People are full of fire,
you told me.
You said that people glow red,
their eyes full of stars that are
bigger than them, chain reactions
refracting and exploding light,
because when people are infinitely
small in the universe they fight back.
They sharpen their words with their teeth,
until swords are glistening, ready
to keep out ghosts blistering
in the heat, get out stay out,
this soul will collect and over-
flow with fire, will burn
like the sun that started it all,
will fight back,
white hot, on track,
for the right to stand tall.

I lit a candle to show you
how the hottest part of flame
is actually blue, but
you blew it out and flicked your wrist
and sent it flying high as your far-flung
hopes and you sat with me through
the darkness, ghosts gone, we are
glowing red, we are fiery and content
to sit among what we can’t see.

Tell me about myself.
The way you’d explain to the moon
why bits of it sometimes go dark,
tell me what I’m waiting for when I
go still in the dog park. Tell me how
my silence sounds when everything
is muffled and magnified by air
full of snow and empty space. In a
shuddering state of icicles inquiring
ice, as the shards fall into the vacuum
below and shatter outward, as they circle
your head and orbit your mind, seeing
the whole thing from the outside,
check your privilege.
To the rest of the sky, the moon
is always whole,
so before you ask me,
you know what? You know
what? Just this once, please,
you tell me.

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 sound yet every day
you choose life,

man and wife
man and wife

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

I will love you
come hell or high water

but the first time you landed you didn’t write a thing,
you just 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 this new house’s door
it fit so perfectly that you didn’t feel at home anymore.
The *** boiled even though you watched, and you drank
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.

I remember you bringing reds and oranges
back to the leaves as if you’d painted them on
grey canvas where there’d only been negative
space before, remember watching you watch
your works of life drift to the floor.
I remember you trying to look down
when a perfect snowflake landed on your chin.
Now I sit on the ground, just waiting
to hear that your flight got in.

I remember sitting in the crowded café,
remember knowing you had entered
by the way the room got softer, the way
the colors saturated and the crowds got smaller
and the windows magnificently taller.
I remember staying away.
I remember being afraid.
The sensation was not enough to drain
the warmth or color from the room
until you left it.

Kids will be kids
and boys will be boys.
We’re not who we are
and we don’t share toys.
Most days I can think
of yet better things
to paint and to trace
than my face, but that
acrylic blue, they tell me
I’ll rue the day
I let it highlight
my fingerprints
so well.
And so by fall, I  
am scrubbing my hand
off the bedroom wall.  
There are spikes inside
my unpeeled grapes,
in my father’s wine
and mother explains
about seeds and vines
but I forget, ask,
say it again, please,
she says write it down
instead and I tried
but I can never
find a pen.

In the beginning there was light
and so much fight to be drunk into
our very bones, not an eye sunk in,
nobody drunk except on finger paint
and what the stars might taste like
when we thought stars were small,
when there wasn’t far to fall,
before the white-tiled kitchen floors
grew too far away for us to notice
the texture of the black mortar
that held them in place like Elmer’s glue.
School is a bright maze of halls
that we walk through hand in hand
and mark our heights against the wall,
unsure whether to fly or to stall and stay close.
Our eyes are level as we hopscotch
round the ankles of women and men;
I think we’re going to be friends.
They weave a Charlotte’s web of pigtails
and bright red balloons, but isn’t it just
true that we feel safe close to ground,
tempted upward by gold and warmth
but torn, for the kitchen floor is close
and nice and cool, and doesn’t burn us
to the touch.

in the silence where the storm should be,
in a room with slanted, loft-low ceilings,
you sit by the window where the cold gets in,
wrapped in a blanket you wouldn't need
if you'd unlocked the door.
the rest of the building bundles up
and walks across the grass
they shouldn't be able to see.
the storm watch buzzes
through the air where the snow should be,
and no one should bother searching empty shelves
but everyone does.
milk, and extra batteries.
all that unused energy,
crackling through the sky just like the lies
you've been told and those you've tried to hide.
I can't act, you say, I can barely tell a lie
without cracking a smile, without losing face.
in the silence where the storm should be,
you wait.
the lights go on.
in the calm after, you piece together
your shattered ruins, rebuild the floor,
unlock the door,
and carry on,
with a smile,
as before.

