You see sod busted up by a long, sepia-toned farmer. He is pushing a plow that belongs in a museum of the prairie. You feel as if this is happening to you. To your insides, I mean. You feel a squirming pancreas, and a dancing spleen. You feel a change coming and you are happy about feeling, about movement, agriculture. You catch a glimpse of yourself in a window and realize that you have grown to be 10 feet tall. You are looking down on the corn; at eye-level with the barn. You imagine  your father, the farmer, would be very proud of the tree you have become, and the windbreak you afford his fields.

Solving every problem
With a belly full of tea
And your feet
Hitting the treadmill
Shoulders taking on
The rowing machine
When dreams of mom dying
Keep you up at night
Who made the molecules
Behind your eyes
That shine
And glitter like Aztec gold
Through the green foliage
The right angles of your face
Looming like the himalayas
Annapurna and Everest
In the minds
Of mountaineers
And ex-boyfriends who can't forget
Your perfect china doll complexion
Rosy cheeks
A fake shade of delicate
You could hold up a bank with those eyelashes
Reaching for the sky
No time to call the police
Just put your hearts in my hands boys
And no one gets hurts

Put your toes on my shoulders
Sister
I'm always here for a boost
Take that leap sister
The world was
Made for you

He was the best hide and seek
Player in the
Second grade
There were whispers
Rumors
He could beat the 5th and 6th
Graders
Nothing was ever lost to him
But time spent
And that was worth it

I hid and
When he found me I told all his classmates that he had stolen my lunch money.

I love you like peanut butter
Protein makes me strong
I don’t know how to get along
With anyone else

He pieces her together: eggshells
She pulls him apart: saltwater
And outside it is always rose-light
And paper boats and some sweet breeze that nobody asked for
Outside it's all honeysuckle vining up the pasture fence

She falls asleep small against his tallness
He sleeps like a dog in the sun
If the truck keeps running
It's a metaphor for their relationship
If the truck stops it's foreboding

She loves him: pins and needles
He loves her: turquoise jewelry
And they're forever burning like
Matches on fingertips
Forever noticing new wrinkles in their reflections
As the mirror stays the same with age

"Do you still think you're going to marry me?"

"I won't let you get away again," he says,
Knowing she's young and she's fast

She smiles like pawn shop diamonds
Knowing he's lucky to have her
And having never felt so stupid
In her wicked wayward life

It's a take-your-top-off
Kind of day
And I'm getting naked
In the backyard
Merle Haggard rambling
Feverishly in my mind
I'm letting the sun
Get a little frisky
Kiss me anywhere it wishes
And the lilacs whisper
Fragrance
There's a new cadence
of Grasshopper sounds
I'm gonna change things
I'm gonna be that girl
That everybody falls in love with
Everybody knows her name
Dark-skinned
All muscle
All smiles
Living life outside
Kissing all the boys
And making them cry
Living life famously
Shamelessly
Physically
With a closet full of jorts and cut-off tees
I'm gonna be that girl
Because
It's a take-your-top-off
Kind of day
And I'm already naked
I'm a wild mustang
I've got nothing
To lose but my shirt
and my inhibitions

Those sleepless summer nights
Sweat pouring from every crack
In thinly layered sunburnt skins
It was all *******-on-the-floor
Blood-on-the-sheets
And *******
Living out highschool fantasies
Like the cool kids

Life before 22 was all a dream
Of midsummer swelter and
Salt water
In the mind of the dog
Chained up in the universe's yard
Tethered to the ether world
Racing rabbits through space
While I was turned into an ***
Staring at the mirror
And my expressionless face

This must be how cancer feels
Growing increasingly smaller
In a world where cabinets
And aspirations grow increasingly taller
She met the devil
For coffee on diagnosis day
But the deal they made didn't take
Her hair fell out
And her body atrophied anyway
She found herself
Floating far far away
Her blood coagulating like
A broken thermometer
Of mercury

Salvador Dali painted this fall
The house of salvatore
Minds gone to roost under warm eaves
Staring fireplaces
Hungry couches and singing windows
It's all ******* drooping like clocks
And derailing thoughts
The local biddies
Cluck their tongues
At the absurdity of infinity
And the girl in Ace Hardware
Buying shoepolish to hide her tan lines
Yawns, as her boyfriend feels her up

*Meanwhile I collapse
Like a house of cards with a flick of the wrist
Thinking about life's mathematical beauty

