I hate how it's never like it should
And I love the way you
Eat breakfast
Or say "what is it" when you get
Lost.

I've spent so much of my life crawling and crawling for that
Feeling of nothing but sticking down
Not getting anything back
And it's been beautiful but never
Correct. Like a like was always shoved off to the side

I've met beautiful people
And touched them and breathed them
But I never met people who danced as silly as you
Or talked so clearly in
Broad daylight, while I skippered
And listened (without effort)

But it's not it at all
And I know where I am and I'm up
(If you only knew the half of it)
So I know I'll end up ok

I would just think it would be cool
If I could be "ok"
With you

Not like it wasnt nothing at first
Just a heavy spin in a heavier room
Filled with people and pillows and spills

Not like it wasnt somewhat scary next
Like the sunburn and the goodbye
That was just awkward enough to be fun

Not like everything didn't blend and get
Different and slung underneath miles
And miles of bumpy stars and moon wisps, or rain and saké and leaving
Early and early

And telling your life close to my face
I know it's here you tell close
So just admit it and be close
Because I already am
And it won't make a difference to not say it anymore

If I did go wrong more or less at once, I wonder where
The chop block decisions of grade school, when you first realize you don’t care
‘I just don’t care’ in whiney and off-pitch voices and messy drawers
Was it the first time you realized you couldn’t be perfect and so just stopped
Being
Was it sneaking on to computers and secretly learning more about life in books than your
Parents wished you to (***** things)
Or was it when you learned because you shouldn’t
And didn’t learn and didn’t learn, and that persistent bubble as you grew up got bigger and bigger
Some looming threat about your future dangled over your animal head like a carrot as you trotted through worksheet a, a-2, a-3
And exercises you could finish in two minutes or two hours and get the same grade
Or copy and get the same grade
And those grades mattered more and more, and vaguer and vaguer
And they guided you less as they shoved more in front of you and grabbed your nose to say
This is important, this is you
And your friends started laughing like lunatics as well as *******
And the first kids ended up crying in stairwells
And you slept in class?
Was it all that, or was it outside. Was it your parents admitting they weren’t happy.
Was it the first time you had to recognize dishonesty or cruelty in others
(you had long since seen it in yourself)
Was it the first time you wanted to die.
Is it now?

My mother made me clean the shower
It was today and I used cold water
and rumpled curtains over one shoulder
I am telling you that the water was up to my elbows and my phone, I checked it and I swear I was alone
And it was winter so my toes on tile when wet,
were angry and bit up my legs.
My toes were somehow as thick and slimy and
inconsistently out of order as my legs
And I thought that was absurd;
That,
And how my hands were raw, cold or not.

Like transient dogs,
the kind that come and stay on a porch
and leave later: the boys shifted in and out--swept up
through one door and out.
and They were a sorry lot
They were so proficient at being sorry
( it was a wonder anyone ever
accused Them at all)

Suppose that was the point.
remorse was Their method
of shameless safety

Thirty-two. Adventure.

    Exotic was the word we felt. You rode beside me, small as we were on rickety
flippant and injured bikes, but it was so dark dark and your hair
your hair was *****, and the lights that neoned over our heads turned into lines and twists
fists of red and blue and green and the bricks were wet, like the dirt on the bottom of your shoes
shoes that we fled in, shoes that slapped water and collided with the pavement
You were just as cunning kniving knifing strafing dodging as I
and our lips cracked smiles of sharp white teeth and we ran
because we were bad, we were motors of deliberate disobedience
our eyes were glazed with dizzy daffodil poppyseed crushed ice and bottles hidden
and the room that was the city sky was spinning
weightless and confused and sure so sure, we broke window after window with rocks
and danced, out of character and space

I took you home late

I want to spread like fingers through the creases of your brain.
I want to flow like a solemn procession across your eyes, and wrap my hands,
I want to wrap them around your neck and pull your soul into mine
And squeeze the death out of you.
I want to draw your smile out like the smoke from a dead fire and
I want to crawl on my stomach towards your breath, and feel it against my skin because
I want to be the one you wake up for
So you can squeeze the life into me.