I remember my primary school
which was all large hallways and shiny shoes

library
which was all popsicle stick projects
and a round reading room

after hours and finding a book about art.

I showed it to Mrs Romano
who was fat in a pleasant way and wore round glasses

and she said “Picasso?”
and
i said
"yes."

you kissed me in the street

before putting on your helmet

earlier you told me that you see too many things to laugh at

and i thought maybe your long legs under the table weren’t such a bad thing

lightning bugs always know where to find me.

I mean this literally. I mean they consistently land on my fingertips when I’m gesturing, I mean, they rest on my shoulders when I’m dancing, I mean they find my knees when I’m wandering.


I’m perpetual motion.

They flit onto my skirt from my parents field in the forest, dozens of ecstatic chromatic insects, missing my tonsils this time and tickling the back of my neck.

And I’m clothed in phosphorescent resplendent incandescent light.

Letting go of a round shouldered man who wanted to change my signature means touching the slimy parts of my bloodstream ink jar heart.

It means peeling back the window shade to smash the glass pane eyeteeth of my youth.

And remembering the key to unhinge my jaw tension voice sans stones and lacking sweetness.

It means saying goodbye today and releasing my ribcage parakeet hands to catch my own thoughts.

I am through with placeholding promises and biting through backwoods in order to forget the pieces of strength that I love so much.

The museum feels like heaven, feels like I could walk into the corner Pollack and the indiscriminate Monet, but there’s the characterization of Thomas Kane and you hate Mondays security guard.

The man with a beard followed me all the way from the Impressionist room to the modern films and when he finally made me lift my eyes from the canvas, his were turquoise and shook me awake.

I kept running up the stairs because I finally found out where they keep the hidden garden with the spiraled copper fountain and I laughed when I found my reflection in the Italian enamel.

You fell asleep with your head on my knees.
The weight of your skull was alarmingly heavy, so I played with your hair until you woke up. The moment of recognition on your face was so human I wanted to cry.

You scrunch up your eyebrows and touch your glasses trying to remember and a tiny echo of a perfect smile plays on your lips. You kiss me exactly and hum along.

You carried a contraband white umbrella into the gallery so we hid it under a desk. Your helmet was still blank so I gave you some concept art. Your languid loss of service as a multitude of goodbyes allow me to kiss your forehead right as your thoughts hit the pillow.


So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I understand why you tuck me into a warmer blanket before you leave for work in the morning with your heavy boots and your thermos and let me sleep while you shower and kiss me awake for breakfast with a cup of coffee in hand.

I miss taking the train in the mornings and the subways in the evenings when I spent last summer  in Philadelphia more than I miss you.

I’m more confused in a way that forgives myself and I’m more creative in the work that i do. I’m more honest in all aspects and more understanding in my suspects.

You ran the maze past sanity and doubt
as if
your skies with the stone rock

could speak past a whisper.

I hid in perfume bottles notes to my old self
and I buried the harbinger dolls.

White tea hotter than the radiator humming
Smile sweeter than the sugar that you lump in
Your hands on my hip while the water heats up
Kind enough to hand me my favorite cup

Even if the smile is painted on
Even if the handle is chipped
Even if you send me away in the morning
Nothing better than the very first sip

Black tea cooling while we find all the clues
The failure of motion allows for a different view
The artist’s intentions were somewhat disturbing
The way that you kiss me just short of unnerving


Even if your hands shake
Even when I hold you tight
Even if you fall asleep before dinner
Pass me the honey, honey, and pass me a light

Green tea spilled while we steep our own Monday
Afternoon rain is your favorite kind of mundane
I let you spoon sugar even though I like it bitter
One taste of the brew and my heart is all a-twitter

"6 years old, brunette hair, pink dress."
"I’m with the grandmother."
"Last seen?"

Later they found her by the moon star wall.
It sang her arrival to hold a stranger’s hand and, grinning, she skipped to her grandmother’s arms.

he says don’t get too comfortable
i say it is not in my nature to do so

this is a man who stood on the edge of the mountain to make me laugh
and moved across the country three weeks later

he invited me in to see his stained glass window
but i had work in the morning and anyway his hands felt like

the roots that grow out of potatoes that you leave too long in the cabinet
knobby and altogether alien, uncomfortable and unyielding.

he plays with light and i have nothing to do with it
no emotion compared to Popsicle Boy or to the ever-logical Elbows.
(i thought i should bring him up because i love him)
but he let go on the day that I was concerned with the pottery wheel
and it was graceful and unimportant at the time

now its all a wash
and i miss the clay hidden behind my knees on the days we’d climb up to mountain for ice cream and giggling.

