Let the molecules charge and crack
and rip the world right open
around me.

Let the closet under the stairs
smoke and fry and cook,
let the tangled wires melt
into each other like they'll
never let go,
their flashing shadows
welded arm in arm like a
Pompeii puppet show.

Let the air's discontent
rumble softly and
let the rattling house rock me to
sleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream—

i.
unable to see over the big box of memories in your arms,
you walk down the stairs into the dark slowly,
waiting until you feel your toes curl around the edge
of a step before moving the rest of your foot.

ii.
you hold the book carefully,
propped open against the carton of milk on the table,
trying to balance the pages in each hand
so that the two sides of the book match up
where the binding is split.
it’s been read many times.

iii.
you hold up a little doll with brown pigtails,
look under
 the yarn-knit dress

for the little felt red heart on the left of her chest,

stuck there with glue,

messy but impossible now

to remove.
its eyes are black and incidentally,
her eyes were the color that forms the
backdrop of your dreams.

iv.
when the box collects dust
and the binding breaks clean in half like earth’s crust
and your mind quakes and a wave
of new comes washing over,
your dreams will be set in the eyes
of a different ‘her,’ one who’s still kicking,
with quiet hands that know the spot on your wrist
where your pulse is its strongest,
so I hope you've been writing all this down.

The first time you flew
you told the birds how unfair
it is that the air is so much
thinner up here,
that below they have to breathe
the crushing weight of the
stratosphere
just because they’re accustomed
to it, and your gasping
for breath doesn’t make
any noise yet
every day you choose life,

man and wife
man and wife

placed in a gunfight with a pocket knife
and a guidebook of expectation.
You don’t remember filling out an
application for this life, for
now-flightless wings and for being
their daughter,

I will love you
come hell or high water

and the first time you flew
you heard birds laugh at you
and the air was so thin
you fell right through,
and the silence so thick
you landed hard,
lungs aching,
but you were never afraid of the dark,

in the high water
watch out for sharks

because you aren’t one for stark
contrasts and it’s nice to feel
like nothing at all,
keep falling.

The first time you didn’t
write a poem you drank tea
out of a paper cup, no mug
in the sink, no need for anyone
to look up when she came home.
The first time you used the key
in your new house’s door
it fit so perfectly that you didn’t feel
at home anymore,
and the first time you were afraid of the dark
you weren’t,
because it can’t get you
if it can’t see you’ve left any mark.

The first time you didn’t
write a poem the *** boiled
even though you watched,
and you drank tea out of a paper cup
and no one looked up, it was
biodegradable and then it was
gone.

The first time you flew.
The first time you really saw you.
The first time you heard that
song called poison oak,
the first time you said what you
meant to say,
the last time you spoke.

If showers are man-made rain, then
you are a man-made hurricane,
obliterating everything in its path
while people take photographs
and storm-chasing is a sport
that people will die for
and storms are named after people.

I am erased words,
it’s not fair that birds
can fly when I don't feel worth
walking on the ground,
when I’m a fish out of water because
just for breathing air, I'm drowned.
It’s not fair that the air
is thinner up there,
that death takes years and years
and then disappears,
that we have to walk upright
and breathe the crushing weight
of the stratosphere,
and none of us are volunteers
yet somehow everyday we choose life,

man and wife
man and wife

placed in a gunfight with a pocket knife
and a guide to your expectation.
I don't remember filling out an application
to be your daughter,

I will love you
come hell or high water

but maybe if I had and you'd known
what you signed up for it wouldn’t hurt
that you can learn to hate me right
down to my wrist bones
and leave me alone in this fight.

Erased words,
with only the indentations on the paper left.
Placed on this planet to live to death.

you held me through every phase
of favorite
with one hand on my stomach
like you were teaching your
child how to swim
through pools of myself that I
hadn't learned

purple first, I casually declared,
and you nodded and smiled, baby's
first favorite,
and when I screamed and cried that
we had to move houses you
made sure the next one
had purple walls and frilly purple
curtains to hide away the other
options and keep me floating
above regret

then green, you didn't know where
I'd picked that one up
but you'd raised me with one supportive
hand underneath and the other
holding back my wrist so I
wouldn't write words in green ink
on the walls
so I sank down a level closer
to whatever you were holding me
from but it didn't matter
because you'd lift me through it,
because the blinds behind the
curtains were green, more
and more layers between
me and other things,
and a green blanket for the bed
so I could hide in an island of
me surrounded by the raging
sea
of some girl I used to be

then yellow, orange. you nodded
and smiled,
any color was fine, you
held me right through them all,
we were so far from that first house
with the white walls
where I hadn't any favorites
but now I fall, and you'd held me and
hid me through so much
and you can practically touch
the colors in the air
when you walk into this room
now,
I wish I knew how
you managed to hold me through
all that change when I can
barely keep myself in the lane
of existence,

I'm swimming on my own now.

I don't know when you let go,
but one day I became me
with all my past phases in tow
and no matter what I picked you
treated it like something legitimate
and I took it for granted,
enchanted by colors but now
I've landed,
and the layers you built were between
me and myself
and you hid me well.
I'm sorry that existence is a phase,
sorry mine is too heavy
for you after all those temporary
colors you held me through.
how many favorites you held me
hold up but I guess I never liked
my in-between colored eyes enough
so you didn't support me through
me and it's my fault,
give me all the weight back and
I'll try to show you the difference
between a phase that ends with unwritten
words on a wall and a phase that is
an existence
so you don't have to be burdened by
me while I learn to swim with myself

this town was bare when I left it
and green when I got back
but green isn't my favorite color
anymore

i.
it takes the end of a death
(because death is where things start)
to realize how important it is
to lie down with heads close
and look at you falling asleep
across the way
with the same combination of
reds and greens
on your shelf as on mine
across the way

ii.
i don’t know you

iii.
i miss you

iv.
how do you measure a year
or the two years you steered
through the halls like you
knew them
or the two years i didn’t know
them but steered through anyway
and why am i still here

v.
there is punctuation now,
pauses and stops,
organization and fear