"I would like to see the world someday,"
He said

He began by taking samples
Little things at first
A photograph of summer freckles
A strand of hair
Fingernail clippings
And my favorite polish
Turquoise and caicos
Footprints
On the bathroom floor
Nothing I would notice
Nothing I would miss
And then he went bigger
My lips concealed
In his underwear drawer
My fingers and toes
Still painted
Stuck in the yogurt
The peanut butter
Full of ears, a nose
He grew bold
With surgical precision
Moved my ribs to the fridge
Chilling
Staving off listeria
My hips he displayed prominently
Framed by the headboard of his bed
My head serving as centerpiece
For his infrequent dinner guests
Shapely legs holding up the table
And believe me
THEY ARE THE SHAPLIEST
Arms supporting arms
New tattoos on his favorite chair
My alarm clock heart
Beating wake up
Wake up
Get out of bed
From his desk
And meaning
Nothing more than that
"I wanted you for my collection,"
He said
"You're the most extraordinary
Specimen I've ever met."

Under a big tent
Topped with stars and
Smelling of elephants
A couple of daredevils
Toss in their trailer
Restless in the Midwest

Their golden suits shimmer
In the Iowa half light
The cornstalks talk in
The breezes passing by
At night the daredevils whisper
About what it would be like to really fly
And not just on the trapeze
They kiss goodnight and dream of impossibilities

Times are changing
Since the war it's been mostly women
In the crowds the circus draws
They scream at the lions
Roar at the strongman
Gasp and applaud the two daredevils
Enthusiastically
Happily
Making love in the sky

Times are changing
Since his number came up
She's been lonely
Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri
Her gold suit is covered in farm dust
Growing nothing much
Her husband is on a bombing raid over Nazis
He's finally flying
Helped by an airplane
B52s and bloodshot eyes
No longer dreaming of impossibilities but
Missing his safety net

Since he left she's been thinking about cannons
Popcorn, scrap metal
and hoping against solo acts
She's been dreaming of
What it's like to be shot at
Really take risks
Really feel out of breath
And her husband's been writing her letters
About white picket fences

"The daredevil life that we wanted is so much worse than we thought it would be. Let that sweet silent net catch you and lie quietly thinking of me."

Times are changing
And so is he
Times are changing
And she feels like world shaking
She can hear the wolves blowing it down

But she keeps up her stunts
And keeps up her spirits
Till one day the bearded lady is screaming
Her name from the floor of the tent
Up on that tightrope she pauses
A second
There's two grim faced servicemen
Her daredevil husband is dead
Flying a mission over Dresden
Just another casualty of a world at war
Another daredevil in a dogfight and
Now one less mouth for the circus to feed

Suddenly she's high up in the stratosphere
Breathing fumes
And from the tightrope she faints
I've given him my heart, given him my onliness
She rests in her gold suit
Cradled by the safety net he warned her to hang on to
And in her dreams she can't help thinking
Maybe she dodged a suburban bullet

Times have changed
And since the war's end
The leftover men
Have gotten married
And she's been doing nothing
But lying awake in her bed
Thinking
Picturing cannons mauling
White picket fences
Her body in a gold suit
Broken on the green grass
She needs distance and airtime
To cull this restlessness
Get out of the Midwest
**** his conspicuous missingness
And come up with a solo act
To keep her fed

In the morning she finds the ringmaster
Hungover in the hay of the elephant stalls
In the morning she's made a decision
To fly like a cannonball
Through a dreamland
Times are changing
And since she woke up
She's dressed in her gold suit
Setting fire to the average
Dreaming of impossibilities

Oldest of two
Responsible for none
She was always a daddy's girl
And a morning person
She quit a lot of jobs
Before she turned 20
And when she wasn't planning to marry someone
Exactly like her father
They were ripping each other's heads off
Over nothing

She had strong shoulders
Not as broad as her sister's
She started swimming later
She was always more of a runner
Than anything else
Her parents should have known
Not to let so many hopes
Ride on her

Because life savings didn't translate
Into education
Her nose was always sniffing in the wrong books
Nothing on the booklists
Flouting authority was her favorite thing
So all of daddy's money
Couldn't buy her a degree
And all the lectures
She didn't attend
Couldn't make her see a dream that wasn't hers

Truth be told
She wasn't aiming all that high in the first place
A sturdy library
A cottage in the country
A dog
A tattoo sympathetic
Honest-eyed husband
And then she picked all the wrong ones

