She dragged her nails across pale skin, digging
into her flesh and relished in the the pain, curling
her fingers across punctured plains.
She bled crimson but it didn't satiate her guilt.

Where have you been with your words
that you vowed to whisper softly
until they tumbled over the moon?
Tranquil images are all I can see
in your rhymes
that sank deep into the night
too soon.

Where are the eyes that lit up my world
and filled my pockets
with dreams of a life that shines?
I am realizing now
that what I once was
you have steadily changed
as you exhaled your lines.

Is my hope a golden thought
I love because it dwells
in my emotions
becoming a journey
where I drop to my knees,
spelling out words
then wonder where they lead
into my own circumstances?

Sometimes, when I sleep,
I glide over shells,
holding the hand of life,
forming collages, I could never forget
even when I am weary and I speak
of past things I should have forgotten
over the years.

Where have you been with your words
that make me smile in knowing
I have found my safe harbor
where I can be quiet
and revel in the tranquil images
you create
in my heart and soul?

I lay down under the scorching Manila sun
It feels something like searching
for solace in discomfort.
Eyes clenched.
My body sinks into the earth.

I want to breathe.
But the air is dense here
And my every other breath
is diluted with smoke.
These lungs push into the
walls of their cage;
Eyes clenched and anxious
waiting for the day to end.

But tonight…
I will run alongside the wolf,
Follow her as she chases the moon,
Mimic her proud howls to the sky.
Tonight I will run alongside the wolf,
Follow her until I’m lost in the night
And search for her shadow in the sunrise.

Tonight
I will breathe.

i said i didn’t miss you so i wouldn’t
but you made me
listen
to things you wrote, gave, made
did it say something about love? she wonders these things aloud
it’s hard to keep them in when you’ve been thinking them so long
without even noticing.
sometimes just noise is enough to change a person

I haven’t looked in the mirror, she lied
because she was self-conscious about being more beautiful
and about changing so often.

if there is enough to go around, let’s all cry.
all of us.
if you listen hard enough beneath music, there are words
and they are talking to you.
why is it so hard to do something you don’t want to it says
questions that don’t have answers

why is it so hard to do something you do want to do?

what if I just go back?
what if I never go big – just go home
sleep in a cabin
eat fish
become something greater than myself
before I become less than I was before?

I keep trying to think of new ways to touch you
sometimes you touch me back
but often you don’t seem to notice me here
I just need you to need me back.
but I’m alone in more ways than one.

listening to you again feels good.
why did I never get through to you?
why did I never get to BE with you?
I don’t care who you were, why wouldn’t you let me see? why wouldn’t you let anyone see?

you try to forget the things that plagued you
but they have a way of coming back – me, it’s because I want them to.
I like the despair of old fears, of rekindling something dead,
of sitting by a campfire in the woods alone thinking about what you should have said to your parents before you left
or what you should do when you’re in love with more than one person
because no one plans that stuff
no one plans dying.

where are the metaphors you ask
and I tell you they are in the universe, full of color
full of something that we try to understand but have too many names for

I am going to ask you one question, and you have to promise to answer.
promise.

get lost in something
and you can start to tell the difference between you and someone else
if you feel sad, that’s okay. just stop trying to hide it
just stop trying to hide
just stop hiding

who are you?
you promised.

Standing in the kitchen window late afternoon heavy in the Southwest United States and he is looking at her and he is thinking and he says it out loud
You are looking so much better
And more so much more
Alive your cheeks are less like the caves and more like
The peaches in the orchard that we walked before the innocence was taken

Through the window old trees converse about the passing breeze and there is a chill in what they say for it is never for us to know.

She turns from the pane and she looks at him and she nods her head and she says
For a time, before it happened, I believed that all things passed and that was so wrong for. Nothing passes, nothing heals, and nothing fades. It is all right here in me like it were the minute before. *She quiets for a breath.
It was not until after, long after that I learned this
That this meant also that nothing dies                                  she looks straight at him now
Nothing dies she says again
Nothing dies and I see the most beauty ever to weigh on my heart
in the face of an illegitimate child disappeared in a swinging screen door or in
the time I am alone awake before anyone wakes up
Or in the neighbors along the way putting a candle in the window for Christmas.             do you understand?
I don’t know why but I live to see these things
I guess because someone must see them. When they come I am the only one that is there to see. And when they pass, they justify my place here and right now, for I am the only one that saw.
The last syllable of her sentence is uttered in a calm note and everything follows and is right,
ugly as it is,
it must be seen and every part of the story is and will be what it is.

They in this moment in this place
among a million
always passing but never passed
always they share the same air, the same words upon this page.

*He has nothing to say so she turns back to the window and its okay and he thinks that he loves her but he does not say it out loud this time.

it is nothing I could begin to say to you
for it came to be without words
without sound
but not quiet

it was with the sound of something as you look upon it
The hum of tiny waves
shadow   not shadow   and the space beneath, that is to say,
between

life without a need to be
without purpose,
failure and not failure so close together because (finally I saw) they are not separate

it was steps that unfolded to infinity around the block
and around again (sic transit gloria mundi)
it was arms swinging like pendulums past ribcage clock faces
waving away the concept of time
In this small corner of the world
it was saying thank you for handing me over to solitude and meaning it
dying in order to let me heal you
it was following the jet trails with fingertips touching them like you taught me to
it was letting the poetry come in and pass through and move off
not holding it in, anymore
When I learned for the first time, to write.
it was when I heard something behind me
it was       I am.
it was when I drove on the freeway and the cloud broke and we passed out into the sunlight at 67 miles per hour, even though I was alone
when I was disturbed with the thought
today (dei gratia) I am happy to be alive.

Green was your favorite color.

with my heart
and when it broke, my soul
and with time,  sacred and ethereal, that too
bent beneath you

then it was with only with might
that I was able to hold your head to my chest
as you cried and as

in passing,
you overcame that too

impossible: still I loved you still I loved you *still I loved you