I can see the clenched fist just waiting to spring free
in the tightness of your jaw. This anger of yours,
so tangible in the air, has always scared me.
     Did you know?
I would rather suffer nothing by walking away
that deal with all of this. All of you.
I would feel safer doing that.
     But did you know?
I would rather suffer a blow than let you
walk away with the fist hiding in the curve of your mouth,
with the barely held back fury pouring out of your eyes.

If I do nothing, it solves nothing.
That’s why I risk it all and stand still before you.

In May, the black bird on the beach mocks me
with the death that sits heavy on its bones.
Its beak is open, filled to the brim with the sea,
and I cannot meet its eye with its shining tones.
Now, if I filled myself with the sea it would spit
me out, disgusted that I would try death there,
when dust is meant to return to the land that it
came from. I just wanted to float a little, like air,
which lifted the black bird once, and so brought
it down when it couldn't support a deadweight.
Death knew it was time for me to go, I thought,
until I saw the black bird which death couldn't wait
upon. So even now as Death calls out for me, shaking
with desire, I know the waters are still unwelcoming.

When we move from Texas to New York,
my mother’s smile slowly wilts. But she’s
smart and plucks it from her face before
my father can see.   
    
Do you know why I agreed to uproot myself?
My mother promised me a garden of my own.
My father allowed me one windowsill ***.

Now, I tear my hair out when I’m all alone.
Maybe if I plant it, a better me will spring up
like Venus from the water. For, as I am now,
I am no goddess.

My mother doesn’t stop me, only takes me
by the hand to walk through the city. Her face
is mottled purple and blue in the bright lights.

Plants can’t cry, you know. But they can bruise.
My mother watches videos of her and my father
when they were young. She asks: “Do you love me?"
and he laughs.

I can still remember my lover's name
because it sits on my tongue impatiently;
my heart shouts for joy, too happy to be tame.

The world moves together, all the same,
until my reality shifts, and takes me.
I seem to remember my lover's name.

Now I sit with a body gone lame.
And the rain outside is all I can see;
my heart whispers, too defiant to be tame.

Days bleed into each other - who's to blame?
I recall dry corn husks, and feel just as empty;
I try to remember my lover's name.

"Friends" come to visit, calling me by name,
but I lie and say they're slowing recovery.
My heart hides, too uncertain to be tame.

I know it's a Monday when I can reclaim
my place in the world, but unfortunately,
I cannot remember my lover's name
and my heart cries out, too sad to be tame.

Tonight, Depression is sitting in my nose.
She likes to tickle the inside and whisper
things like, “Don’t you see that your friends
don’t love you? You care too much about
yourself. What have you done this year
To make it worthwhile? You just stay in bed.”

I remember that the last time I made my bed
I sat on top and cried because no one knows
That I have tried dying three times this year
by disappearing into the wall. Always, whispers
follow me: “My daughter and I, we had a bout,
something about leaving with her friends

for good. I told her, ‘I don’t like your friends’
and she looked at me, then went to bed.
I don’t understand what she goes on about
when she complains about her nose;
she says that sadness comes and whispers
from there, and sometimes it leaves by ear.

I told her not to get that piercing last year.
You know, I hate how she listens to her friends
instead of me.” These little barbed whispers
fly swift from her mouth  and put me abed,
unable to face the world that just knows
that my heart is bleeding from a little “bout.”

But then, I wonder, what is all this about?
I sit in the bathtub and get water in my ears
when I meant for it to end up in my nose.
I decide to go under for good when my friends
call me and share their plans from some hotel bed;
they tell me they know how to help in a whisper.

That’s the night I leave, my feet mere whispers
on the carpet. I take everything I care about,
regretting only the fact that I can’t take my bed
with me; if you’ve ever spent an entire year
alone in one place, you know why. My friends
assure me leaving my mother is easy, but who knows?

I watch her sleep and breathe through her nose one last time, and I hear Depression whisper.
She speaks in my mother’s voice, condemning my friends and demanding to know what I’m about
to do. I smile because I know that surviving will be hard this year, but this time I won’t stay in bed.