As you reach a mountain’s peak, your weight slightly decreases as you get further and further away from the Earth’s core and gravity loosens its hold ever so slightly. If you have ever felt this tiny change in more than a physical sense, then this is for you.

This is for train tracks and box cars, this is for every road we planned to trip but never departed, this is for the difference between August and October and the first snowflake on my sister’s freckles a whole week before Halloween.

Because nothing is as sturdy as uncertainty. Nothing is more constant than the ever changing blues right before dusk in the summertime, where the deepest blue is just over your head. It’s the untruth of the moving target and the integrity of the unlocked window and driving through mountains during a snowstorm on Christmas morning to be home in time for my brother’s favorite joke, but I take the turn too quickly and spin my mother’s car into the woods.

Because I can only trust something viscous and permeable, and there’s this moment when you first see someone push their hair out of their eyes, or take off their glasses that is so identifiably human that I can’t get it out of my head.

The arrangement of my mother’s garden isn’t one I remember because I want to. I remember it because it held her hands when I couldn’t and the hockey game on the car radio wasn’t important because my father said it was a playoff game, but because it was a place we could exchange our thin ice for someone else’s.

This paralysis of analysis lives in the heart of transitional phrases.

"i'm sorry that i sort of fell apart after you left."

i tell him that it's okay, that we all have bad days, and that the delivery can be made tomorrow. i thought i'd made it clear hundreds of times that i am usually the one to fall apart, to scream in the woods, and to sit blankly on the bus until i am home.

I smell like the zucchini bread that I spent all afternoon baking.
You smell like pine wood and soap.
She smells like lavender and lipstick,
He smells like rosemary and hope.

We all bike down the valley to get to the spring,
helmets on, eyes to the horizon,
the skyline, I swear, rose to meet us that day.

You and I get there first, we lay in the sun
by the river, dancing on the stones,
jumping off ledges in boots
til the wind chills our bones.

We warm up with blankets,
unpack our baskets
and settle in for the sunset over the river.

Illuminate the bridges,
halflight the buildings,
shine on the rivers,
the light stopped lilting.

Brilliant colors, then none at all.
It grew darker again and we said goodnight.
"Do you mind if we don’t go straight home?"

Not at all, not at all, not at all.

He asks me to choke him about fifteen times a day. Fourteen times, I do, but the fifteenth, I take his throat in my hands and I kiss him everywhere he used to hurt. Somewhere along the way I lost track of what it meant to hurt. I tip toe tightrope walk across the tiniest line between good pain and bad pain and I am wearing the daintiest dress you’ve ever seen.

I wonder if a younger version of myself, even a year younger, could look me in the eyes and tell me what they thought they were doing this whole time. I wonder if I could hand that version of myself a sliver of a clock, a grain of sand from an hourglass, a tick of a kitchen timer so that she could have something to stand on, from a step stool perspective of what this year would bring.

When he grabs my wrist and pins me to the sheets like a butterfly, he uses his eyelashes to tickle my cheeks.

When he looks at me and my stomach drops, I tell him he’s handsome and he tells me he needs a haircut.

The smidge smudge of pastel over my left eyebrow matches the wildflower I picked down by the river which matches the stray spray paint stain on my right shoe and I’m not one for symmetry, so it suits me just fine. Today is for letting go and for mailing things left behind. Today is for coffee and for Peter Pan Wendy Tiger Lily dances. Today is a blueberry day.

I couldn’t stop crying when you played guitar on your birthday on my parents porch because it was time you chose to spend with me out of anyone in the entire world and it’s so rare that anyone ever gets to be exactly where they want to be.

what if i can’t stop thinking about that day

when you took me to the feminist modern art exhibit at your favorite museum across town

holy ****

and kissed me in the starlight room

and i thought, ******* you are good.

i consume black coffee by the steaming mouthful
so i can stay awake long enough to do something useful
i am playing a waiting game with my feelings
but i have never been acquainted with patience
the way i admire so much in the humans who love me best

maybe all we all require is the opposite of what we are
to fill in the space between your fingers
is exactly what you can’t hold onto.

anyway i miss your mouth.

framed in red light as we move towards the corner it grows larger while you grow smaller and i hope i can remember the image of you smiling while the projection reflected off your glasses with your hair too long in the back and your jeans always several sizes too big and your black t shirt. your underwear was my favorite color that day.

I don’t know how love works.

But I know I left you on a Sunday after spending six months trying to shove the words that escaped me into the dozens of envelopes that you had sent over the last six years.

I don’t know how loves works but I know that Christmas Eve, when you held me and I cried, it was because I was already losing track of your world map hands as you navigated the clams in the soup your brother made.