With every broken heart
And every finished book
She called home crying
"Dad, I can't do this. I am so lost. I see the destination but not the path."
She'd been drinking again
Frequenting tattoo parlors again
It would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed
When she could have been
A professor, a musician, an author
Or president by then

"It'll be ok," he said
And when she asked why it couldn't be better than just OK
He asked "have you been taking your meds?"
She hung up

And thought back to a time when the whole world tasted like
Beer and pretzels
Before she even knew what beer was
It was a picture on the wall
A curly-headed
Naked girl
Tiptoe on a stepping stool
Making pancakes with her daddy
So when the sun came up
Breakfast would be ready

Whistle blowing
Get up
Go out early
Before the sun starts showing
Before the rooster’s finished crowing
Get out into the outside
Go out into the world

Get up and stoke the fires of your life
They smolder in your sleep
They are smoking
They need fuel
And they need you
Get up and make them dance again
Get up and make them burn
Make them bright again
Go out into the world and keep on burning

Until you fall back into bed at night
Exhausted from the fanning
Burned up from the flames
Keep your days burning away
And everyday
Wake up
Whistle blowing
Get up early in the morning
Keep the fires going
Go out into the world and just keep burning
Burning
Burning

After this climactic
Three-way
Mexican stand-off
Once the orchestra
Dies off
And the treasure's dug up
We should probably just
Lay down
Enjoy the sun
Let it scorch the earth
And bake our bare
Finally poncho-free skin
Because all I need to be
Happy
Is the western sky
Burning me
Biting me
A polka dot bikini
Clint Eastwood
And the most delicate six-shooters you've ever seen
By my side

In the fall there were two of them. Wild animals, I mean. New driver's licenses of shiny, longways plastic and long limbs that hadn't filled out yet. She was filling out her Freeburg High School T-shirt pretty well he thought. He was taking it off her innocent body in the parking lot. After the lights at the football field shut off and she kept drawing monstrous hearts on the fogged up windows in the back seat of a car it was almost as if she could let it all go. Hardly thinking about him at all as his hand slid under her waistband and she woke up as he was fumbling with a ****** wrapper. How awkward, she thought, to be a teenage boy with a ***** how tragic, not knowing how to handle a latex balloon when you have it. Like the Hindenburg, she thought we're both going to die some day so it might as well be an explosion and I might as well put on a show for it. She could feel his heart beat in his ***** the way that nobody talks about it and she laughed a little at their nakedness and it was tinny in the climate of their hot breath. I love you, she said.

As if it would change anything anyway.

Killed himself when Thomas Edison beat him to the punch
And went down in history as nothing much
More than an obituary

When  my mom was dying
We put a bed in the living room
Fresh from the hospital
In front of the piano
Behind the rocking chair

We still called it the "living room"
I didn't mention the cruel irony in that
And the living people
Who knew my mother
All came and sat around her

And we weren't allowed to touch her
Cause the morphine lost its memory
And every bit of her was falling down
Dozing in a straw house
When the weather man called for hurricanes
She was right there
But miles away from rescue efforts
And hand-holding daughters

Marilyn Monroe went the same way
In bed, I mean
Facedown
Her pill supply run out
And I imagine her room was a beautiful mess
Full of roses and tokens from insincere men

An icon deserves better than that
A pin up with no one
But ex-lovers and sheets to hold her
And a pillow stained with last lipstick kisses
All those little white beads of forgetfulness
Crawling on the floor
And happy birthday Mr. President

Billy woke up bawling the other night
In bed with a girl
Who was not my sister
And he called and told her he loved her still
She hugged my dog and cried into her fur
She finished the roll
Of toilet paper blowing her nose

There were three of us in bed that night
And two somewhere else
Continents, nations, states apart
The air in my room was like asphalt
And allergies weighing us down
Lulu barked at our crestfallen hearts

Under the supermoon
I turned into a twentysomethingwolf
Keen senses acute defenses
And all I could smell on my sheets
Was the kitchen I work in
I wanted to be human
Taste the fear and perfection
Of being a ******
In bed with a boy who is not family
A teenager whispering under sheets again

I stayed at home alone
Soothing, sighing, and howling sweet nothings
To my lonely bed
Telling mom and Marilyn Monroe
The fever dreams in my lone wolf head
Praying "please God, send us someone"
"Please God, let love burn us quick and strong"
"Please God, don't draw the blues out. We all buckle."

