It is too early, or too late, and
you are scrubbing your underwear
in the bathroom sink.
The light is white, and cold, and
the water is pink, and cold, and
your fingers are stiff, and cold.
Ice water and hand soap,
the tried and true recipe
for unset bloodstains.
It’s unsettling something else, too;
something coming undone in your chest
and pushing your lungs into
your throat. A Gordian knot
that loosens and loops
until you are so tangled
you lay down and hold still,
the better to swallow your frustration
my dear. It is shame, perhaps,
or shame by another name.
There is this thought
that turning your hands
into blunt instruments
by freezing the blood in your veins
will keep it from seeping
hot and sticky and clotting
like your frustration
in your hair and your throat,
and you just want
to be clean. By morning
your fingers will bend again,
but there will always be
a faint stain, a pink ghost
that you cannot scrub out.
A tiny haunting,
a sigh on laundry days.
But there’s no use crying
over spilled milk, or blood,
as the case may be.
Only more threads to pick at,
more low and high pressure
fronts moving through you;
lightning in the roots
of your teeth, acid rain
being used as bleach.

In summer, there was a bloom of tadpoles
in the bathtub against the pasture fence,
the sludge at the bottom of the cracked trough
seething with bodies the size of my nails.
I hauled out the old fish tank, dumping net
after net full into the dark water,
until I had dredged up every last one.
I watched them teeming against the glass while
the cicadas’ keening ratcheted up,
then poured them all back. But it was too late;
not a single one lived, smothered beneath
the press. In love with the glisten, they pour
until they trip over their vestigial tail,
enthusiasm trumping better sense.

Do you think that you’ll remember
washing your least crusty mug
in the cracked bathroom sink at four am,
blinking afterimages of Wiki articles
and Midwestern poetry out of your eyes?
(Always the Midwestern aesthetic–
what is it about starkness that drives people?)

You’ve spent too many mornings
watching dawn from the wrong side, pacing
up and down beneath the streetlights
as they go out one by one.
The earth keeps turning but
your thoughts scattered last night
and they never came home.

The percussion is
(you heart is)
pounding,
crash ratatatat thump,
ratatatat crash, time
slipping between your fingers
in fits and starts to the beat
fluttering in your chest;
no repeats or hesitations.
The topic is–
Magpie, bird brain,
you line your nest with tinfoil
to keep the world at bay.
You’d say “I want to believe”,
but instead you just play the song again,
hoping that maybe this time—

Did it take this long to realize
you’ve answered your own question?
You have to run
when there’s nowhere to stay.
Maybe you should take a vacation
to the desert yourself,
get some dust under your nails
so you’ll stop chewing them off.
Quit glancing at the clock, sweetheart;
you’re on a timer here.

There are countless other waiting to take your place.
You tried to follow the highway out, but
the headlights blinded off your necklace spelling
noli me tangere, and now the only part of you
going sixty out of this two-horse town
is the fur that caught in the grille that hit you.
You never had a big enough spread
to be a proper Goliath, anyway, and besides,
nobody believes in white harts these days.

By day five
your mind has reverted
to a test channel out of signal–
there should have at least been some colors
but instead you’re left with static,
the visual sensation of a limb gone to sleep.
There is a slow haze
shuddering down the length of you,
and you have written masterpieces
you cannot recall the names of
while you shake your vision
back into your skull
from where it wandered off
with the cursor again.
Your knees buckle as you try
to stumble back to the living,
but it’s too late,
you’re out of minutes–

Outside my window, there is a bird
melting,
dripping from the sill
onto the cat waiting below,
feathers congealing in a tattoo of wings
across its shoulders
while the little claws tangle in its twitching tail
like burrs,
or perhaps just a reminder
of where you draw your strength from,
trailing behind you like empty cans
tied to a wedding carriage,
and tipping red and bitter down your throat
from your wine glass
as her father twirls the bride across the dance floor
and you wonder
what good the memory of wings does.

