The time on the oven says it’s almost four in the morning,
Lit up that neon green that only microwaves and ovens seem to know.
We are in my best friends kitchen without the lights on,
The window is open and the early morning’s air whispers goose bumps onto my forearms.
It is after wine and everyone else has gone to sleep, Quiet,
And we try to stifle our giggling, but not too hard. You ask me if I want to dance,
So.
We waltz in our socks from the linoleum to the carpet, swaying with the melody of the radiator and the harmony of our own jokes.
Your hand is strong holding mine,
Your torso quivers as you laugh.
Finally,
We tire.
You’re wearing Statue of David boxers,
And I watch you as you sleep.
I look to you,
then to the doorway with that tiny wooden cross above it, and back to you again
before I fall asleep-
still dancing.

Out of the corner of my eye,
I saw your feet peeking out from
Underneath the bed,
Dancing through the halls of heaven.

Out of the stained window pane,
Your grey eyes
Smiled themselves into my kitchen,
Occupying space on a vacant counter.

I know you are following me.
I spy your fingers crusading up the
Steps to my porch, each morning after
It rains.

I know your shadow watches me as
I walk up and down the same
Ghost-filled streets,
And wait for you to dissolve.

The backs of my ears are wet with
your tongue,
traveling gingerly along the edges leaving a
tingling in my side

And, I like you
but I am thinking of him.

There is a hollowness inside me
and no matter what I eat
it doesn't leave

Knocking on the door of my mind,
of my heart,
it reminds me that
someone is missing.

I try to replace your hands,
small and white and
sweet
with a pair much
larger and more familiar.
This pair is rough and calloused,
but they spoke through my skin
and now they are gone.

But,
I like you
You have kind eyes and a
round face
You apologize when you mean it.

Still,
I am hollow and oh so
            heavy
at the same time

There's something that's changed -
I always wanted someone to sleep next to at night
and now that I have
I'd rather be alone

Sometimes,
I am afraid there are so many
People In this world,
So many crowds to
Walk through,
That eventually I might never
Recover the body (and mind) that are
My own.

Some days,
Even when I am alone in the
Pale light of my very own
Thoughts,
I seem to lose myself in the
Vastness –
I seem to lose myself in the
Narrowness.

Do you ever wonder if it is
Possible that a person could get
So lost inside their own self that
No matter how hard the trying
Hands grasp through the
Darkness of the soul,
It could never truly be found again?

It’s funny –
The places a person will discover himself,
Not in the back of the mind,
Usually,
But in the back of the hand,
In the back of the throat, ending
At the tongue and the
Slightly-open lips.

Occasionally,
I climb up an ancient wooden staircase that
Ascends into an attic,
And I gather the thoughts and pieces of
Myself I have hidden there.

And, just for a challenge,
I try and assemble the pieces together,
Like a necklace-
The kind of necklace that looks
Interesting enough,
maybe even beautiful,
but is never quite wearable.

It happens when,
(Together)
We breathe in the night.
It happens when
(Together)
We breathe in the darkness,

We breathe in the stars.

Because believe it or not,
I still remember when you told me
That the stars were beautiful
And I thought it was strange how foreign,
Yet at ease,
The word “beautiful” sounded
Coming from your lips.

It makes a difference
When you aren’t alone in noticing beauty.
It makes a difference
tonight, when I breathe in the
the stars,
that I know you still think they are beautiful.

After awhile,
The word together
Holds a different meaning.

And you and I,
Together –

We breathe in each other.
We breathe in the stars.

It is the driest winter we’ve had in years
Drier than bones
Bones hold things up
Like you held me up
Until you didn’t

It is so dry that my skin aches as it stretches
I am starting to hate the sun
I curse it every morning and then I feel guilty
I need to stop feeling guilty
About what I can’t control
I need to stop feeling guilty about my heart
All we can ever do is try
Sometimes it’s enough
Sometimes it’s not

I’m praying for rain but worried about
What’d I’d do if it came
Lie in the street and let it soak me
But here,
It’s illegal to lay on the street naked
Either way
When it comes
I’m going to stay in it for so long there’s no way
I’m not getting sick
I’ll lie there until they come peel my body up off the pavement
Like a wet rag

Let me be the wet rag for the world
No no, it’s alright, I volunteer myself
Let me soak up all of their sorrows because mine aren’t so big
Only as big as my body

Just now,
One man in a café went up to another
Said he’d seen his son
Sixteen years old,
And he looks great.
The other said that, “yea, it’s been a whole year
He has a check up in six months”
But he can’t imagine he’ll come out positive again

God

It seems like these moments of beauty are placed there
Right when we need them
No one is separate here
We are all alone and together at the same time and sometimes it is so
****** awful
And so ****** beautiful

It is possible that I can ache
For you to come back and fill whatever chasm it was that you left
Me with
And at the same time
Somewhere,
(Where is an empty space facing north,
or towards the sky or both
the space will be more apparent later when the ache fills my chest less
When it doesn’t sit inside my stomach like an animal that needs to be fed)
You gave me something, too
But it doesn’t make it less hard right now
The animal is still hungry,
Clawing,
It will be for a while.