Fifteen uniform clouds
Roll across the prairie
In a neat little line on the horizon
Kicking up dust storms as they go
Hurrying along
Silently
The settlers driving their wagons
Keeping their lips tight
And their eyes sharp
Because there are Indians
Lurking behind every rock
Bandits and thieves
Waiting in the hills
Snakes
Scorpions
Buffalo
Guns
Disease
Separation
Heartache
­ Might surprise them at any moment
Might make them victims and this moment their last
The settler’s hearts are racing
At 120 beats per minute
Pounding out a rhythm
Unlike anything they’ve ever known
Their hands are working at nothing
In the thin dry air
Twirling, twisting, pirouetting frantically
Their jaws are clenching tightly
Spasming, biting, drawing blood from their tongues
Their eyes are wide, unblinking, terrified
Seeing it all as it really is,
Really should be
And secretly, perhaps subconsciously,
Unrealizing,
They hope life will always feel this alive
But then,
In a few weeks
When they’ve made it to the city
To the town
To the shelter and comfort of ease
Civilization opens up her greedy maw
Swallows them whole
And licks her ****** fingers clean
So as not to stain her tidy white frock
And the settlers do nothing
Complacently allowing themselves to be digested
But they are thinking
“This is what I wanted?”
The voices in their heads have reached fever pitch, disgusted, screaming,
“This is what I wanted??”
And still they do nothing

Tonight we’re aligned with the stars
I’m wearing Orion’s belt
You’re drinking in thirsty gulps from the big dipper
The little one’s in freckles on your chest
And now I can hear the wind chimes
On the porch
I can hear the leaves
Of the Bradford Pear
I can hear the cats and dogs and coyotes and deer and owls
Making nighttime noises
I can hear mom snoring in the house
For one of the last times
I can hear the trampoline springs creaking with age
And feel it bouncing and swaying under us
Like it did in its heyday
I can hear you sniffling, sister,
I can hear you crying
Your warm wet tears
Are drowning my ears
Like all those summers we did swim team
When I take your hand
It’s smaller than I remember
It’s Abby circa ‘99
Though you didn’t let me hold it then
And I never tried
Now our hair is curling in swirling halos
Around the same face
Mom’s face
We never did look like Dad
Now we’re gazing at the same stars
Under the same March sky
Thinking, saying, “God is good”
Saying, believing, “How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
Believing, knowing, that it’s true
Even while our hearts are rocks,
Our hands are clay,
Our minds are swarming
Teeming
Buzzing
Hives
But “God is good”
“How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
When our mother is a fish
How can He not be?
We know:
“God is good.”
While we’re reading the Braille of the sky
Two foxes slink by
Now we dismount the trampoline and go inside
Where we hear Mom snoring
For one of the last times

Before the universe
Exploded onto this canvas
There was a crawlspace
A cave
In a church basement

A pinprick of strange matter
Floating unfettered
In space
And after years of careful planning
Years of careful manipulation

A balloon pop
A BIG BANG
Of people places things
Life and solar systems to fill the church basement
Fill the void

God had blueprints and maps
The universe conspires
And the stars align
God mad picket fence plans
Painted this infinite canvas
Just so I could meet you
And we could become us

She fell asleep thinking not of her
Boyfriend, but of the moon
Like the tides, her
Passions were tied to its
Waxing and waning
At its fullest she could
See around corners
Identify people not just by
Sight, but by scent
She watched, enraptured, as her
Fingernails grew and sharpened before
Her eyes
And for maybe
Not quite the first time
She felt alive

The strange symptoms
Of her youth
The pawprints in the
Yard, the lust for Jack
London, the undercooked meat
Calling the moon by her
Boyfriend's name
When her phone was ringing
With his number lighting up the screen
Calling her boyfriend
The moon
And thinking about sinking her
Teeth into him
The people who loved her
Pushing for a lock up
Questioning her sanity
The people who loved her
Trying to understand

It was all so
Unsettling, it was all so
Mindbending how much louder the
Wild called to her
And how it knew her name
Without any introductions
And naturally her instincts
Took over
And supernaturally her instincts
Wanted flesh

Finally it was just two
Wolf hearts
Beating in the
Dark, all those wild
Thoughts racing across
America and destiny was
Manifesting itself faster
Than they could chase after it

She had turned him and
There was no going back
Just forward into that
Rabid
Unnatural
Unknown
Forward into that
Toothy grin

