My brother brushes past me in the kitchen.
I find myself offended, not for his rudeness nor the brash way he attempts to apologize.
But because on my own flesh and blood I smell him.
It has been years but the odor of his cologne still sends me spiraling.

Memory is a haunting thing.

How am I supposed to move on when every wide eyed, bro-tank wearing beef cake smells like my worst nightmare,
It feels like I am just trying to escape,
but was forced into Stockholm's syndrome via perfumed air and this sense of helplessness that I cannot bear.

This is what it feels like to drown all over again,
but this time I am perpetually a scared 14 year old girl, and it is arms surrounding me not lake water.
I could find irony in using that brand of cologne to light myself on fire,
or to inhale the aerosol into my already full lungs for a short high
Either way it would be the same as killing myself all over again.

Half of me is still on that mattress somewhere,
I don't know how to get her back, or why I want her so bad.
But, how can I make this little girl inside stop crying if I'm not there to comfort her?
How could I ever be there to comfort her?

I am so broken and bruised,
I still flinch when hit in spaces once blackened by hands I thought I knew.

He sat in dewy grass
Writing a pastoral dialog.
“And death is also here,” mused he.
“All art depends on gravity.”
He neatly ordered his pages.

She wove lilacs in her hair,
Standing on moss in the damp morning air.

He considered that God might be in all things.
Was he blaspheming by crushing the grass?
But of course Bentham’s calculus obviates sin.
He thoughtfully scratched his chin.

She approached him from behind,
Dismayed by the clutch of wildflowers
Someone had wrenched out by the roots and thrown away,
Yet suffused in the absolute peace of that day.

She touched his arm—a summons.
What was that sensation?
He was left without rational explanation.

Arrogant in faith and blind in sin,
Virtue without and hatred within,
Flavourless in taste and foulness in rhyming.
Crude in diction and metre-less in timing.
Headless in form and weightless in meaning.
They never sleep, they stay awake ( half heartedly dreaming).
Where have the poets gone?

your touch

        your touch

sends sparks through my

being.

starting slow, little bolts

crackling through my nerves,

    boiling my blood

          and

surging my veins.

your touch

    my heart,

beyond control I

g a s p

keep me from falling,

flesh, bone

       melting into yours,

we are one.

gold

that beneath from
sturdily shouts a girl
in milk as body white

easily

that snipped of barely
perhaps flits enormously
which face is hers

curiously

curling upon
most girlish smile
of most maybe lips

gone

behind quick glass
–and rain started
to fall

They said I had my grandmother's eyes
Cynical and bright, never watery
Like theirs

I saw her once, baking bread,
Kneading dough with floury knuckles
Into the shapes of her children

Did I come from that batch?

Could I trace the crumbs back five generations
And see a man in Victorian dress treat a lady
The way she deserved to be treated

Is this who I am when I'm begging?

Bleeding on a bathroom floor, in the moments
When I swear I could reach out and touch God

Is this void theirs?

Chewing my fingernails, playing with the flesh
Between my teeth, tasting myself

Or when I haven't washed my hair in weeks
And my skin shakes against my bones
Like loose leaves clatter in the gutter

I have my grandmother's eyes