I don’t know how love works, but I know that over spring break, i bought flowers i knew you wouldn’t even like to say I’m sorry, even though I knew I was just trying to make things better temporarily until I got the courage to say goodbye.

I don’t know how love works, but I know that when you force feed yourself a certain amount of affection, your body starts to reject it. You can only fill up so much artificial substitute for love, like cotton candy filling up my head and grape flavoring spilling out of my mouth all over your bedsheets like the time i was drunk and spilled hot chocolate with marshmallows and you yelled at me like they would never be clean again.

I can’t love a terrarium. I get too frustrated with things I can’t touch. I can’t fill up any more phone calls with rainstorms and giving up.

You are the moon in my sky

And the only hand to hold mine

You turn my long braids into time lines

past the world and before we both were here

past everyone and everything near

back before the sun could shine

back before you were mine

From London

From Home

From Places Unknown

Sometimes I’d just like to get out of my head and get out of my ribbon ribcage and my roadmap wrists.

And I’d like to break the glass of your eyes into the thousand and six pieces of that pickle jar I broke last week in the middle of the street. Your voice sounds the way an old book feels when I first pick it up out of the cardboard box while the sidewalk scolds me for thinking too much. I bet you taste like New Years.

All my favorite people have too much to hold onto.

red canvas sneakers
crush a bug on the playground
right where the crayon grass meets the chalk pavement
her feet are
tiny
but the bug is even more insignificant
so it’s all relative, i guess.

so many shades of home
exist simultaneously in this city

and i feel so lucky to call this corner mine for now.

i'm sure someday i'll be hidden away in the mountains again
or surrounded by thousands of trees so much taller than i

but for now the lights on train are exciting enough.

**** the way you say nonsense syllables because it makes me weak in the knees.
Your verbalization of a non-vernacular, space-filling, time-stealing thought
makes me melt like Popsicle Boy’s spine when he realized he couldn’t chase the lightning bug anymore.
You’re just two steps shy of blind in more ways than one, and your ribcage is such a terrible pillow.

Um.

quiet boy stepped into my looking glass and handed me his helmet
years past until i noticed his long graceful hands in my hair
and i turned to see where he had come from

it was just past nine when i took the zucchini out of the oven and waited
it was half past ten by the time he rang the bell
and i sat nervous and shallow

he gets lost in his own world and finds his hands in mine
we stepped back from our maps and abandoned our ships
i sank in with the anchors

it was just last night when i realized i could love you
it was three junes since i first wanted to
i kissed you in the nighttime.

I’m glad you wear a helmet when you ride your motorcycle because your brain is far too pretty to be splattered on wet pavement

I’m glad you take care of the humans in your life because your son is a genius trapped behind his own shaky hands

I’m glad you’re honest with yourself because your teeth hold so much truth that your tongue still astounds me

I’m glad you always ask how I’m doing because it helps me to remember to ask myself.

Strangers are nice to me because I’m pretty, but I wouldn’t be much without the rest of you.

Your voice is like flowers
Your voice is like Thursdays
Your voice is all the best kinds of ice cream
Oh please stay

Tell me more about that story
Tell me more about that day
Tell me how you thought you’d run
And how you ever convinced yourself to stay

You make my heart flip flop
when you open the door
when it’s cold and I’m waiting
outside on your porch
and you say always “hey”

When you first thought
that this might hurt
you went indoors
washed your hands of the dirt
just like we planned

Because I have fallen in love with men like shadows, I have learned what it means to hold onto my light.

You do not have to remember the day you recognized your own autonomy on the same day you continue to define your freedom.

Take it easy.

is there a word for the way it feels to cry in front of the Water Lilies in the museum?

is there a word for when your teeth taste like blood from getting punched in the heart?

is there a word for the moment when you say the last words you ever wanted to say to the boy?

there should be.

maybe then I could understand what it takes to tell someone that you hope they wake up feeling alone.

Who I’ve become is someone I respect.

I put dates on my wanting to remember my tactile experience at the expense of my memory

"that’s very meta, isn’t it?"

alternation

sublimation

consecration

They have spent their hours wanting for a moment

and They have spent their moments wanting for the hours

Getting lost in a city that wears me too well

A man yells and a well-dressed older woman smokes a cigarette

and I turn left on fifth.

If you took a picture of this city,

an instant of stillness

no one would be able to tell if it was falling apart or coming together.

Hard Drawn
I found a hole in your ribcage

just above the hard piece of who you were

lodged in my throat

insects on my tonsils

and I found an eyelash on your cheek

just below the wire frames

beneath your perspective

I find myself in between the butterfly shoulder blades of your swan spine.

