my house feels the emptiest when it's full
the scent of home made food and the sound of my sister's voice both parade out of the kitchen through the rest of the rooms like a new orleans funeral trumpet
laugh all you want, i know you still look at me like i ****** your husband
laugh all you want, i know you'd rather go home to get high in the garage
laugh all you want, just remember to remind your mouth to smile when you do
you smell like ash and misery and leave traces of it everywhere you go and if it wouldn't leave you lonely, you'd look at the cigarette in my hand and say *this is all your fault

one, two, three shots
a cold basement, a cold count
the sound of laughter and half-hearted attempts at conversation
i feel myself loosen up and even get a bit
friendly
confident
i have my lover at my side and it feels like everything makes sense like
everything is supposed to be this way
this is how people like me have fun
i love how the alcohol warms and coats my throat
until
i feel my mother

(can I call her that?)

her hair, a flame of tangled curls and the smell of
men
drunk off of her and her magic
radiating inside of me
my colloquial tone begins to fall away as she
climbs
up
up
up
and i try and try
but i can’t hold her down
she is suffocating me with her illness and she whispers to me in a drunken tone
she tells me that this is the way to live

see all the people laughing, my dear?
they aren’t sad
hearing their cries boom off of their bedroom walls
trying to pretend the beating of their heart is a death drum
shuddering and shaking violently to the beat of the song at their early funeral
no,
they are loving each other and talking
in their own tongue

this is the way to find me, your mother.
to feel my liquid embrace.
warm and
sharp

so drink, my dear.
drink until you pour your insides into some stranger's toilet in the early hours of the morning.
you won’t worry about the fact that you just got sick,
and your mind has the possibility to get sick like mine did,
that every step of life could easily take a violent turn that you won't be able to stop
you will be happy that your stomach is empty and you are finally
finally
hollowed out

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, my dear, and the past repeats itself and
i have handed you mine

so drink up.

i used to be a girl that got ****** on friday nights
spilling beer in garages across town, making boys laugh
calculating how many smiles or touches on the shoulder or seconds of eye contact could make me feel like i belonged somewhere, a cigarette for every unit of the quota i didn't manage to meet
even on mornings i woke up with sore lungs, i was alive
alive with meaning, with weightlessness, with two cups of diet coke on a patio table
watching snails climb up the aloe vera plant
i used to be a girl who felt whole on saturday mornings

he started sayin' somethin
about girls and cars and
that's when I tuned out
'cause i'd already considered
that,

not the showin up at his house
part, but the other girls who might
have kissed him in my absence

albeit something I've never understood
i'm not too good at cover-ups and my
libido only stretches for one person
at a time but
i couldn't blame him for things
he did when I wasn't his and he wasn't mine

who knows what happened in that time
but I can't care
and if other women
are on my skin then
at least i am on
theirs.

i wish you could see him how i see him
in the early morning without my glasses
blurred around the edges
buttoning his shirt with eyes half-open
or with one hand on the steering wheel
focused mostly on the red light
but also on the garden caught
between the synapses in his mind
i wish you could see him how i see him
storm clouds tumbling in his eyes
also rolling overhead
and the mercury falls ten degrees
and the skies break and he pours out
and my cup runneth over
i wish you could see him how i see him
at once a child lost in the grocery store
and a king on horseback charging into battle
at once a boulder with moss on the north side
and a wet, ****** heart
i wish you could see him how i see him

When the weight of
a thousand moments
wasted overthinking
makes its home on my skin
and drip, drip, drips
down my cheeks,
I doubt everything.
I doubt ability,
your credibility.
I doubt capacity,
I doubt significance.
I question why
everything I touch
eventually shatters,
and why in my heart,
you still matter.
But maybe it's time
to stop doubting myself,
cause maybe this time,
I could feel good enough.

i think i saw him riding by
earlier today--
with so much time we spend
staring out the windows
I was on a phone call with
a customer about overdrafts
and loans--
but you can...you can...call..call the...
every word following a little bike out
on the highway
Miss? call?
I'm so sorry, I say, laughing.  I was
elsewhere.

I was elsewhere.