You sit in a large hall.
On one wall,
windows climb all the way to the ceiling.
There is too much sunlight. It is bright,
and drafty, and always crowded.
But you can glance
up from the depths of words
and notice her, notice how the room
gets even brighter, notice how it gets
quieter and cozier and louder and smaller
and magnificently taller, and
you are terrified.
You smile in terror, and laugh in terror,
and wave in terror, and in terror
you watch her sit down,
and in terror you struggle through
a proof together,
a quietly terrified give and take.
You are content to wait in this moment
for the moment when you can give in
and accept what is true.
For the moment when you can stop
proving things.
You are afraid.
The sensation is not enough
to drain the warmth or color from the room
until she leaves it.

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.

I leave my nails unpainted
and cover them with pulled-down sleeves
and put on my glasses
so I can count all the leaves

because all the nights I couldn’t sleep
your best advice
was either to count
or to pretend

the person who doesn’t have
any reason at all
is the person with the farthest
to fall

don’t patronize me,
it’s the fire station across
the street
that doesn’t have any open doors

and the pack of people
on the road
making a solid wall of liquid drinks
     (once more unto the breach)
in some big show

that I can’t pass through.
where are you

and which one of us
is here

One hand on the small of your back

to keep your mind upright 

and your eyes light

as you spill through the door

One hand, on the small of your back,

just the fingertips

propelling you forward on ice

until the blades slice through 
your cowardice.

until the speed you did not acquire

yourself makes you unsure.

Your hand

scraping the floor

I had my phase of finding things
and picking them up,
of wanting to turn them in
but not having the courage,
a little butterfly charm at the bottom
of the pool and I was always
scared to put that much pressure
on my ears but someone
was missing their wings
so I dove,
and I was missing wings too
so I came up sputtering and coughing
and afraid to talk to anyone
with the authority of Lost and Found
so I left my conscience drowned
and the wings closed in a fist.

And I found another thing, a
butterfly charm again,
mocking me,
and I stayed up and hoped
the guilt would fly away
but 'social  butterfly' is a misnomer.

I had my phase of refusing to eat
anything inside of which I couldn’t see

even grapes had to be peeled
and I would marvel at the spiky lines
tearing through each one,
angry veins
in something so soft and sweet

my raisins and my juice
my Friday-night wine substitute
seemed so childish to me
until I knew about the spikes
and watched as they grew
inside myself

I had my phase of being me,
and it is isolating and spiky
and you don't like it

the only place left to go is up
so I lick the syrup
from my fingers and drive north,
but every time I leave this place
behind it doesn’t stay;
it relays back and forth
between my head and the
thick rope that ties it to the back
of the car where it scrapes
against the road
and bounces between
the back tires and
the north star,
which you pointed out to me
once on a night
when it wasn’t the brightest
in the sky.

you stood behind me and pointed up
and I heard your hand move
and saw your voice rise
and questions knocked this place
out of my mind until
a child
tugged on my sleeve
and I came tumbling down,
pulled along
by the sheer weight
of here.

Carbon is carbon is carbon-

the skeleton key, vitally

important and wholly ununique.

And I am she is me,

diamond so tough that only it

can scar itself,

graphite that is written and 

crumbled and erased.

In the air you breathe out,

pleasant for trees but otherwise

deadly, and

trees are trees are trees,

rooted to the spot without me,

taking in the byproduct of our

existence and using it to outlive

us all, to change and fall

and grow again. 

Count to ten and then

reach for the sky to the place

where trees climb people,

and remind themselves not 
to die

while the people’s hands 
stretch and
close around carbon,

tethered by
ineraseable existence,

trying to breathe.

I can’t sleep on my side
because the moment my ear
hits the pillow, my heartbeat
hits my head
and an image hits the backs
of my eyes,
of you talking about lies
and absently stroking your thumb
across your wrist,
feeling for your pulse
like a child searches the skies
for a wish,
reminding yourself that you
are alive.

your heartbeat is the shooting star
and mine is the emptiness it left
behind.

I can’t sleep on my side
because existing gives no breaks
and my heartbeat
and your far-off hand
make me so tired that I
stay awake.

If I’d told you anything I would have told you
how I smiled through my tears
when the nurse thought it was the needle
I was afraid of,

how I took enough anesthetic to keep still
a two hundred pound man
but be still my heart, they don’t go by weight,
they feed it right through
to your heartbeat

and how much I wanted consciousness,
to lose the teeth but not the wisdom,
how much I wanted control over my person
that I don’t have over my people.

