it's only a little bit like a toothache when your
eyes well over in that muted, melancholy way.

i had so sorely forgotten this place
the anxiety, fresh like a cresting wave
that languid boil in my throat
the therapist tells me that I have to take deep breaths and
hold myself where it burns, tenderly
but i always end up choking myself.

limp attempts to strangle the fervent clamor
my brain revolves a harrowing dialogue,
masquerading as novel thoughts

this afternoon i stood, back to the sweat-slicked masses
my own mess of rank and fear dripping from brow to navel
tears vaporizing mid-air before they could season the eggs

and i realized in the most painful way
that the pallid, grease-burned hands stroking my neck
in some strange semblance of comfort
might as well be his,



they should have cremated him.
i ache to hold reverence on the same ground in which he rots.



you were humming between my legs while i twitched and gasped and then i burst into tears. wracking sobs, really, the kind that make my chest hitch and your mouth kept hitting my ***** bone while i shook, orgasming and crying.

i want to say a lot of things about the why, how and of course and to be honest with you and i think

but my lips are too swollen with his death. his bloated corpse is hiding in my throat, slicing up my insides, and i'm so ******* allergic, can't you see in the ways my hands flail and my eyes bulge?

all the lengths of my skin are boiling,
your validation a soothing salve
for a moment, before dissipating in my wretched heat

can't you see that this all fell into place decades ago? from the very first time you had somewhere better to be, someone else who needed your time and space, i was already burning.
so small and slight, trembling just a little bit.

it was you you YOU

all of you, now dead and rotting or just as good as




i refuse to join you.

I stepped outside and all I see is the air you left behind
The candy bars we used to eat

I close my eyes and all I see are phosphene colors
The feelings broken down in a kaleidoscope

There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I am an aberration, as you know.
I never promised you a villanelle.

You cannot trap the ocean in a shell.
You feed the roses blood to make them grow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

It does get bumpy on this carousel.
The ride is all extremes of high and low.
I never promised you a villanelle.

I was the aberration, you could tell.
I ******* my neuroses in a bow.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.

I think it's safe to say you know me well
in all my many masks, but even so
I never promised you a villanelle.

Let me pin my ragged heart to your lapel.
If it's truly what you need, I'll let you go.
There is no cure, no fix, no magic spell.
I never promised you a villanelle.

When I was six
Daddy held my tiny hand
He promised mine would stay silk
His hands were hard
From love
He walked with me
in the Tennessee mountains
While the Lady Slippers bloomed
Rare orchids
in pink and yellow
They grow wild here
He bent,
looking me in my pale eyes
And he said
"God of the mountains and wild things,
breathe,
make them dance,
for my little lady."
And they did

you scratched our initials
into the surface
of the polished wooden table
behind Redlight Redlight
with the key to my heart.

P + S.

a brief message
etched in time
for all to see.
you grinned up at me
when you'd finished,
ombré fluttering slightly
in the evening breeze,
and said, unabashedly,
"it was the first thing
that popped into to my head."

P.S.

sometimes, i still think
of how your hands clung insistently
to my windbreaker when we sat
on the pier, how our bodies
synced in quiet harmony.

She's talking about the cloth we're cut from and the scissors she used
but I'm only half listening, because
there is this pain in my jaw that comes from dreaming
and outside the house i can hear somebody speaking

She's asking about the axes I've ground and the wounds I've licked,
I can't tell her a thing and in this dream
my mouth is sewn shut and I am not strong enough to change anything

in the morning I will wonder why she comes to me,
but doesn't stay

last night the world slipped in
quietly through my window;
police sirens, car alarms,
church bells, rainstorms
collecting in a pool
on my bedroom floor,
coffee cups clinked and
kettles boiled,
babies were born and
ashes were thrown
and though I was tired
I stayed up all night listening;
the collective madness
of the world
lulled me back to sleep
and i woke with its bitter
sweet taste on my tongue;
craving more.

We live in cigarette smoke and shadows and uncontrollable laughter; in music, and in the way the wood floor creaks and shakes the whole house even when you walk lightly on it.
We live in cold basement walls and staircases lined with blue neon lights.
We live in confusion and my fingers pressing into your skin and the way you would wrap all of yourself around me while I ****** you.
We live in the ***** moments followed by the sweet ones where you would kiss my forehead and I could feel your warm body slide up against me in the middle of the night.
The most I remember of those days was bundling up in layers and walking outside through snow up to our knees just to get to Williamson road under the setting sun just so we could get a pack of cigarettes.
The sky was dark blue and it reminded me a lot of your eyes.
I remember waking up to the sound of guitars upstairs and the way you nodded your head and lost yourself in the melody of your own music.
I would watch your fingers-- the way they would pluck the cords and slide over the instrument so effortlessly.

And you look at me from across the room and for a moment, I'm at a loss for words

so I just smile.