Is it possible to hand someone hopefulness and
Hopelessness
At the same time?
To demand them to cradle it in their arms until their
Chest absorbs it-
Well, you don’t have a choice.

The earth is so      d         r          y
California, she needs some water

Don’t we all

Today, I realized,
As No One stood before me,
That it is possible to
Miss someone who was never there.

The vacant space in front of me
Felt more solid and heavy
Than my own being,
And with all of my will,
I could not walk through that
Non-Existent Person if I
Tried.

I attempted conversation.
My words fell to my feet and
The Empty Air seemed too
Superior to listen –
As if my words could never possibly amount
To the Nothingness beside me.

So,
We sat in silence together.
We did not have tea,
We did not reminisce about the past.

I held hands with The Wind.

I am more alone than ever.

It’s so easy to feel so small

I’m on a bus, the last one that runs on a Wednesday night,
Sketching a tired face
Bags under the eyes, made of black ink

I’m eavesdropping on a conversation,
(Does it count as eavesdropping when
There are only two people speaking in an otherwise
Silent bus?)

My heart’s been having an existential crisis,
And my stomach and chest
Empty
Yet heavy
Someone’s hands are holding my insides
And squeezing them in a fist
It is exhausting
It is lonely

In my right ear is this beautiful song
Violin and cello and
A raw passion that reminds me
That it’s okay
To be human, and to be scared shitless

I’m still listening, partly
But not really
It’s late
I want to sleep
Busses are full of zombies-
Phone, earphone, unsmiling zombies
And despite the
Tired sketch on my lap
I’m one, too

The conversation slows
I smile
I turn and I recognize the face in front of me
I’m told that this person, vaguely familiar face, whose conversation
I’ve been eavesdropping on remembers one of my poems
About stars
And the line is on his wall
A line from a poem that I wrote
About stars
Is on someone’s wall
Even better than when Chad Oliver told me I was
Quite attractive junior year of high school,
And I remember writing that poem
And I feel a little less useless

I want to cry

My body hasn’t known what to do with itself lately
You see I exhausted myself in love
And now that it’s gone
I feel useless
My heart pulls towards mediocre sketches
First sips of coffee in the morning,
Listening to the violin
It doesn’t know what else to feel for
It’s been left in this dark room
Grasping for a table,
****, even a stepstool,

Heartbreak is exhausting
Because it’s not just the heart
And it doesn’t really break
It just has to re-learn how to feel

But I get off the bus
And the night is warm,
The moon is
Beautiful,
This white-hot luminescence
Burning through the silhouettes of trees,
So bright the sky is still blue 6 hours after sundown.

I open my palms up to her
I see the stars
I open my palms up to them
They guide me home

Contemplating,
Though I won’t say what because the
Term has become taboo-
One of those words that the second it is said,
Faces have already begun to fall.

To some,
It is romantic.
I can see the appeal.
I can see how tragedy is beautiful-
A sun setting over a grey ocean,
Raindrops heavily hitting pavement;
And really,
What is more beautiful than sadness?

It is a heavy term to use,
A weighty thought to even
Think of thinking of-
I know this.
But somewhere,
There is someone standing in the rain,
Perhaps waiting for a train or a bus
To ride for another hour or two,
Only to end up somewhere else she
Doesn’t really want to be.
And somewhere else,
There is a person with tired eyes,
Dragging behind him a large bag full of trinkets
He doesn’t need,
But he keeps them safe as though they are
His lifeline.

The thought consumes me, and it is
Morbid,
And it is probably
Unholy,
But it is terrifyingly beautiful,
That by tomorrow,
These people will never see what they saw again,
But neither will anyone else,
Crying on a Sunday,
Over coffee and the
Morning paper.

It felt so unnatural,
holding you in that
dimly lit room.

The cupboards were stained with
water and scratched -
other people's trails left
behind
now yours

We could've lived in that cupboard -
together,
and it we couldn't fit we would have
simply
hidden away the parts of ourselves that we
no longer got along with

We could've lived in that cupboard -
together,
you and me and our best selves,
and we could've held a flashlight underneath
each other's faces,
and make up stories about the weather or
what was for dinner that night.

But,
that wasn't what we did

We held each other in that
dimly lit room and it
felt so unnatural because

your face was twisted with the words
"goodbye"

but the weather was nice,
and we ate dinner alone.

bitter poetry
is not worth it

let me tell you
I could write piles of it
but none of it would sound too good
my mind is
hidden wherever you last
touched it

I used to think that I wrote the best
when I was sad
I think now
that I don't understand sadness
sadness is an animal that doesn't come out in
daytime
or nighttime
sadness is a creature dressed in black
an empty chair
a half-drank cup of tea
a stoplight that never turns green

when you’ve been emptied out
like an animal that’s been bled for meat
and you’re hanging upside down
on a rack
ready to be devoured
you realize-
poetry won’t save you

my hands are close to touching the floor
nearly
but they can’t
so instead
my carcass hangs
I leave my body
I watch it being adjusted like a coat in a closet
swings back and forth,
like a child on bars in a playground.
I wonder when it will start rotting,
how long I have before I’m cured and cooked and
sliced into individual cuts
wonder whose mouth I’ll be entering
whose stomach
whose hands will serve me
if the blood will run off the plate.
if they were happy, would I feel their happiness?
if they were sad, would I feel that too?
I wonder
how it feels to be digested

or maybe
I won’t make it that far
and just be hanging
until pieces of me decay, fall to the floor
like dropped pennies from pockets
until I’m eaten away by
time and an
empty room

i’m not a bloodless animal
hanging on a rack
dead animals hanging on racks can’t write poetry
of course
but,
if they could

it wouldn’t be worth it, either
no,
it wouldn’t do them much good

I should be reading right now,
But my mind can’t focus.
My body’s energy is directed
Only towards my hand and
Through this pen.