I think I might stay a while.

The snow falls around me

in the peacock window light

the trees wave hello to me

while I find a candle to fight

Just let me catch my breath

we spend time wandering through the towns that our father chose

and we spend days looking for the perfect garden rose

because i’ve seen men who stand behind their father’s grave while they hand a gun to the hand they shake and they wait and they wait and they wait

a woman walks into the street with a gun and a boy walks to school wishing he had one

and we hate and we hate and we hate

I’ve stood at the wall and I chased down the hall your sister ran towards the light

we danced in the morning while my brother was snoring and we held each other tight

I’m weeding through my bedside manner

because I thought the dull thudding of bass line wasn’t just my heart anymore

I met a boy who could see his heart through his chest

and and and

the women on the bench moved anyway

they asked what i was drawing

and the woman’s tattoo looked like adventure

but her face looked like she had spent too much time waiting

and and and

my feet don’t touch the ground

but my soul does.

crooked teeth houses push
"i love yous" to the front porch of my mouth
in an earnest attempt to
set the sun down to a slower tempo
hoping if i can hold onto this city
on the day we almost crashed
then i maybe i’ll be able to hold onto him

i can’t kick the words past my lips so i
try to keep holding his hand
even though he needs to shift gears

he tells me that he likes it when i kiss him on the mouth
i like it when he’s cursing under his breath because things are so beautiful
i want to see him naked every single day

he told me when he shaved his face
and even though i already knew about it
when i saw it in person i squealed
and i couldn’t stop kissing his jawline
even though we were in public
and even though i’m pretty sure i tasted like macaroni

because everyone who knows me past my second middle name would tell you that i crash hard and i don’t wear a helmet

it wasn’t so much that you caught me

it was more like i was running sprinting hurdling

and i crashed into you like the world’s lankiest brick wall

but you’re picking up the pieces

i know this is might not be a good thing, but hey, at least you wear a helmet.

mornings ****. mornings are the worst thing in the entire world. i wake up every day far too aware of your absence in my bed, on the window side. You’d face the wall and let me cuddle up and touch your hair until you fell asleep, snoring. I ******* loved your snoring, and I don’t really understand why. You’d lie down for just a few moments, and then fall asleep mid-sentence, parts of you still awake. You could be snoring and still braiding my hair, or kissing my hands. Sometimes you’d fall asleep on an angle and your breathing would scare me so I’d wake you up just for a second to try and get you to face the right way, but you never remembered in the morning, so I figured you weren't too bothered. when i told you, you said that you wished i were as nice to you when you're awake as i am when you’re asleep.  I wake up wanting to hold you and want to call you and say “love, i’m so so so so so sorry. forget it, let’s try again. one more time,” but you always said I was awful at apologies. i probably am. i don’t know, i haven’t apologized to anyone in a while.

continuity

expression

there are others just like you on the

merry, go, round,

stop

motorcyclemotorcyclemotorcycle

whack

Sometimes the days feel like a train

and I’m running and running

and the wheels turn louder and louder

with those weird bar things that fascinate me

steel on steel on steel

And it’s too loud, I’m going too fast,

and just when I think I’ll be thrown under,

I remember that I was just riding my bike anyway.

the side effects of a well-travelled companion
the complications of the ticket in my hand
the warning signs of my transfer station
i am crying in the back seat of your car
**** it
i am through with this medicated contemplated existence
i am coming through the other side
because i decided it is time to stop being sad

I lost my heart when I moved to the city

and I lost my Sunday blues

I found myself a new kind of family

and I found my way back to you

It was a long long road past the bones of the lonely

where my wandering soul met yours

there was a garden filled with the promises of Sarah

the day that we walked blind

to the ghost of the moon and the men that we left

but I found my way back

i always liked the chipped bowl best.

i always liked

your crooked teeth

your frayed jeans

your broken boots

and i liked the scarf i made

with the holes

and the strings

and i like when my hair is a mess

and i like when my tights show skin

and i liked your ****** up parts.

Some days I feel like I’ve spent a quarter of my life waiting for the wrong train.

But I don’t mind the time in between

sometimes i mistake my shadow for my light

but i don’t mind the grey spots in between

i fell asleep where you slept

and dreamt that i fell asleep under the ocean

i knew i’d drown if i didn’t wake up

but i kept telling myself, just a little longer

i wondered if my sister was laughing above the surface

we were at the pool and i dove under

and there were bubbles everywhere

and i realized i couldn’t find my way up

so it turned into the ocean

and i fell asleep

and it reminded me of that time when i was ten and i jumped into the river

and i didn’t think id ever find my way out again