There comes a point as you sit there
trying to untangle your fingernails from between your teeth
as your leg bounces at a million miles a minute,
and you think Jesus Christ how’d I get here?
Shadows on the screen and a pinch with spreading cold
as you nearly shake yourself off the table,
you clutch at the cage on your head
and breathe deep.

it’s Passover and my boyfriend sneaks wine
from a Gatorade bottle in a neighbor’s dorm,
gets a pack of vanilla scented candles on loan
and a Bic lighter from a friend who uses it
to smoke their **** behind campus on weekends,
and we light a pair on a rain soaked bench where
the wind keeps blowing them out and the lighter
burns my fingers as I cup them around the flame.
it’s Passover and I sit in the campus café, listening
to two girls on guitars crooning into the mikes
“If you’ll stay with me, then I’ll make it worth
your time,” while my iced coffee melts and
the spotlights turn their hair red and blue.
outside the April rain drizzles down and I
wonder how old I was the last time I went to
Confession as I smell the wine on my boyfriend’s
breath while tasting the coffee souring on mine,
and I think- are these are the best days of our lives,
then, Passover on a rainy Monday night while
guitars hum and our reflections in the windows
flicker and warp, faint like candle light.

Dry white pills rattle
in their dark green chamber.
Large and hard and pure,
they leave soft dust
where they clack together.

The cap spins free easy
when I fumble the bottle
and they trip eagerly
into my hand, so that
I must select my savior.

It takes hold of my muscles
and releases their grip on me,
fills my hanging head with its
whiteness rather than my red,
and gives my grinding teeth peace.

It ushers in sleep,
who has circled at the door,
smooths the sharp edges
of my breath in the
darkness, and tucks me in.

I consider words,
dwelling
on how they move
your tongue
and shape
your mouth.
How the word
“snarl”
pulls your lips back
to bare your teeth
and leaves your jaws
agape
just so;
how the word
“whisper”
starts off soft and blunt
and hisses on the ‘s’,
pouring out of your
mouth like smoke.
I think of the word
“love”
and how it drops
smooth and round
from the tip of your
tongue,
like a stone falling into
a pond,
disappearing at once
and leaving ripples
in its wake.
I think of the word
“hate”
and how it makes you
square your jaw
and wrinkle your nose,
and leaves your tongue
pressed flat
to the roof of
your mouth,
like a viper
rearing
to strike.

I spent my fifth grade year in school in my fourth new district
writing timed multiplication tests while blood fell from my nose
in hot fat drops splattering my papers,
a rusty brown organic counterpoint
to the red ink of my teacher’s note
“Emily- see me after class”
and my stomach dropped faster than the blood
or the bobble-headed Care Bear that my Social Studies teacher
threw out the window during class
because she once mentioned that she hated Care Bears
and so we covered her room with them.
I spent my fifth grade year at home in my parent’s bed
with blankets tacked over the windows and towels stuffed
into the cracks under the doors
while my parents tiptoed through the kitchen
and I dug my chewed off nails into my scalp trying
to claw the rot and smoldering ash out of my head
and flinched at every creaking floor board.
It was an old house.
The mourning doves called sycophantic dirges every dawn
(and noon, and dusk),
and I grinned when the dog chased them off to hide
with the one-eyed tom in the barn.
I tell you these things not to make you feel sorry for me,
but because I am confused how I can feel sorry for me
and yet miss that time so much.
In the end, I am left only with the firm conviction
that timed tests are every child’s bane,
and mourning doves are just country pigeons.

Stumble on the ragged bones and fur of a deer above the spring,
choke on fear and grab your dog, drag him (and you) away.
Three years later, come upon the picked over corpse of a button buck in the upper field,
notice that there’s only half of it, back away and shudder.
Older now, pass half a dozen bloated carcasses along back country roads,
sigh, swerve to avoid the bloodstains on the pavement.
Meanwhile, your father’s got a doe in the bed of the truck strapped down still warm,
step back to keep the ****** snow off your boots, smile.
There is blood dripping from your nose and your brain feels like it’s rotting,
a blight of molding fur in a fallow field; picture fire, not bones.
Before, herds crept from the tree line at dusk while you sat around the flames,
grazing the lower field until they bolted at the howl of coyotes.
There is a bottle of pills and a carved antler whistle on your dresser;
one could save you, one might **** you. You know which is which.
Stagger through the woods with blurring eyes and a hanging head,
trip on a mouse-chewed antler and pick it up, smile, list right.
There is a white fawn standing plain in the bottom field that will disappear come winter.
Pull the arrows from your eyes; you can feel them, you know they’re there.
When the pain leaves you will run, fleet as deer, and outstrip the exhaustion that
howls at your heels. You will be alive again, and stop rotting.
Meanwhile, try not to trip on your bones, body trying to drop as though from a headshot.
Don’t lie down yet- the blood will scrub clean eventually.