I find cannibalism intriguing
2. Bee stings
3. I haven't heard that speech that every boy needs
           to hear to be a man

4. The love that bottlenecks in your throat when someone dies
5. I have to be heavily medicated
                to enjoy my life
       and it feels like cheating

6. A tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out
7. Raising a second generation in my hometown
                It's this place
         That keeps me down

8. Jack the Ripper shows
               when I'm home alone
9. I've read every Sherlock Holmes
           and I am jones-
       ing for another
                   story to make me think

10. Same God, different names
11. Is language to blame
                  for misunderstandings
           or is it just human failings
Faith is a frail
       old woman
              feeding her 1,000 cats
     1,000 separate bowls of milk

12. The class of 2009
13. When I drive home at night
            I pretend to be someone else
       singing along with the radio

14. Ghosts of friends that walk right through you
15. Maybe the past never really happened?
     Maybe I was someone else back then?
16. Men
            Who leave me and fly off to
             Never never land
      Boys, not men
            Who don't want to grow up yet
            and probably never will

17. Ladybugs

I don’t want to be lying
Alone in your arms
I don’t want to be telling the truth
With your calluses speaking to my belly
And your words getting lost in my ear
Did you feel it kick?
Did you?
Did you feel it?
I didn’t feel a thing
I am not unhappy
I am happy
I am not unhappy
I’m uncertain
Of what’s beating in my belly
Did you feel it kick?
I didn’t feel a thing
Will you make me an honest woman?
Will you do the math?
1+1+1
Is three
I’m so afraid
That’s what we’re going to be
I can’t be your wife
I’m so sorry I’m a liar
I love truth
As much as you
I loved the lie inside me
I loved the words you spoke
To the not ears
In my belly
And your shape
Filling the not space
Beside me
And your blood
And my blood
Telling stories inside me
Saying not not not
I am not happy
I am unhappy
I am not happy
I’m uncertain
Of what we do now
I didn’t want to be lying
Alone in your arms
But I wasn’t telling the truth

Me and John lying in bed
And on the train tracks is a
Groan and shriek
A metaphor for rambling

O, that whistle sounds like Holly
O, that whistle sounds like John
O, that whistle sounds like going
O, that whistle sounds like gone

Me and John lying in bed
And on the tracks is a dying away
And on the ceiling are familiar shapes
The moon makes

O, that whistle like my mother's voice
O, that whistle like a charge
O, that whistle sounds like running
O, that whistle sounds like God

Me and John lying in bed
And in our minds are separate thoughts
And in our heads
And in our hearts
A metaphor for getting lost

"Oh, that whistle,"
Whispered softly
"Oh, that whistle,"
He agrees
With a quiet understanding
With a nod
O, that whistle calling
As our lives are getting gone

My father believes my mother is a hawk
Circling above him building bonfires
I think my mother's soul was born again into my dog
I can feel her there when we hold paws
My sister believes in a heaven
Where good people get their everything
And float
Over streets paved in Tiffany diamonds

I am outside.
My dog barks at a bird in the sky
I twist the ring off my finger
The stone flashes in the sunlight

Uncertainty lingers in hearts and minds
I was Butch Cassidy in a past life.

Flash of modesty
As he gets dressed in front of me
Fast hands and mismatched
Buttons
Hiding white skin and brevity

I prayed last night
For the first time
In a long time
And I didn't know what name
To call God by
Something that rolled off the tongue
And tripped the switch inside
Beer
Felt right
Fear of the unkown
Maybe God's name is Celexa
Buspirone
Prozac
Any number of things that come in pill form
Night time thunderstorms
Waking up with the sun
Driving to church
Or Krishna
Vishnu
Shiva
Allah
Yahweh
My last gold dollar's
Got something sacred with it's spending
Or maybe Miranda Lambert
Or mom
Or the back of a car
Just before curfew
Saturday night
For the first time
A 40 mile hike
Your trusty red bike
Maybe the feel of strings
Under your fingers
Or a frozen snickers
Maybe the way your wife
Of 30 years
Stays appealing
Or maybe God's just a feeling
A million words
Humanity needs
For the state of being
Alive
Amen.