If I’d told you anything I’d have told you
how your people and mine are at war
like ginger ale and jello,
like the syringe in the drawer and
I bought you a small leather-bound
copy of our favorite play,
the skull will pass between our hands
without a sound,

how I woke up faster than they expected,
everything was worth awake,
they added motrin to my vicodin
and when I finally let myself be swallowed
it was by a too-large army t-shirt.

I’d have said,
my eyes have darkened to the defensive green
they’re wearing over there,
and Arabic is such a pretty language
but mine is bolded blocks,
a defense force defending a country
and a country’s defense of itself,
which is more than I give me.

And you’d have said, I’m sure,
what a waste it is that such a high drug tolerance
is wasted
on the cowardly

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

I ache with how much I want to do nothing.
I want to listen to someone else sing,
and live in someone else's life with my legs
crossed until they go numb, the dregs
at the bottom of my mug unnoticed and the
feeling gone, focusing on living unfocused.

I want to hear someone else speak silently, I
don't want to say a word, and when one defiantly
speaks out loud I want the sound to be blurred like
my vision because I've left my glasses on a stack
of books somewhere and I don't want to see
anything farther away than what's in front of me,
don't want to hear anything that makes noise,
nothing that destroys,
only things that build the life of another,
I want to cover my mind with yours and live under
it for a while, stumbling through my life blindly
because yours is right against my eyes, so close
I can hardly see,
and I want us to live like that, blind, tucked away,
you and me.

Where does pumpkin pie go
to die
in the spring, when everything
smells like pollen or else nothing,
air conditioning sterilizing the air
into bits while everyone sits stuck
to their chairs and
if there’s a scent in the room
someone asks what’s gone wrong
but scent is right sight is
blind he couldn’t
smell carbon monoxide

Nothing comes to life in the spring,
it springs back to life
it wasn’t dead, it’s
back, from dormancy, it wakes
up,
and everyone knows the dream
is better than the reality

But in the season of warm pies
when air smells of cold,
I can taste the snow and I can
taste the sky,
and everything is bright
and snow appears to swirl not down
but up all around and your eyes are
just the shade of brown
that can
probably smell cardamom, or
cinnamon spiraling in chai and
he smelled warm fire and cool
sky and it kept him alive
and olfaction, olfaction
the only sense we can’t remember
technically
with neurons but we hold it anyway
because sight is blind
and come May—

I can't keep the colour of the sky.
I can't keep wanting to try
but this camera won't focus on things
that are too close up so if I'm not going to lie
I have to say
I'm a little glad you're so far away.
I wrote it down for you, the colour,
and you can read it to another
or copy it in your handwriting
so the words pale away from my slanted ink
to the link
in the stratosphere and are now reigniting
on paper you've touched that I've never
known as such.
I hope you use it to start a fire so I can
see your smoke clear
and I hope it doesn't change the colour
of the sky that I hear.

The no-two-snowflakes
phenomenon set my brain
off into a million different
fragments of star, each
looking down on the world
from afar.

You were already up
there, just waiting
to tear
it apart, or maybe not.
You didn’t need sweet
tea so you swirled in
apathy where I took
honey, and you turned
to the screen while
I watched the sheen
of gold
protecting little pockets
of air like they were
all that mattered.
If I protected you that way
you’d say you weren’t
worth my time.
No time is worth
anything, when you’re
going to run out.

Run out to where?

We took still lives in
photography but I couldn’t
bring in honey or pockets
of air or the raindrop
that froze on the airplane
window with ice shattering
and spiraling up around
it, but with the intent to
put the stardust in everything
I touched I arranged
the things for us
since you had something
kind of maybe more important
to do.
You like orange, right?
Yours still looked better
than mine.

Your mind is still in flight.
I wonder if you see the
fragments of ice
on the window of the
emergency exit row.

So snowflakes are no different
than fingerprints,
and neither is made
of stardust bright enough
to make sense
to you.
We’ll all be up there
soon enough, you say.
Whether stardust
or dust.
You love Mersault,
in an indifferent sort
of way.

But I zoom in on these
oranges and the ridges don’t
match, the RGB codes of
every combination of
orange shadow are off
by a letter
and no two oranges are
the same, I take two
photos without moving the camera
and yet something’s
changed.

