my aunt never read the last chapter of the return of the king
just so, my tongue and lips are heavy with all the 'g's 'o's and 'b's
of all the goodbyes i never asked them to shape

goodbye sounds like a bathtub
a place where you sit and you soak and bubbles float
and you think a but
and you sift through the dirt that rests on your skin
and try to ignore the dirt that lives in your skull
and rests in the crevices of memory fences
where the paint has worn away,
leaving a map of paint chips scattered on the ground
to lead you to where your sea meets your sky,
that cognitive horizon, clouded by brainfog,
its map fallen from fence posts stripped from trees where lilacs used to grow
and now line your thoughts like the cellophane
that lined the caramels that came out of piñatas at your old birthday parties

i think about that sometimes
how the return of the king must have been so important to my aunt
that she went and stripped posts from her own lilac tree
or maybe it was an apple blossom (my aunt is from connecticut)
but whatever it was, she built that memory fence
she waited to say goodbye and then she never did
and i'm sure she sits in bathtubs sometimes and looks at the soap
and wonders if it would be easier to wash her face
if she knew what it would look like afterwards

were were all of us in love with the dark and closet doors
drawn to the feeling of close, of cold against warm
of drawn in, of quiet, of knees pulled up to chins
the world was too bright, too harsh for our eyes
and they never did find sunglasses to fit in the light
so we simply went out and bought our own
and wore them in the dark

and we go to parties every night
parties where silence is the music that plays
over out collective heartbeat drum set as it picks up pace
in empty rooms that carry sound
like a cast carries a broken arm–
gently, painfully, purposefully.
we go to parties where we sit
with our cheap sunglasses to protect our eyes
using darkness to shield us from darkness, and ties
that we know will have to be broken
so we just sit in the silence and listen

our bodies are canvases
for a thousand watercolor words left unsaid,
our knuckles are painted white and red,
our parties are places where the things in our heads
are proven to be real.
we are all of us in love with the dark and closet doors.

this journal met me when i hurt.
i took it out of my bag with shaky hands
breathed ice on each page
and wrote each word
detached
separate
(and tired,
*******
i was so tired).

this journal felt
my 3am bloodstains
in every pen stroke.
it watched me close my eyes
and furrow my brow
and saw just exactly how
lost I was
in the fog
(much too lost for poetry logs
and remembering historic dates).

and you can be sure
that every pencil tip that broke
against this journal’s lined sheets
shook
like some sort of sign shooting
from my heart, an electric line routing
through my fingertips
and into the graphite,
allowing me to hear the soft
crack
of the lead
and recognize
somewhere in my foggy head
that we were the same,
me and Number 2.
apply enough pressure?
we both snap in two.

there's something about the movies that screams intimacy to me
i don't mean rented flicks on a tv screen
i mean popcorn and soda straws
hands sticky from sweets
gum stuck lazily on soft red folding seats
and a fabric wall that looks like a tablecloth

come and see a movie with me
the dark is a safe place to touch my hand
and when the characters on screen step outside
and our faces are painted in colored light
you'll remember that you did
and then you'll smile
and i'll know

it's safe to cry in theaters, isn't it?
safe yes, because the reality on screen
is not reality itself
people cry all the time at things of fiction and fancy–
it's the real things that scare them past the point
of letting emotion spill

sit with me at a movie
watch with me a reflection of the world we live in
or don't live in
whichever the case may be
i want to get lost in a story together
one that both does and doesn't belong to us
but that we're allowed to explore regardless

and anyway
i know the dark is the safest place
the safest place to touch your hand

you make me wonder about you
you do
you make me wonder about you
and about how new
your shirt is and where those scuffed shoes
have been, how your knee got black and blue
(and whether your heart is those colors too)
whether or not you keep up on the news
how long you've done that thing that you do
with your tongue when you're laughing, and who
it was you first kissed until your lips turned blue
and whether or not you have any clue
how every word from your mouth is thoughtful and true
or how adorable it is every time that you
get excited by star wars
or ninja masks

you don't know me
did you used to?
oh
oh my god why aren't i sure?
i'm not sure i'm not i'm not i'm
not oh god oh god
who are you?

