Love and desire, two different ways to ignite the fire.

I was chicken
dropped only a half tab--a quarter before midnight  
and hurried back to my apartment
before the day changed    

from a Monday
to a ruby Tuesday  
where my walls melted
and music smelled like sassafras;
the flickering flares of light from two fat candles  
tasted like toasted almonds    

every eternal hour, or minute,
or so, I would try to tiptoe down the hall  
past the sleeping neighbors who were all dreaming
of me, skulking past their locked doors

but I never made it to the street
a feat that would have demanded
I stop giggling, and my heart stop thumping
for any pig or narc could have seen
my crimson machine pumping
ready to fly from my chest    

dawn did finally come--I was
coming down, down from the floor
on which I had lain from the minute
a ferocious fly dive bombed me
somewhere around three  

I walked to the corner grocery store
where I bought pan dulce, and was glad the clerk
spoke no English, for surely she would have asked me
to tell her how I survived such an aerial assault  
in peacetime

let's put it this way;
if you give me a chocolate cake
and a bunch of last night's leftovers
I will frantically eat both
because I love you
for your better
and your worst

My fingers were trying to text you
Trying to get ahold of your voice again
Gripping, with the comfort of holding something familiar in my hands
Something my ears could float in
Cause your voice always made me feel like I was under water
But I knew if I slept there too long I would drown
My fingers were gripping the keys
Your name, a recipient
of something I knew I'd regret
But I was sure you'd be disappointed
So
I wrote a poem instead

I don't want another heartbreak
I don't want to feel that pain
I can't live with all that suffering
Another man could bring
I have opened my mind
Before we ever kissed
And suffered for myself
Transformed my being
How do I know
You won't do to me
What I can do to myself everyday
But choose the hard way
The work on myself to be patient way
The internalize situations before confronting way
The stop in my tracks to breathe way
The constant fight to be better
The vicious cycle of escaping relapse
Is that not enough
Is the pain you could inflict on me just
You tell me now you love me
You tell me now you wont leave
You seem so sincere
And I want to believe you
But sincerity is a sin

In Florida sometimes it rains so hard
that you believe that it can't possibly stop,
that it will just rain and rain forever.

Sometimes I'd wake to a storm late at night,
and I'd sit out on the porch.

You could smell the lightning, and the coolness of the storm would
make your hair stand;
I'd feel so alive.

Some nights I'd go out, and my father
would be sitting on the porch already.
Lost in the storm
or maybe
called to it.
We wouldn't talk,
but we'd be lost together
in the rain and thunder.

Sometimes I wonder what of him
is left in me.
I am not sure
if I am more afraid of there being
very little
or of there being a great deal,
but when it rains
I think about him on that porch;