It takes conscious effort
for me to be the type
of person I’d be friends with
but you do it so easily.
And if you recognize
that as unusual, it’s
one of a kind
just like everything else.

No two anything.
No matter what I look
at, it’s
still life
and I’m still living it.

It’s a hard choice.
You made the same one.
But it was different.

Look up.

Little gold arms and legs
dance below a little
fake diamond head.
Little gold chain around
my neck that had been
around yours instead.
Little gold ribbon around
the box,
long thin gray box
with the little gold person
inside.

I don't know what
you are trying to tell
me but I know what
I'm hearing.

You wanted a man
for me but you gave
it to me in a coffin,
thin and gray like
my soul,
but your ribbon outside
was alive and gold.

The ruby heart-red body
was fake.
So I can't accept
your dead concept
of man,
but the least I can do
is move the little gold
arms and legs
and thank you.

After every word I say
I think about how I'll cringe
as I walk away
from you,
just from thinking.

I can't deal with this sunshine,
this vastness of sky
like this whole **** planet
is a collective spy
on the universe,
and some of us are afraid
and some of us are too brave.
Some of us choose science
as a faith
and are let down when we
can't get far, bound to
be lost within this vast collection
of stars that no longer
exist.

Some can't resist
the pull of gravity and so remain
here, a pin on a pin cushion
in suspended animation; the
pins come and go but the
cushion's still got the holes.
And some can't resist the
pull of nothingness,
to drop out of gravity,
from a needle in a haystack
to a needle in the sea
to a needle in infinity,
that is to say, basically,
D.N.E.

I am unbearably light,
with no one knows how far
to fall.

When the clouds cover
everything a lid hovers
over the glass jar of the universe,
and a needle could break through
but at least there is some
resistance, at least there is
some effort put into keeping us
within this section of
stratosphere.
Maybe we belong here.

It takes effort to fall off the
planet, but none at all
to fall
down.

I am drawing lines
in the sky.
A carefully engineered
map of whys,
of stars connected
by thin pencil lines

stars are exploding light
but you are graphite,
(the pencil lead but
insight)
conducting the chaos,
in your element.
Stability that can hold
the heat,
and diamonds are tough
but they are just carbon
and you are so
much more.

i.
as we get bigger
our handwriting gets
smaller

ii.
stars are bigger than
the sky itself
but their light forces
the past into the present
and forces our wishes
into the past

iii.
there are so many
women out there with
my name but
this increases the likelihood
that you've said it
out loud
and identified me
with sound as i have
you
sound travels slower
than light but we are never
alone

iv.
she showed me your
picture with some words
square tight around it
and two dates in the caption
and said
nothing is ever worth this
until i wanted to reach
into the earth just to
cover your ears

v.
the dementors couldn't
distinguish between crouch
and his mother because
this illness doesn't discriminate
so i don't know why
people do

vi.
you and even
i
are lowercase letters
today
with no punctuation

There is a fine line
between wanting to
be healthy & happy
and wanting to take
up less space.
Wanting to be less.
Matter is neither
created nor destroyed
in the universe—
wanting to take
as little as possible
from the world,
wanting not to leave
a mark.

A fine line between the
BMI of activity & health
and being told that the
gaps in me are the
best parts.
The spaces I don’t fill.
The matter I don’t use.

I draw this line in the
sand, thin—with just the
very tip of a nail—
but the world screams
in protest at me until
my head aches, and it is
more relaxing just to
let the sea
reclaim the small
mark and wash it
back into
the universe.

So as a reminder to
myself I keep
drawing fine lines
on my mind and
on my skin, where
the world and time
can wash away
at it but I’ll still
have the mark
all to myself.

Maybe not the
world, but this
being is mine
and I am
welcome
in it.

Books recommend people to me.
I scan spines of every person and
every book I see,
just waiting to find you.

As an exercise in moving-on
I am looking for you in new
places because the old one
is hidden in a sea of faces
with smiles like they can see
I've made a wrong move and
are about to point out the error
to me to spare me the shame
even if it means they will lose
the game.