I should be reading right now,
Instead, I am dreaming right now.
I am falling into your
Arms and they feel exactly
The same –
Boulders –
Only I can erode them,
Only I can mold them to the
Earth of my own.

Your soul –
Though it is quiet –
It speaks to me.
I should be reading right now,
Instead, I am writing right now,
Because that is what I do best.
I want to write my life
On your skin,
Because it is that important.

Stopping is just as important as
Going,
But honestly,
I’ve never really understood the
Word “Importance,” anyway.

You wonder how long that
White-haired man has been
Making waffles to give to other people.
You wonder how long the other
Has been slicing ham under
That immeasurably hot, metal light for;
Only to pass the pieces out to
Children who may just throw them away.

You wonder how long their
Hair has been white.
You wonder when
Yours will be.

You think that –
When I am eighty,
I sure as Hell will not be
Serving food to
Unappreciative
Strangers.

But, maybe,
That white-haired man gets up
Two extra minutes early on the
First Sunday of each month,
Probably alone,
To make the same waffles for the
Same people as last month.

And the man whose
Fingers don’t even shake as he
Slices your ham and
Tells you a joke at the same time
Might even be happy to
See the same people as last month,

Yes,
he definitely is.

Those men made more than
One child smile this morning.
And even though it’s
Easter Sunday, and that child
Probably doesn’t understand what that means,
Well, neither do I.
But I imagine it resembles something like this.

White haired men
Serving waffles and
Ham,
Telling jokes,
Not much different from
Last Sunday.

Not much different at all.

I have been writing in my head for too long.

Pages and pages have accumulated in my mind and finally I realized
Words are heavy.

How long had I been walking around in this state?
These sentences
They make me drag my feet.
These sentences
It’s hard to lift my head

These sentences –
Am I still standing?

Look-
I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to shake these
Words off of my fingers.
I could be sitting here for years.
The universe may carve this exact spot out for me
“Reserved: for the girl who
held her words like they were bricks
for the girl who dragged those bricks around for
three years and didn’t even know it until now,
this very moment,
she sat down and a brick was shattered.”

This very moment.
This very moment is all that exists and all that ever will,
Yet this very moment
Is gone

Curious.

You see,
I have been writing in my head for too long
And right now
This very moment
I feel weightless

It is the first time in months,
And it feels as if the pleasant
Hands of
God
Are hoisting me up,
So that one solitary
Fingertip may briefly touch the
Holy hinges of the
Pearly gates.

It never lasts long,
It is usually a fleeting encounter,
Therefore,
It must be sacred.

Still,
I can hear harps playing,
Feel feet dancing,
Heart beats pounding with passion
Within the walls of this very
Room and the very
Chamber of my own heart.

And so,
Happiness enters,
And so,
Happiness fills,
And so,
Happiness empties.

“Look for happy accidents,”
But where?
In the cracks on the sidewalk or
In between the gaps in the clouds…

Spread apart your fingers,
And hand the world to me –
Country by country,
Ocean by ocean,
Until I have it all living inside of me.

I will look for happy accidents,
Deep in the irises of your eyes,
In between the valleys of blue and green and gold,
And I will wish that one day,
These accidents will belong to me.
Like the world you gifted me
That I casually
Dropped,

And let
Shatter.

I could’ve kissed you on the Ferris Wheel,
Where we were close to holding
Hands with the sky.
Instead, you kissed me with the door open,
An empty hallway staring back,
But you liked James Bond movies,
And I liked to read.

On Halloween,
I wore red striped tights and I started
To cry and
You knew it was about you.
You held my hands,
But you liked to talk on the phone,
And I was always too tired.

In the summer, it was my birthday,
And we fought each other with eager lips and
Sunk into the green, green grass.
You rode your bike to my house with
Roses and a poem,
And I read it alone with your
Vase next to my quivering hand,
And you wrote about my eyes and my
Lips, because those were the things we
Had in common.
But I hardly knew what you liked,
Because I hardly knew what I liked.

In Mid-November,
You looked at me and your
Voice shook while you talked.
And we weren’t on the Ferris Wheel,
We were standing, (though I was falling),
In a field of red and blue people.
Your poem didn’t make sense anymore.
And when you turned,
And when I cried,
My hands were empty.

If you left me anywhere,
I’d rather it be the mountains-
There with the wildflowers and dirt and running water-
There with the trees.

The trees that are my brothers and sisters, and father and mother
When I am near them, I inhale knowing breathing is more than it is,
I know I am close to home
The trees that spoke to me by swaying,
Threatening to fall but instead
They raised me

Those same trees taught me how to breathe and how to love,
They re-teach me each time I forget.
They open their palms to me, show me the value of this fragmented moment-
I do my best to get lost in them when I can.

