Before I could connect the dots
They became like stars
And sat on your cheeks
Painting the universe with scars.
Taking me to a place
Where rain drops elate
And sun dries the fields
Where the great trees yield
Seeds of yesterday's blessings.
Do you know knuckles tighten
Tears swell and bloom,
And vessels seem to cringe
When your name,
Like a knife
Is thrown across the room.
I hate the sour taste of resent on my tongue,
And the emptiness of words
Like the songs never sung.
You, like a cloud, hang too low
Like last night when they pried
So I swallowed the tears to let it go,
Heavy with regret.
Each one of my bones has your initials etched
And probably my forehead too
Because everyone seems to draw a line between me and you
Thicker then it ever grew on your side of the fence.
The truth behind us is as simple as flames,
One always burns faster, and nothing's to blame
But it's 5 pm and my hands have moved on
To someone else's back
And you may hold her hair back for a moment on your bed
But she will never understand the
Mountains in your mind
Or try to climb to sunrise and understand the lies
Like I did one Sunday morning.
I hope she never loves you
Because you deserve nothing more then the sting of the sea you refuse to walk along with me.

The words are inside
Struggling to come out

That's just a metaphor
For what this poem's about

So keep marching little soldier
Because those old men's time has come

Gay, straight, who gives a ****?
Find your joy, go get some

I feel invisible
Yet you claim(ed) I am the air you breathe
And perhaps like air I am always present,
But presently forgotten

The heaviness of your hush is crushing me with empty blows
This silence leads me to wander down a path cloaked in a heavy mist
That whispers harsh truths such as:
Our hopeless, fictitious, drawn out infatuation is like
A library book that was checked out last March
You underlined and doggie-paged the first few chapters
And then left it on your shelf to collect dust all of April and May

I foolishly kept begging you to finish the book
Read the last sentence
Take time to skim over the epilogue
Please
Find your way to the back cover

I foolishly ignored your “I can’t”s

And now it’s late August and our love is long overdue,
In the opposite sense of what the phrase typically means

I write with angry lead because
I am too stubborn to admit I just filled a trash bin with tissues
And that the cuffed sleeves of my flannel
Are damp like grass’s morning dew

I have so much more to say,
Although I cannot find the words
To say anything more than



You should’ve written.

Because two weeks of nothing
Was enough for me to realize that you are just a passing breeze
Seldom present, presently becoming something of the past.

My mom was physically and sexually abused for
Eight years of her childhood
His name was Richie, the boyfriend of her
Mother, she kept him in the
Picture for eight whole years
And let her three young daughters have their
Childhood stolen for a man with
Too many belts

My mom was six when he entered the "family"
And fourteen when she left with a plan,
Never to talk to her mother again, but
Today my mother told me why we always
Visited Grandma when she became sick,
She told me
God made us to be forgiving, so she turned her
Hate into sorrow and
Belt marks into
Scrabble games around the dinner table

Every night we say a prayer
Hoping Grandma is in a better place, but
Tonight I can't help but stutter over
The words I barely mean because
God made us to be forgiving
But eight years is a long time
Lost

Sitting on the dock smoking those stupid cigarettes
A half smile on your lips I fell in love
As the wind blows and howls
The lighter refuses to spark
So we huddled together
Hoping to nurse it to a blaze
Physically closer than we ever had been before

And as the lighter catches and you inhale deeply
I shrug and reach for one myself
Because in that moment you had stepped away
And i wanted you back in close
So I lit it, we sat together
Any doubts in my mind about my health
Erased by the rapid beating my heart felt

Arm in arm we talked the night away
Waiting for the sunrise
Two lonely souls now together
Bonded over a ritual as old as time itself
Yet still as magic as the day it was discovered
And when I looked over and asked you for another light
Our mouths were kissing; the world was right

The first time I kissed you, you felt like home. I kissed you again and again, all over until we realized at the same time and much too late that you’d had too much to drink. I would have kissed you when you left, too, but I was shy and you were beautiful and sometimes it’s scary on your first night in a new house.


You started a fire and I got there too late to put it out, to tell you I’m sorry they don’t understand and I’m sorry I don’t know your every crevice quite yet. The second time I kissed you, you welcomed me home and said sorry, I’m sorry that you don’t know how it started or where I put the lighter after I lit our home ablaze. 


I spent my heart pouring water on the embers of a grease fire that I thought was wood-burning. You threw sparks at me when I tried to tame the heat of your coals because I didn’t know how. The third time I kissed you, I called the old tenant and asked her how because I didn’t want to light myself with your manic flame. 


The fire turned to ash and the house got cold when I let myself in to rooms I hadn’t seen before. I used bobby pins to unlock the door instead of asking for the key; I suppose I should have known the abandoned nooks would have chilled the whole house. The fourth time I kissed you, your lips were blue and your eyes were open and I knew the flames were gone and I wasn’t sure I was glad. 


I don’t know when our house fell down. I was wrapped up in your eyes and how they don’t change when you smile at me when I looked around to find the walls on the ground and the roof blown away. The last time I kissed you, you said goodbye instead of goodnight and left me at the bus stop to find another home.