I can bear that look in any
face but yours.
So for you I tore
a length of orange ribbon
and tied it around the lid
of a jar and littered the bottom
with scraps of paper,
small scraps for small things,
pieces of poetry you didn’t
think I had that I was scared
was just the you in me, so I’m
sealing them in a jar to be
distorted by the glass
until 2015.

You are a story in thriving rising action.
This year is my character development.
Next year I will open the jar
and let the poem scraps spill
like ink into the sky,
like snowflakes flying light
and weighing down the wings
of birds in flight
and I will see if I can shake
off the snow and let the ink
flow into cohesive phrases.

The goal here is to be worthy
of you
but not for you.
While you rise I’ll rise behind you
and I’ll just follow
where you lead
until I swerve.
I cut the hair you once
ran your fingers through
today.
It looks the same.

So as an exercise in moving-on
I am looking for you in new places
because you are gone.

I need you to be
quiet so you don't
have to think
over the sound
of your voice.

I need you to come
in here, in this room.
It's my mind. I need
you to see what it
looks like when you're
alone with yourself
in it.

I'll wait out here.
You just pay close
attention to this room
and how you'll get in

Did you miss it?
Oh.

There are mirrors
on every wall

Each mirror reflects
into another, and all
reflect these reflections,
and small things
get big and big things
get bigger

Things that aren't even
really there
appear

Sight is just the way
light reflects off things
but suddenly you're seeing
things that aren't anything
at all except
reflections
of
themselves

You are the only
one in the room
and everything is
reflecting different
than it is

You see the things
getting smaller and farther
within each reflection
within every mirror,
but you're just one.

You peer to the side,
trying to see around yourself

but your reflection is
in the way every time
until maybe you aren't even
there, then
or you're just there to
take up the space of
the matter of your atoms
or you're the only
thing that's real
and
nothing
else

Someone calls you
from outside, someone
shouts at you to get
out, we have to go
somewhere or do
something or see
someplace

And you look around at
all the reflections and there
are no doors or windows
and you shout that at the
other side of the mirrored walls
but Someone can't hear
and Someone keeps shouting
to get the hell out
we're going to be late
just go
like Someone doesn't even
see the walls
but you can't see Someone
on the other side of them
so they must be there

If there were a fire right
now, what would you do?
If the fire reflected again
and again, if the heat
bounced back on you from
all sides and the smoke swirled
farther and farther into forever?

It's not up to code, is it. Building
Services would never allow it.
But you're in it.

There is a physical barrier you can't see
between me and what you need me to be.

You didn't design this mind.
You didn't even put yourself in it.
But Someone's **** frustrated with
you anyway.

And you begin to think that maybe
there are doors and windows
that you just can't see
because of all the reflections

but either way, they're no
use to you.

That which we call a rose
by any other name
and so on
and so on

I don't know my name
What I know is what people
call me sometimes
A discord, the wrong
chords,
the blaring lights of a
fire alarm if the fire were
me pulling on a long-sleeved
sweater and putting
up my hair and
molding myself into
their day

What I knew was the euphony
when you said a particular
order of sounds,
vowels and notes
that you picked out special
like the warmest combination
of colors
all threaded into yarn
all woven into patches
all sewn into a quilt
that you draped over our heads
Your eyes glinting in the dim
glow of soft sound

That which we call a rose
in any other way
is something else,
but that which you say
with the same cadence
over and over again
and so on
is what will stay

Absentminded speech.
You had taken the scissors from the basket
in the darkroom, they were just
still in your hands, the ones
not covered in rust.

It was absentminded, that part
is important. Just absentminded,
like the way you'd play
with her hair or pretend not
to care,
like the way you'd talk with
your hands even when the
darkness spoke louder. The way
you'd nudge me, a "don't move"
elbow, to let me know you'd
dropped your film and I shouldn't
step for fear of stepping on it
like the shadows did.

I absentmindedly twirled a pen,
and you absentmindedly looked
down again and again,
scissors open, scissors closed,
running your fingers over
the little ***** between the blades
as I ran my fingers
over a little ink drawing I'd made.

You absentmindedly followed
my eyes with your own, and then
threw absentminded to the smoke,
up and out the window and gone,
and the smooth blade up and down
your arm.
It wasn't sharp. It couldn't even
cut the film. That's how you'd
dropped it in the first place.

Still watching my eyes, my dawning worry.
Oh, you. Ignorance reduced me
to child and pity before your
knowing eyes, but what do.
You know me, I know you.