I breathe in words
like water
and forget -
I am a fish
pulled out of water,
and now I am drowning.

Your liquid mercury eyes,
drawn to the sight of a hiccuping heart
half-exposed through a ragged chest,
brought me close and held me there.

Despite that proximity,
in the end not even my own heart
was cold enough to solidify those
mercurial eyes of yours,

and you slid right between my fingers
forever, leaving only a diseased heart

and renewed dispassion.

Definition # 1: Being wanted, but not necessarily needed.
I was born on the coldest day of '93,
three months too early
and
three pounds too small.

That sounds like a death sentence,
but it's not – it was more of a:
“Here's what life is like,
now earn the right to live it.”

And I passed the test.
Oh, I passed with flying colors
and surprised everyone,
especially my parents.

They didn't allow themselves
to be too optimistic, see;
If they were pessimistic and wrong,
it was a pleasant surprise in the end.

Being pessimistic and right
always felt like a well earned stroke
to their over-inflated egos,
and they liked that more.

Still, they brought me home
and welcomed me – I was the first,
the only, the most important;
I was the VIP in the household.

My grandmother, a staunch Catholic,
came to see me, her first grandson,
and kissed me soundly on the forehead.
She proclaimed a prayer over me, then:

“Ah! Our Father who art in Heaven,
This baby is truly a blessing from You,
and may You bless him evermore!
Amen!”

Grandmother, my only words to you now
are these:
I wish you had prayed more fervently for me,
and stuck that blessing on me more firmly.

Definition # 2: Crippling kindness through actions.
Her name was Katy.
She was eighteen when I was six,
and she crossed the gap between us
as easily as Jesus passed over the waters.

She claimed she was my babysitter -
3 to 9 PM, Mondays through Fridays -
for three incredibly long years,
but don't they take *care of the kids they watch?

It's almost shocking to think of how
she peeled me apart back then
with fingers pale as my face
and a smile sweet as a tangerine.

(I thought it was love. I was wrong.)

I was misguided by her gentleness,
the way she held me in her arms
and gave me baths when I had played outside.
My mother never did that, after all.

But her fingers strayed too far
and she snatched something from me
that I have never recovered,
and now never will.

I would say it was my innocence,
but that's not true.
That went to rot long ago,
and I do not miss it.

No, it felt more tangible than that,
a feeling I had, one of trust,
one that only disappeared
after I realized what had happened.

Now I am left to side-eye people
and wonder about their true intentions;
all because someone named Katy
kissed me on the cheek, then went a little farther.

Definition # 3: Absolutely nothing at all.
It's amazing how one experience
affects the rest of your life,
but it does. Irrevocably,
each happening is a dropped pebble in water.

I wish it wasn't that way,
because there are things I want to erase
in order to move forward,
things that require moving backwards first.

That's never easy, going back to the things
that are in the past for a reason,
when facing them is a task you're not sure
you're really up to.

I know how that is,
how the moving forward feels like stumbling,
like stepping blindly in the darkness
and missing a step.

You fumble for something to hold onto,
and your heart panics,
gasping desperately while you flail;
I know. I know.

That's how I ended up kissing little Ann
in fourth grade – Katy was gone from my life by then
and I thought this other girl could give me back
that vital something I was lacking.

She gave it her all, truly, with that plucky mouth of hers;
from the warm depths of her trembling heart came a kiss,
but I defied the laws of physics then which state that heat
is energy transferred from one interacting object to another –

I felt nothing.

Definition # 4: Keeping painfully close.
Therapy should have been the option
when I told my parents that ‘Katy’ and ‘molester’
were the same thing, after I looked it up.
But it wasn’t.

My parents opted for isolation and
careful watching; if they could keep
an eye on me at all times,
they could keep me safe.

This was their pessimism talking,
leading them to think that a therapist would
**** them dry of their money and do absolutely
nothing.

Maybe they were scared of something else, too -
of molesters and rapists sitting outside,
just waiting to get their grubby hands on me
and take me away, to a place they couldn't follow.

Either way, their decision wasn't a cure,
it didn't help. Home-schooled at eleven, I lost sight
of how the world moved around me,
and all I knew was the inside of my house.