When he says he wants a family
and I say I want everything is it
too much to pluck the moon from
the sky and carry it in my back pocket?
Rather than his hand there I like
the feeling of not being pregnant
I like hot air balloon rides and
sinking into the earth after rain
when he talks about the future
it's a pie chart and a clearly labeled
and concisely drawn graph and
when I talk about my dreams
in the morning they are vapors
and LSD my words mean absolutely
nothing I weigh less than a slice of
bread mostly meaning happens in
between things or when I hear Paul
Simon whispering lightning in my ear.

*Our children would be green-eyed monsters

Lulu pulls me down the
Sidewalks, keeping me
Dangling a leash length away
She's in training for the
Iditarod and she's
Breathing hard with her valentine tongue
Lolling about
Across the street she
Spots a squirrel and
Climbing the tree after it
She bends the trunk
Arched like a trebuchet
"Should I?" she
Asks me with her chloroform
Eyes "sure, " I say
"Why not give the neighborhood
A new sport,"
Lulu's snowshoes flex and
Let go and
Before we know it
The whole district is
Placing bets on how far the
Coconuts will coast
Before falling back to earth
In flames like
Vacation-scented rockets

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Printed on mudflaps
That reek of Appalachia
It is almost heaven
Not to have you
Holding me back anymore
It's almost heaven
To forget your face
Your stupid workouts
The 300 ways you found
To never say anything
That pinched drawn unhappy look on your freckled face
I feel grateful
And I'm thankful
To be a human again
I hated the way your
Silences sauntered into a room
Ten minutes before you did
I hated the way stale I love yous
Hung around your head
Buzzing like flies on the dead
I hated the way dreams were something to be laughed at
And subsequently given up on
It's almost heaven to have mine back again
I love the way you dumped me
Through text
Like a little kid
Like Sorry this is what my mom wants
Like Sorry not sorry
I'm not sorry you left me
It is almost heaven where I'm at now
I peed outside twice
In West Virginia
And you weren't there to be embarassed
By an Appalachian woman
Who wants to have almost heaven
Every day for breakfast
And truly-loving-life-in-love-with-a-musician
This is what heaven is
Every day for lunch
And maybe just beer and a song for dinner
I'M SO HAPPY
It's almost heaven not to have you
It's heaven to feel alive again

When you wake up in the morning
And there's a note on your mug
"I didn't want to wake you"
"I left your favorite donuts on the table"
"When you sleep you make little sobbing sounds"
(And I think that's cute) is implied
To no longer be your own
To be stealing his deodorant
Because you miss his smell at work
And kitchen smells are not musician smells
And guitar strings are not
Your body
But they might as well be
Because you feel
Every
Tiny
Note
He plays
You would gladly do his laundry
For another song to fall asleep too
Many ways he kisses you
Too many places to count the stars
Too many phantom vibrations
And you think your phone is ringing
Because he just wants to talk about your day
You lose it for a minute
But it's nothing
It's the wind blowing
It's just missing someone
And you're terrified you've forgotten
The shadows his nose casts and
The dilations of his eyes
And the shapes of his words
As they meet your ears
But you look up at the moon
How it waxes
It wanes
Your love goes through phases
That bring in the tides
And wash lost shark's teeth out to sea
Your love changes daily
Loving him is often scary
You are perpetually quaking
Remembering how quickly
Sweet things dissolve in the rain
Sugar wastes enamel
Like time wastes muscle
You could fit a camel through the eye of a needle
Easier than you can handle this
Than you can wrap your head around
Caliente
Having no control
Because you cut the reins
You wanted it that way
And you forgot that fear
Taste like red wine and stale saltines
And being out of ice cream
You wanted it that way
You wanted a love story
You wanted to know that there's no such thing as control anyways
No such thing as
An autonomous heart
And you are ******
Because you could draw the shadows his nose casts
The squeeze of his ***
The way his eyes fluoresce at the sight of you
From memory
You are ****** because he is all you can think about
Past, present, future
I mean, you are seriously ******

Relax. Breathe into it.
You're a hill. You're an immovable object.
You are shaking this whole world
just by being in it.

Breathe into it.
You are going home now.
Like a forest full of birds.

I can't tell you how many times I have done this before
Sliced tomatoes with a dull santoku
My ankle bells jingle
My hips swivel
And the tip of my pinkie
Is gone
"Will this erase my fingerprint?"
I ask
"No. Only acid can do that."
Like from tomato juice
Like from chlorine in a pool
I am swimming in my own blood
Practicing flip turns
Watching it clot
And drying off
I turn a blue towel purple
It was just a tomato
It's not as bad as it looks
And it tastes even better
When I make panzanella