do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

Antarctic stares from Arizona eyes; white knuckles, heavy blue pores.
No, nothing changed you anymore.
Rapid touches to the abdomen, the sound of violins breathed in your mind
and he's not usually like this, you said, "He's actually really kind."

What didn't **** you, left you broken.
And you had misspoken, as your words slurred into tears that never fell,
after a fifth of alcohol and half a night of hell,
as you revealed that you thought without him you were nothing at all.
You whispered this
while I cried to you for the last time through a cellular call,
through an invisible, static, insurmountable wall.  
And I disagreed because I had seen it all:
heavy blues and brave bloodshot brown eyes,
"Please don't, I think there's more to you than you realize."

My heart dressed in polka dots and dark shades
Hair and hurt sitting on shoulder blades
Across rose-colored skin,
I brush my fingers over bumps and scarred perfection.

Dance with me in a pit of quicksand, rockabilly babe
And help me understand that I don't need to be afraid

We are children with short attention spans
and short term parents,
and it's apparent, in this short span of time,
I love you.

Drinking summer skin,
I hear the voices in the night sky
I'm a slave to the darkness around the stars,
and I can't remember why

One, two, twenty-three percocet in my soul.
Ambulance lights breathing throughout the mist.
Pump my stomach like the sawed-off shotgun
that I was too afraid to use,
because what if I 'miss'?
What spectrum of desolation to be traced with lips;
to kiss away the desire to exist.

Mirrored reflection injection causes the resurrection of my imperfection.
I see me for who I am, who I was, and who I won't be.
It's the collection of
my eyes dilating and my knees speculating their arrival
to the blue and white tiling disguised as neo-survival.
My mind is evaporating. My body begins to convulse.
I am a ghost in a machine. I am without a pulse

beware when you fall in love
with an artist
be it a painter, a singer, or poet

for the artist will
paint you
with strokes and hues
in shapes of every kind

sing about you
with heartbreak lyrics
and feelings which rhyme

write about you
with the simplest words
and a secret message she wants to say

beware of the artist,
and her love
one wrong move
and you're an artwork in her display