What kept me grounded were the little things:
snow days, which spoke of beauty and temporary freedom,
books, which promised a world away from the one I knew,
and the goodnight kisses from my parents.

Definition # 5: The right to take what you want.
I escaped homeschooling
when I entered ninth grade,
and the freedom I found there
was intoxicating. Addicting, even.

I’d been so out of touch with the world
that I decided the whole world
was now my friend – I fell in love
with everyone I met, at least once.

Opening myself up was surprisingly easy;
then again the only things I really opened
were my pants zipper and the pubescent hearts
of girls, always readily available.

There was the first girl, Caroline –
she kissed me everywhere, and all I did
was take everything in return – and then
there were a hundred others like her.

I knew Amys and Rachels and Sarahs,
but I never knew another Katy.
There was only one of those in my mind,
and she pushed all the others away in the end.

By eleventh grade I was in pieces,
dragging myself through each day
for no reason other than
to find another girl to claim as mine.

Definition # 6: Wrong, wrong, all wrong.
In the end,
I had it coming –
and though I don’t remember it all,
I remember enough –
rough beard pulled across skin
in a horrible mockery of kisses;
all the messy memories of Katy torn out,
like tangles pulled out with a boar hair’s brush;
the sound of something breaking,
though that might have just been me;
a ragged whisper of “Your uncle loves you, you
know that, right? This is me showing you how much.”
and finally, a piece of me I never
offered, flung far, far
                         a
                      w
                  a
                     y.
That’s all I remember,
and that’s more than I ever want to remember.

Definition # 7: Saving grace kisses.
Silence became my hiding place
in the year that followed,
along with a deep darkness
that I drowned in every night.

Where I was once confident
and a “ladies man,”
I was no longer; some experiences
ruin all the ones following.

This is how I suffered –
quietly, painstakingly, always.
I let no one in and no one out,
not even myself.

That is, until I was found out.
He was the same age as me,
but it felt like he was years
ahead of me, experience-wise.

That's how he knew -
from one sufferer to another,
we found something in common -
and that's how I redefined love, one last time.

It took three years of high school for me to step up
to the podium, clear my throat, shuffle some papers,
and mutter into the microphone, barely above a whisper:
“You know, maybe I was wrong about love.”

And maybe God did show up in the end,
in between his eyelashes and the gap in his teeth,
there to be the saving grace for a poor sinner
like me, who messed up love for far too long.

Definition # 8: Absolutely everything at once.
Recovery is a long, winding road,
one that I wanted to leave a long time ago –
if you must know, I’m still on it, though
I almost succeeded in leaving it once.

But there are almost always people
who will make you reconsider,
and decide that maybe jumping off the roof
is an act for another day, a better day.

And there are people who know how important
listening is, and that’s all they do: just listen.
I underestimated how powerful it is,
knowing someone cares enough to do that.

And there are other people who know where
a kiss goes, and where a hand should be placed,
and how to make the kiss a band-aid,
and the hand a life saver thrown out in churning waters.

There are others still that know what to say,
even when you don't. The words come easy,
and they reassure, they heal, they put you back together -
maybe not in the same way, but it's still good.

I know there will be scars, and there will be reminders
that all is not right in the world, of course,
but if you find a person who can listen,
or who can save lives with their mouth,
or who can find the right words,
you’ll probably do just fine in the end.

After all,
love is not just an action – it’s an experience.

step one:
do not grow cold because
a loved one is now gone.
it does you no good, and in the end,
only bitter thoughts will grow
in a body that once loved.

step two:
get yourself outside
on the bad days, when the world
is drained of its lambent glow,
and scream until your toes hurt
and you know what being human is again.

step three:
eventually, holding on will be harder
than letting go - when it no longer
hurts to visit those old haunts,
but the memories are getting slippier,
it is time. You are ready.

step four:*
do not be afraid of this moment -
you still love them, you just have to do this.
Breathe. Relinquish your grip on them,
finger by finger. You will fall. And you will land;
your heart will flutter, and you will be free.