A deliberate story now (absentminded
can't be filtered out of the smoke anymore),
of a girl you used to know.
Something to do with little screws
in every pocket of every
long-sleeved shirt she owned.
They had to be from something cheaper,
you mused. Mindedly.
Scissors don't come in bulk.
Little screws. Not razors, not knives.
Little screws.
You thought out loud, but it wasn't
thought. It was speech. It was
words you already knew.
Where'd they all come from?
You asked questions to give me
the answers.

I reached out for those ****
bright green plastic scissors
that wouldn't cut a piece
of film in a darkroom, because
fear gives light great powers.
You smiled at the anxiety in my
eyes. You chose then to stumble
upon the answer. (It wasn't scissors.)
To relieve me, you meant.You
meant to share without telling,
to lighten my head and dissipate
the ignorance like your
absentminded smoke.
You knew a girl...

But when you put knowledge
in this mind it gets picked up
and circled around and around,
centripetal acceleration, exponentially
flying, so fast, so high, what do I
do with it there. I build it up.
It tears me down.

I scanned your wrists for months.
I watched you pull your wallet out
of your pocket, checking the floor for
little screws.

You knew, ******. You knew
your wrists would stay smooth
as a scissor blade, smooth as
darkness. You gave me the story
deliberately, but you gave me the
answer absentmindedly.

You didn't mean to.
You gave me the worry,
you gave me the thought.

You didn't tell me where to find
a ******* screwdriver.

my hands are still
soft from rolling dough
in sugar,
still smell faintly
of cinnamon and nutmeg

cardamom and clove
spiral upward in
the smoke from black
tea, a warmth
inside to mingle
with the smoke of
fire

I have nutmeg hands
and chai-campfire lungs

I am warm-scented
steam in an empty
orange sweater

I am the poem

acquaintances pass
and eyes meet
instinct happens
       (heartbeat)
because maybe all
they need is a
smile
you didn't know
you remembered
how to do that

When I was seventeen
I'd come home from school every day
and hope the house would be empty
so I'd have somewhere to pour into.
To pour all the things people
inadvertently filled me with

And all day long I defied the laws
of surface tension at the rim of my cup.
With nothing to hold them in, things
somehow just kept piling up.

I drove to school and when the faint
smell of gasoline met my eyes I
opened the windows until all the lies
were sliced away by the cold air.
What terrified me was that as it's coming
you can't see gasoline.

I breathed the freezing air in
and the gasoline out through the open window
and the passing cars said I dare
you to survive being this scared of
what you can't see.
Because people fill you up
past your brim without seeing
the way that your limbs are holding
things in place light years above that
little lip of water that can sit above the rim.

The headlights of the cars join in now
and they say you are not a cup.
How do I know if they're lying?
Headlights only show you what's right
before your eyes, and they expect you
to make the whole trip that way, farsightedly blind.
They say, you have so much tension that
you don't know what's yours and
what you pulled away from others
so you hold on to all of it and it
ever extends that little lip of water
that can sit above the rim.

And now the colored traffic lights chime in.
They say the irony of surfaces is that you
can't see what's inside because of them,
so if everyone is drowning beneath her own
surface tension you'll never know.
People are too hard to read.

I dare you to survive being this afraid
of what you can't see.

I wrote about her
in an essay
and never once
used her name
and she was she
and I was me
and no one knew
including us two

And then I asked
the world to
read it and the
page came back to me
sanitary
full of cross-outs
well-read and heavy
and looking tired.

And not a
single person
asked who
she was

no one in the water yet.
the smell of chlorine cuts
the noise, which is so loud
you can hardly remember why
everyone is here.
shadows step on you,
the pressure growing as
the sun sinks. you want
to sink with it.
instead, you outrun the noise
and you dive.

You slice the water, slash it, push it
behind you, but it never fights back.
You slide through the water and it
caresses you softly, as though
it has been clinging to the sunlight
all day, just for you.
You cup your little fingers, hands
slapping the surface. The sounds
of the people and their shadows
alternate with the fast-moving silence

of underwater.
At the deep end of each lap the ground
falls away, but you feel safe.
Air would have let you fall.
With each breath you are more eager
to plunge back into the warm
support of water. Breathing
is a hassle.
When your limbs ache with a pleasant
soreness you cannot ignore, you drag

yourself out of the water.
Gently, it tries to pull you back.
The rippling splashes fade into
Where they come from. Whatever
you throw at it, water can heal
its own scars.
His scars would not
heal. Water is the universal solvent,
and he needed to dissolve.
You don’t know him.