When my heart hurts,
They surround me
They remind me that no ache is so great as the immensity of their trunks,
No worry as significant as the weight of their branches,
No earthly pain could ever amount to the detail found in just one of their leaves-
A beautiful, browning pine needle,
Fallen to the drying forest floor.

I Like You the Most

I like you the most when your
Hands are on my neck.
Your fingers are large and cold and
Mold perfectly to the
Small nape that directs a narrow
Pathway to the
Rest of me.

And,
I hate myself for being hopeful.
I pretend to be
Busying myself with books and papers and pens,
When really,
I am only waiting for the
Light to hit your eyes and
Electrify me.

And,
I am empty when
It doesn’t.
I accept the unwholesome absence of your
Pale arms leaning against
My door frame.
My neck feels cold,
Because I like you the most when your
Hands are on my neck –

Feeling for eternity.

The sounds of passion,
and the beating of our hearts

Echo.

It is moments like these that
Step into our memories,
And never leave

It is strange when your body feels
As though it is an extension of
Another’s

And suddenly,
The air becomes stiff

My heart is so afraid with love.

Dry throats become dryer,
And you tell me it is okay
And I believe you
But your skin tells me otherwise

"It's in you somewhere"
rising up through the soles
of your feet,
hollowing out through
your bones

"It's in you somewhere"
The strength to race through
this nightmare like it
may be the last -
You were born to live
ferociously

"It's in you somewhere"
so dig deep,
because once you find it,
you will know more than
the moon.
You will be the moon.

"It's in you somewhere"
and it's a lighthouse
beckoning to it's ship.
Sweet sailor,
your captain misses you.

"It's in you somewhere"
and call me when you find it.
Tell me that,
"Things ain't so bad,"
Tell me that,
"I am home, and
I am the moon."

Love,
Some night in the summer when it’s not too cold,
Let’s go to the park and kiss in the grass until
Someone walks by
(Even then, we’ll laugh and kiss again because they’re embarrassed –
But we aren’t)
Like we used to before we had cars and
Empty houses.

I’m going to kiss you harder than
I’ve ever kissed before;
My mind won’t wander farther than
The ends of your body, curling
Around my own.

There was a time when the world wasn’t sure if we were in love.

We walked along the railroad tracks,
And I forget what we talked about,
But we were always holding hands.

Love,
Some day in the spring let’s walk aimlessly, past the
Streets we’ve already been on,
And I won’t even make you wear a sweater,
Because secretly,
I like the way your t-shirts smell better.

Anyway, we’ll love each other until our lips turn blue.

Love,

Did you know that before you came along,
Love poems didn’t exist?

I remember the days when the moon was following me
La Luna,
You were everywhere and always so beautiful
What were you trying to tell me by appearing brighter in my sky,
Than in others?

La Luna,
You visited me in my dreams each night
You fell towards me but I never felt afraid.
I mistook you for the earth,
And the earth for you.
You are everywhere,
And always so beautiful

La Luna,
I want to have you with me all the time
To balance the strange that is these scars.
I wish to carry you in the palm of my hand and roll you around in my fingertips
So that I may always be reminded that beauty and ugly can live side by side
And one wouldn’t exist without the other

I’ve tried to reach out and touch you,
In my dreams I cup my hands underneath the sky and say
“I’m ready whenever you are,”
waiting for You and the stars to land in my fingers
so that I may arrange my own constellations tonight –
my index finger sliding stars around wherever I so choose.
I might make a constellation of the smiling face of God,
So that all of those people down below have something to really look at…
But isn’t that what the stars are, anyway?

I might make a constellation so jumbled that it becomes whatever whoever is looking up at it needs it to become
Sometimes,
Stars just need to be stars
And sometimes,
The moon is just the moon

But  I still wonder
La Luna
How you are everywhere
And always so beautiful
What are you trying to tell me by appearing brighter in my sky,
Than in others’?

I remember in your car
When you told me the sound that
Airplanes make is
Lonely-
I knew there was poetry
In you.

These months,
They’ve felt like years.
And these days,
Well, I wish they wouldn’t
Go by so fast.

Some people,
They train their hearts to
Love one another.

Us,
We only train our
Hearts to love harder,
And to not break each time
We say goodbye.

Some people,
They talk about love like
It is all romance,
It is all sympathy and roses.

But us, we don’t talk
About love,
Because we know we have it.

And you tell me beautiful things like
The mountains are jealous of me.
The night sky is jealous of me,
But Love,
I’ll bet you
The universe, in its beautiful and ugly
Entirety
Is jealous of us,
Because between each smile,
We hold more than the universe could
Ever hope to hold in its
Gigantic,
Outstretched arms.

With you,
I never need to think about the things I have
Lost
Because in front of me is the everything I have
Found.

Love,
It was more than two years ago
The very first time we danced together.

Sometimes, I replay it in my mind –
I’m not sure what it was about that night;

Maybe
It was not the rhythm of our bodies matching with the music, but the
Rhythm of our hearts matching with each other’s.