stick with me here i'm just
i'm trying to remember the talks we had in my driveway
the texts you sent me from airports that made my heart glow
should i list these things to help myself?
your eyes, my hair
funny looks when you'd stare
at me after saying something dumb
before we started laughing
and i thought how good we were together
i thought how good we were like that
i'm trying i am i am
but loneliness has skimmed the dreaminess from the top of my head
and left me instead
with a vision so broad i can't find the tunnel to you
and now my hands won't stop shaking
and my breath feels all floaty
as if even as i breathe slowly
nothing's happening at all
i don't remember who you are

i miss you but i don't
i miss who you were
and i know about change and time and hearts
i know that sometimes people grow apart
i'm not a child
but i was
such a short time ago
and so were you
so where's the damage at?

i'm scared, love
did i know you then?
do you know me now?
and was the person i am now
hidden inside the child i was?
and if so, did you only know the mask i wore
or did i let you see my face?
please help, i guess i didn't realize
how terribly alone we really are

my mind is cluttered in the way
my room was cluttered at home
in the upstairs drafty guest room
of my family's house,
small and bright in morning and memory
big and dark in night and dreamings;
***** laundry that once lay strewn
over futon and desk
(or flowed over from rifled-through drawers
or across the floor, banished there in a fit of frustration
when looking for some lost found thing)
now lies over sticky dark brain parts
covering, protecting, cluttering;
the moldy cups of tea that once lined windowsill and dresser top
now lounge sideways, tipped and wet
spilling remnants of calm that have since grown sour
across a cognitive carpet that soaks them up, thirsty;
pens and paper, pastels and watercolor,
charcoal and graphite and brushes and shavings
sketchbooks and journals with pages ripped out
crumpled and thrown towards the trash can in the corner
(whose rim has long been set ajar
by tissues and bandaids and cellar tape)
all these things now wait in new corners
(different corners
mind corners)
and scatter every drawer of thought,
a familiar symbol of disorganized beauty,
of the genius that whispered secretless secrets into gifted hope chests,
of the artist whose tears breathed rainbow ribbons
down innocent cheeks
in the dark.
my mind is cluttered
and it is full
of the same things that have always lived there
even though
i now live elsewhere
and have since learned to tie my shoes
without much thought.

it’s funny
because i learned to love you, but
i never learned to love or hate the dark
and i don’t understand why
because you are so much alike

there’s no start
no middle,
no ending
to you
and therefore no mending
for me
in my head
because i keep trying to hold you
to get a grasp on something
to make it
make sense
to try to feel even the slightest bit less
dispensable
but you just keep going and going and going
and going and going
and going
and i always fall short
no matter what i do
there’s just no holding on to you

i don’t know how to proceed
i don’t know what the darkness needs
from me
or what i need from it
or how to fall asleep
without the upstairs bathroom light lit

it fills in all the holes, I guess
that’s something.
all the rips and tears
(and other types of tears)
and the peeling paint chips
and broken pencils
and crumpled diary entries
and breaths full of anything but oxygen
and phone calls that ring and ring and ring and ring and ring
and ring and ring
and ring

it’s ink (the dark)
it’s thick
hard to move in
and the stains don’t come out
of my clothes and skin,
its blotchy evidence
forever dinned
into me,
into who i am
but I’m not exactly in the interest
of giving a **** just now
because it fills the desperation,
doesn’t it?
all the stupid aches and
intrusive emptiness
that have been shredding through
this tired little room
at least three thousand
nine hundred
and seventy two times a day every day
since you left
(what with all the tiny gaps and chinks
and leaks and cracks, despised
because they could have otherwise
been occupied
by you.)

it’s ink
it comes and it goes
and when i wake everyone knows
because it’s caked on my eyes.
everyone sees the stains.
they might not notice, but all the pain
they see in me is reflected
in their eyes
when they greet me
and i just want
the dark to come back
so i can at the very least
be surrounded
by something that knows me.

i wish you were here
you know i do,

but you’re not.

so i guess the dark will have to do.

thank god for tea
thank god for whistles and steam and milk and honey and mugs
thank god for teabags
and warmth and sweet and bitter and soft and sleep and mornings
thank god for kettles
and quiet and windows and pillows and jars and an absence of tears
thank god for tea
because i get cold
and my hands shake without something to hold
and my brain quakes when it isn't told something
anything to do
outside of itself so
thank god for tea
and grandmas and books and kittens and libraries
thank god for teapots
and sunsets and toothpaste and thermoses and treetops
thank god for soft chairs to sit in and sip
crisscross applesauce with a mug at your lips
because i get frightened
and i get cold
and if the only thing that's bold
in this house is this strong cup of tea
and not me
i'll take what i can get