You know only the cold hand that
reached into your heart
and twisted it,
painfully, on its axis as you watched
Grandmother’s eyes when she
mentioned him, in passing,
by accident.

But the noise,
then the silence—
you can understand
why he wanted this.

It was the faint smell of chlorine
on your skin; that’s
what reminded her.
Not five minutes after your
wet hair had begun to dry,
her tears spilled over and
ran down her cheek.

(Fight or flight,
air or water.)

You told her
they were there
to stroke her face.

So I tied the string
you gave me
around my ankle, and
I left it there
forever

which was foolish of me
because nothing is forever.

I hope the pieces did
not end up in the shower
drain. I hope they're still
in Town Square being
blown in the wind
and driven over and
kicked by shoes.

I hope a bird picks
up the tattered remains
and adds them to his nest
so that they give the
faded familiarity you gave me
to another life form.

That would be nice.

Now there is only
the sensation of nothing
where there was, for so long,
something

and when I wake up the next
morning the sensation
is gone and bare ankles
are the norm again.

Relief I did not notice
from pain I did not feel
and now the pain is gone

it's not pain if you don't feel it.

Rain magnified the words
on the page and then drifted
away, taking bits of them
with it; ink swirled and
dissolved in the drops
that soaked into the earth.

There are worse ways to
have your copy grow faded,
crumpled pages;

like a child in the meadow
of a fairytale I dance in
circles as the rain comes down,
because water is constantly
cycling.

There is, within the confines
of this planet, literally no
limit to where this rain could
be from.

I could be dancing
in a shower
of words

water is the kindest, quietest
friend. it clings to the sunlight
that is might caresses you
softly and you slice through it,
cup your fingers and scoop
it out of the way, kick it out
behind you and chopping it
up with your hands. and its
only response is always to
hold you smoothly first,
and to heal itself after. bubbles
rising to the surface, rippling
splashes fading into where
they came from, waves of its
hydrophilic self washing
over it. it can always
heal itself.

it is not worried about scars.

water is the universal solvent
when you need to dissolve

Your soft sniffle
echoes from somewhere
behind you.

You turn around
and look into your eyes.
They aren't hollow yet,
still bright with
childish curiosity.

Naiveté is a beacon in the fog
that your small hands reach for
but instead of light they find
your thin, long, pale fingers.

You hold her hand.

Starlight has weight like water.

With frightened, eager eyes
you look at what you've become.
With hollow eyes you see what
you were.
She wants to grow
up but you want to grow
down, away from the
starry eyes watching you
from the sky.

Don't ******* up there.

The stars don't know a thing about you.
They watch, cold light.
Perhaps light is not the answer.
She flinches, almost to pull away,
but you are not light. Relax.

She is, but you squeeze her hand anyway.
The strange sensation of comforting
yourself,
of really being comforted at all.
She looks at you, questioning.
You tug her hand, pull her close,
your chin on her head.

Hug her, become her,
get her back. Protect her
from herself, protect you
from yourself.

For her sake, your own sake,
you don't want to
scold the sky again.

I'd drive down that road
still laughing at a joke,
with the ghost of a smile on
my face from seeing a friend's
smile,
grumpily silent after failing
a test,
grudgingly alright after a
stressful lab.
always on the road, headed home.
I can complain about the heat
and the south and the suffocation
and the big, impersonal town
till I'm blue in the face
but it's where my house is, even
if it's not home, and it's beautiful
sometimes.

I cross the intersection just as the light
flashes yellow
and in the rearview cars spill out
where I've been not a second before.
the action gets smaller as I get
farther away.
I am leaving, and everything is covering
the ground where I've passed
like nothing is different
because nothing is different.
we pass through intersections
every day.
we have to get where we're going.
we leave things behind.
sometimes we don't come back.
intersecting lines that never
cross again.
parallells would be different;
to not know what you're missing.

members are stronger
in tension than in compression.
once in tension, always in tension.
pulling separate ways
destined to long
from afar.

we pass through.
we cross over.

sometimes we don't come back.

I can't stand that.