Last summer,
When were lying on my bed, you started to cry.
For a long time, it was silent.

In that moment, we became something much more than just ourselves.
For the first time,
We were not alone.

And, there we were.
Naked and crying -
But we were not alone.

Eric, you took my heart by the hand,
And taught me how to love.
You haven’t let go since.

Two years ago, we danced together for the first time.

And, here we are.
Love, we are not alone.

We used to have contests to see who could make the best nests in each other’s hair.
Naturally, your nests were award winning-
We’d emerge from bed, spent and re-born
And in the mirror, an applauding crowd of spectators stood standing along our satisfied, flushed reflections.

Those nests would take eons to untangle-
Partly, because honestly –they were ridiculous.
How in the hell did you move so fast as to sculpt worlds from strings on my scalp?
Partly, because they were funny, and it is a small, rare delight to look in a mirror and know the smile across is actually two,
But mostly because, truly- I was quite fond of the fingers that made them-
Ungraceful, to be sure
But some of the best imperfections I’ve known.

Too many people have forgotten how to dance
Their bodies have become stiff with
Everyday life
They are checking their watch and carrying their briefcases even when they are not

You can see the worry in their bones

They move the most in their sleep, when their bodies fight themselves -
angrily restless at night because they are locked up during the day
Their arms are more like pipes than wings
Their legs are simply part of the machine that allows them to count

Their faces are clocks
Their hands are levers
And their hearts? -
Buried - somewhere beneath the flesh that has become less than flesh, the muscle that is less than muscle, the bone that is less than bone and
The blood that has become simply something to pump -
Something to keep from
drying
out
completely.

I heard a harmonica the other day-
My body heard it before my ears did
My arms listened so closely- my hips and my knees followed and the
Air stepped aside for my body
creating a tunnel of space without space for my limbs only
The grass below my feet was my stage and the earth and I were no longer separate

When I left,
A stranger told me
“You’re a great dancer”
I should have told him
“So is everyone else-

You just have to let your fingertips to reach for the notes as they hear them
You just have to train your heart to understand more than lists-
They don’t matter now – They didn’t ever

If there is a God,
I don’t think his intention in creating bodies was for them to worry
Perhaps our fingers weren’t made to always be holding something
Perhaps our eyes are in the front of our head for a reason
And perhaps our hearts are inside of our chest because who know what would happen if we
Let them out

I have not often felt so
Acutely alone
As when sitting behind you on a bus
Knowing you have seen me,
And I have seen you
And neither says a thing.

The bus grows crowded and the opportunity,
If there was one to begin with,
Is lost amidst conversations and body heat.
I am left staring at the thick curly hair on the back of your head
Like a math equation.

Part of me wants to reach out and hit you, hard.
I know I won’t get an answer unless I ask,
But I sit quietly and stare
Wondering if you can feel it, too

Yes,
Loneliness is a form of selfishness
I know this yet am unsure of how to combat it

It is in places like this
Crowded busses
Packed with chattering,
Congested sidewalks that are an obstacle course of
Averted eye contact, whether you recognize anyone or not
Because Heaven forbid we start a conversation with a stranger-
No
We have places to be.

“Alone”
itself
is a contradiction
“Alone” is someone sitting in the same room
pointing out their
blatant disregard of you

To be “Lonely” is to have a long,
Drawn out conversation
With yourself

It is autumn again, finally.
The air in my lungs makes me wonder -
how many lives have we lived before, the exact same way,
and how are we still so confused.

It is the season of wondering and wandering.
I feel my heart more now than ever before.
It begs me to notice it is there,
and I will not forget.

What it is so full of,
I do not know,
but I am slowly learning of the fragility of the
human condition.

We are wondering and wandering,
and occasionally the two coincide.

Tonight, the sky watches us:
The old couple that has become comfortable with not speaking,
but simply offering each other's company on a bench outside a bookstore.
The young couple who are excited over which table to sit at,
who talk about nothing but really they talk about everything.
The people who walk alone.
The ones who smile,
and the ones who don't.
The people who miss their mothers
and the ones who are still learning how.

Tonight, we are so blessed
and the cold whispers something about how we are all confused -
this is okay.
Our hearts beg us to be noticed, friends,

Listen.

My scars show some type of
Calculated insanity,
An organized sadness
That has the potential to eat
At the flesh of my thoughts.

My scars show some type of
Undefined insecurity,
Repetition proves this
Like science- is that all we are?

My scars do not own me
though, they speak of adolescence,
and the unbearable
hollowness that aches, a dull knife:
“The human condition”

Are we not so hopeless?
My bones cry out in objection
I should think not, they say
No, my scars do not own me, they

exist as a part of
a whole, made of bones and tissue
and something else- striving
to be heard among the clamor
of waking each morning

Something that rumbles deep
and is heard and listens when the
rain kisses my forearm-
each glorious drop is a bell
ringing deliverance

If we were all as romantic as we'd like to be,
we could meet our future spouses here.
Instead,
we wait.

We are a moving room full of
strangers
an in-transit nation consisting of
empty spaces.

We are all reading the paper in our own way
Our minds are somewhere else but here on these
plastic, carpeted seats

Lately, my heart hurts.
My bones are anxious.
I just want to run,
I possess all of the energy of the sun, and yet,
I sleep.

