centuries later
by some animal, in mouth or hand,
and if they hold my pebble closely
to the nape of their neck,
feeling its morse code vibration,
they will understand to let it slip through their own grasp,
sliding through the atmosphere,
kissing each fragment of pollen,
back into the pool of consciousness.