The rains always arrive without a great announcement,
but their coming means a change anyway;
the land is slicked back by the torrent
that does not pause for a single day.

A storm can make itself known so carefully and quietly,
and yet leave its mark, visible from afar;
let me do that with you in the night, softly,
between the sheets, by the light of your cigar.

My mother told me
that God is everywhere:
in the music that she dances to
in the actions of others
in the words that I write, even.
He is the inspiration;
I am simply the means by which
He does His work.
But I don’t want it to be that way -
I want these words to be my own,
from my head, from my heart,
and so powerful on their own that they
sweep people off their feet with little warning and
make them think tender thoughts,
dangerous thoughts,
good thoughts,
and malicious ones, too.
I want
to make young and old alike cry
because my words have so much power.
But I want it to come from me,
not some deity
who hasn’t even given me the time of day.

You come home bowlegged and saddled with the weight
Of your love for me. I shrug at the sight and say:
“Dinner’s over there on the counter, I already ate;
Now go take a shower, the TV’s on and you’re in the way.”
You will undoubtedly move to obey my orders
But in the end fail to notice and process
That the air kiss from my mouth’s borders
To your back is a testimony to feelings I won’t confess.
I will weaken and fall to your revenge later on
When late that night I find myself in bed, alone,
As you turn to the favor of a coming dawn
With solitude and beer at your side, instead of a phone.
We are like this – together and alone – you see,
Because we, as one, don’t know how else to be.

take your fingers and one by one
trail them down my back
so that I can catalogue the feeling later on.
january 6: moving south with a speed of
one vertebrae per half minute;
progress is slow,
final destination is not in sight,
but outlook is still surprisingly hopeful.
you are allowed to map my body
with your mouth so that one day
I can write out the experience.
february 17: found that three teeth marks down my neck
there is a breach in the seemingly solid fortress;
careful, you will find an opening point
of shivers and gasps.
better yet if you can
keep me up so long at night
that there is no time to write these things,
let me instead journal them on my nerve endings.
march 30: my skin is music
that only you have the ears to hear,
and you think it’s a beautiful sound.
but please,
never let this be written:
*april 1: it’s not a joke, you told me.
you have new bodies to find and explore;
I guess I’m the fool here.

where your shoulder
slopes up to create the lines of your neck
you will find the palm of my hand
pressed there
and later
you will find my lips
searching for a bared path
of skin and collarbone
to claim as mine with teeth and tongue

While folded over me like an envelope
ready to mail, you sit there and think
and think and think while I try to cope
with lips so impossibly pink.
It takes two good hours before you tell me
that your body is a temple and love,
that infuriating thing, is not something we
should look into, except when it's from above.
I stare at you and try not to slur
when I say that that makes you your own god,
your own worshipper, your own designer,
and not exempt from being flawed.
Despite this you let me go, your hands thinner
than my ego; I decide then it's alright to be a sinner.

Every pinpoint scar on my body
is a place that I decreed sacred with my own hands,
a location which at some point said "I was here."
I only wish now that I hadn't staked my claims
so boldly.

When the pitter pat of your mouse heartbeat fades utterly away
As easily and distinctly as throes of thunder in the stormy distance,
I may go - in melancholy, there will be nothing else to do or say.

And once the rains froth on warm cement and the winds sashay
Across the treetops, and of you there is a startling absence,
I will know the pitter pat of your mouse heartbeat faded away.

It will sting, surely, to wake up every Monday through Sunday
Knowing you are not here, but I will remember your brilliance
And I may go - in melancholy, there is nothing else to do or say.

Still, the years will fly by and someday my mind may neglect to replay
Those memories of importance, and I will forget your presence,
Even as the pitter pat of your mouse heartbeat has faded away.

Then the world will move on and storms will return. In the midst of the fray
I will arrive, on the way to my own departure, a mind full of grievances.
I may go anyway - in melancholy, there can be nothing else to do or say.

And while there may be some last moment of frenzied grief, a ray
Will eventually split the clouds open; of you, I will recall some semblance,
And the pitter pat of your mouse heartbeat will roar, not fade away.
Then, finally, I will go - in lieu of melancholy, there will be much to do and say.