My soul searches for something more than this empty space,
than this
bus full of strangers too afraid to introduce themselves.
This is monotony.
The hollowness of it eats at my thoughts like maggots at a corpse.

Soon there will be nothing left

Was there anything to begin with?

I read a poem about
Scars telling stories

Writing letters

You can hardly see the one
On my cheek

When I’m forty I will forget it’s there

It is in the shape of a flag and I got it from
Falling off the ledge in the back yard I was running
Too
Fast

I have another on
The back of my ankle
I found it a few years ago and have no recollection of
Receiving it, which, I suppose,
Is a good thing.

And the others
Are lined up

They tell their story,
Write a letter to myself
About life and love and

Brokenness.

God knows what else.

Lately I have been so bitter,
Like the surprising taste of metallic blood in your mouth when you’re
Not even sure where you’re bleeding from.

It’s hard to imagine age,
If it is relative to wisdom,
Or if that is only a fable, too,
Just as so many things seem to be.

Every day I am expecting myself to look older
Or at least angrier

It is peculiar.

I am not unhappy; not even close.
Yet there is always something pulling at my coattails,
Telling me
“Keep looking –
Keep searching”

Lately I have been so bitter,
I have realized that those I seem to hate the most are
Those who are the most similar to myself.

Lately I have been wondering
What is it I am searching for?

We thought of ourselves as sensitive –
So intuitive to the sounds of
Other people’s sadness that we
Felt it as our own;
Like we were testing to see how much
Sadness one body could hold.

We called ourselves writers –
The kind who wrote poetry about love and
Hopelessness while sitting in
The front row of history class;
Secretly hauling around notebooks and pens,
As we dragged our flimsy lives behind us.

We diagnosed others’ depression –
While remaining purposefully blind to
Our own trains of thought;
Which coincidentally always
Seemed to be moving along without
Any tracks.

We categorized everything with
Adjectives in our heads, and
Black ink on paper, but it never
Seemed to be enough –
There was always, always
Something else.

Today,
We wander back and forth from
Who we were, to
Who we are, to
Who we will be,
And most of the time,
We can’t tell the difference.
We are still writers,
And we never stop thinking of love.

There is always, always
Something else.

I want you to know that
you make it difficult to
write poetry,

Because my thoughts can't focus
on anything for too long,
without reverting back to
your smile-
which, by the way,
equates to mountains.

I think you hold the earth in
that smile.
I am a
thief of worlds
when you share it with me.

I don't know what the word Love means.

And just because it is English,
and I feel it all around me
every moment of every day,
radiating through the soles of my feet,
doesn't mean I have to use it.

We sat outside on the
bricks which were
glued to the earth,
and that stranger walked by
and told us -
"Have a beautiful day"

You played your guitar like only
the music could keep
the world turning,
and we listened like our ears
were tuned to hear only
the strumming,
and the strangers,
and the pigeons across the street
humming happily along.

The song sounded like summer,
and blue eyes,
and hands holding tight.

I could not help but think
about how you looked at me,
but more about
how you didn't.

But I watched the mouths move
around me,
and the clouds, sitting stagnant in their
blue-sky home.

And we made wishes on things
that didn't exist
that day,
and thank you,
stranger in wearing a white t-shirt and
smile -
because it was beautiful.

Out of the corner of my eye,
I saw your feet peeking out from
Underneath the bed,
Dancing through the halls of heaven.

Out of the stained window pane,
Your grey eyes
Smiled into my kitchen,
Allowing themselves space on the vacant counter.

I know you are following me.
I spy your fingers crusading up the
Steps to my porch, each morning after
It rains.

I know your shadow watches me
As I walk up and down the same
Ghost-filled streets,
And wait for you to dissolve.

These days,
I feel like so much is happening inside of me -
there is a marching band inside
my body and it is trying to
March, March, March itself out
of my ribcage,
but it is already May.

There are fireworks
waiting to be set off, but there is
no one there to light the fuse of
whatever is inside of those things
anyway... Light, and summer and
a need to be with the stars,
to be like the stars -
after all, they're what we wish on.

Soon, I will find a match from
somewhere deep inside of myself and
there will be explosions of
poetry,
of words with
real weight -
the kind of stuff that strong bones and
muscles are no match for.

Because there is a
power
that hides itself in the rain.
It locks itself behind the sun and
in our neighbor's yards,
picking their flowers.

Last night,
I lay on the damp grass-
the unforgiving earth,
the substance of the gods -
and looked to their home in the
black-velvet sky.

It is flawless.
Fireworks want to be like the stars,
everyone wants to be like the stars.
We still make wishes on them,
but really,
they don't owe us anything.

Everyone wants to be an angel someday,
but really,
most of us already are.

Don’t say my name.
Your lips don’t deserve the courtesy to
Sit so closely with a part of me,
Because it’s always been too late.

I would have told you that loving you is like
Loving a piece of the sky –
The same piece I loved yesterday is
Nearly impossible to find today.

I’m being interrupted again,
By the flash of your hands,
Too quick.
Of your face,
Breaking even as it smiles,
And I cannot help myself but to
Fall apart as well.

Only after you leave
Am I able to
Sew together the flesh that you so ungraciously
Tore open, once again.

My childhood bedroom walls are painted bright blue, green, and pink.
I regretted the decision less than a year after it was made.
They remind me of stale candy,
of consumerism in the form of clothing stores for tween girls
who forget they’re still children.

I am in the eighth grade, it is 2007
and it must be three, four in the morning when you walk in
stand in the doorway and stare at me
light blue eyes wide open
like you saw a dead cat on the doorstep
I think about how I’m the only child without blue eyes
You are still standing in the doorway
unblinking
as if the doorway didn’t exist until you were under it.

The air is metallic, and as I ask you I taste it
want to wash my mouth out, spit as far as I can into the hallway
“Are you okay?
What’s wrong?
Jenae. What’s wrong??
You give me the bad news
through silence
and your blue eyes that seem to be held open
by someone else’s ***** fingers.

When people asked how you were doing the following years
I wanted to spit metallic at them, too, sometimes
the same stuff that clung to the walls that night
when you walked from the doorway into my bed
blue eyes as wide as a scared mouth at the dentist

They forgot that I was still a child
and that it took a long time for the word “Rehabilitation Center”
to be released from my parents mouths
like a stray dog from a cage
but the words didn’t crawl around on all fours and
bite at our heels like we thought they might
you just can’t let them
Until then, I wondered where you went for days at a time
how you slept for days at a time when you came back
why you stared through me and not at me
where my camera went, and the neighbor’s cell phone
How you became an event rather than a person.

The night of my eighth grade graduation,
a ceremony that felt exceptionally monumental for little reason,
they found you in the car
screaming to yourself
gripping the steering wheel like a lover’s shoulders during a fight
releasing what was never actually yours,
but was given to you by the drug
the skeleton in its closet that won’t stop shaking
its bones made too much noise against the wood panelling

Those were the years before I stopped praying
I would talk to God like an authority I questioned but obeyed
promised I would not make Drew cry again
or lie again
in exchange for you coming home
“Dear God
please take all the lies I would make in the future,
and build them up into a pyramid or ladder that my sister can walk on
that leads to our front door
and make sure I can hear the old springs whining
as she comes home
only this time it won’t be whining,
but applause.”

Each night you did come home
I would lay my face deep into my pillow and thank him
give him another lie,
because I knew you were alive another night
I could breathe and not have to count down the seconds until
I would come bursting into the garage and make sure the car
wasn’t running and the windows weren’t open and you weren’t
sitting in it
And you weren’t
And I’ve never felt more pride push up through my chest and throat
on my mouth
when I knew that ladder had been built
but you built it yourself

I will always feel like a savior for no reason.
My photo and essay and drawings are on the wall next to your bed
I can’t help but feel like my smile is burning a hole through the back of the wall
All I ever did was tell you I loved you
All I ever did for you was feel scared shitless that I might wake up without a sister
and that I wouldn’t be able to carry that emptiness inside of me
All I ever did was pretend I knew what I was doing

You called two weeks ago
to ask if I had ever heard of some song you heard on the radio
I have,
I said
And you are worried about our little brother
He will be fine
I said
These conversations groan on like a train coming to a stop
I check the time, pull the phone away from my ear every so slightly
wonder who will take care of your bills when our parents are dead
breathe in deeply
try to be the person whose face is on your bedroom wall
still love you
still am so proud it hurts
still am so scared it hurts
still am pretending
still love you
still love you.

Curling up to your chest bone,
six feet above the ground,
it is so warm here,
but I am shaking.

A train goes by,
and then another.
And then an hour goes by and
it's hard to tell the difference between
time and
trains,
trains and
time.

Yesterday,
Your wall was moving.
It was telling me secrets about myself that
I never wanted to hear.
Today,
I woke up and didn’t recognize
My own face in the mirror.

The windows of my mind are
Falling apart.

I am absentmindedly synchronizing my breathing with
The wind –
Metronome.
It whispers,
pleas,

falling,
falling,
falling.

You held my shoulders
and took my palms,
and told me -
"Listen."

But I couldn't, because you
misplaced my
dearest friends,
and I was lost.

And my vision began to
vibrate, and the wall began to
blur, and your voice was
distant, when I fell.

And I guess, my head
hit the floor just right.
Because your eyes became wide,
and you reached for the phone.

When you started to dial,
I grabbed your wrist
and said
"No."

Our hearts were beating loudly,
thundering through the wall.
I told you -
"Listen."

It was when poetry first
walked itself through my ears,
that I knew something had
changed

It was not as drastic as
"The grass seemed much greener"
But you notice something
Smiles, maybe -
faces look different.

Poetry, it walked through my ears,
passed my brain,
and slid itself through the tunnels
of my body,
leaving its mark on each individual
*****:
a stain of something different.

I felt poetry move through my being like a
hissing snake,
flicking its pink tongue at the ends of
my limbs,

And then finally,
poetry made its way into the center,
and instead of hissing,
it whispered,
and my whole body answered.

Poetry walked itself through my ears,
and poetry,
it landed in my heart.

When it says it’s going to rain
I imagine myself accompanied by lemon ginger tea and Bukowski,
The rain sounding of the contradictory company of solitude,
a rhythmic and calm tapping,
I imagine I am lapping it up off the windowpane like Bukowski might his whiskey.
The mist, gray like a cat’s fur, rubs me just as I would the same fur
I imagine I am the cat for a moment
stretching out my back
making a lower case “n” with my body before falling
through the carpet
to sleep

I have to apologize for hating the sun sometimes
Too many days of sunlight is too many days of being exposed
I think it’s my pores inhaling,
letting the small sorrows of the world in
the types of things people don’t want to carry around in the sun-
change, rattling in a homeless man’s cup
unpaid bills, envelopes like mouths
an abandoned red jacket in the armpit of a city,
blocking the gutter from letting the brown water
through to the other side

Too many days of sunlight makes me want to unzip my skin
and wear it inside out.
My ankles sweat
I want to hack off my feet.
Too many days of sunlight is like the adjective “nice.”

So
when it says its going to rain, but it doesn’t
it’s hard for me to walk
and I try to lick water
off the windowpane
but my tongue can’t reach
like a dust particle, it gets stuck in a sun ray
rams itself against the glass
like a snake’s head against a cage.

Here is your brain,
Here is your brain on drugs.
Here is your brain on a bad day,
on a bad year.
Where is it after a couple?

Here is a handshake,
a desk for you to sit in.
Here is taking orders absentmindedly,
Here is silence.

Here is the rain,
pounding agasint the sidewalk like your heartbeat,
Here are the pockets of your coat,
weighted down with water.
Here is depression.

Here is lust,
Here is an attraction to your irises,
the tips of your fingers,
the backs of your knees.
Here is a sidewalk to scrape them on and to
leave part of yourself behind.

Here are your thoughts on sadness,
Here are your eyes welling up with
intangible amounts of wasted ideas.
Here are your eyes welling up,
blue, and holding on to my hands.
Here are your eyes

on closing.

You only say "I miss you"
at the end of conversations.
Like you're sneaking it in with one breath, or
like it's something that shouldn't be heard by anyone else because it's a
secret well kept that

yes,
you do feel.

And this bothers me -
that you try to hide what is so obvious to me in the backs of your eyes.
It's in your palms and your chin but you still say it like you are
breaking a silence.

And it bothers me that we can't say
"I love you" anymore
because, **** it,
I know we aren't supposed to be "in love" right now -
everything is so taboo -
but if you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow morning,
I would want you to die knowing that my heart goes so much deeper than just
a list of things I did today or a list of things I might do tomorrow

because there is more than just
physical distance between us, now
over these thousand or so miles
we still share our skin and we still share every single moment that lives in between our
fingers.
And that's not the kind of stuff that you can just
shove in the back of your closet and come back to later -
unless of course, you want it to be.

But - you don't. And I know this, because I know you.
I've seen your face twist with tears and
I know the color of your heart when your face gets angry.
Mostly, I know the color of your heart when your face
doesn't change,
but everything else does.

You think you can keep a secret -
but I feel how you feel.
You say "i miss you"
with a lower case i,
like you didn't have the time to fix it
because you are in such a hurry to get the words out like they are
gosspip that you might giggle over but shouldn't, like they are
a box behind a door you shouldn't open, like they are
straight from somewhere so deep inside you,
only I have seen

and let me tell you something
I miss you, too.

So now it's your turn -
tell me
why are we still hiding?

and what, *******,
what
are we so afraid of?

We’ll give them the glass stares they want,
And they’ll eat us alive.

In the background,
I can hear knives sharpening.
White bones waiting to be
Sliced by a certain solitude.

The walls are blank,
But the paint is heavy.
This room is hard to
Hold up on an
Empty stomach.

So we’ll leave,
(Promise that we’ll never come back)
And we’ll be cold when the
Snow blankets our eyelashes,
Douses our fingertips in blue, but

We’ll wait to be rescued.
We’ll have red crosses stitched over
Our chests.

We’ll stop on lonely our way because of
Something curious.

Splintered between the cracks on the sidewalk is
Sadness –
A drop of rain struggling to run its course –

Winter’s fortitude.

It’s hard to get out of it
Once you get into it

And I know what you’re thinking,
And you’re probably wrong.

But sometimes, it’s like your eyes adjust and turn everything
Grey
And then when you realize that
“I am an organism capable of
Perceiving color”

It’s foreign

You imagine an aged man, a long time ago, with white hair and
Maybe a lab coat
And you don’t know where he is,
But he’s just invented the color blue,

He’s just created the world.

Yeah, it’s hard to get out of it
Once you get into it

But listen to me:
Get out of it.

Go create the world.

I miss the sunshine.
I know why it’s out today –
It’s wiping the shadows
Away from our eyes.

It’s going to warm the bare skin on your
Chest,
Forming pathways between your flesh and
Mine,
And when you brush the hair out of my face
With your fingers cascading over my cheekbones…
I could just lay here.

Can you hear it?
The sun is so loud, screaming almost,
Calling our very own names.

The sun came out today
For us,
To warm your hand so that it can hold mine,
But unfortunately,
the sun can’t change your mind when you
let go.