You are... what? Thirty?
I'm twenty three and full of
******* and pure charm.

You were drunk enough,
didn't care about *******
on your period.

Barely there, yet soft,
so soft you felt like velvet.
Grabbed your stomach and

asked, "Do you like this?"
Sober, sober, sober, I
said with a smile, "Yes."

Tracing shapes
My hands
Feel cold
Car seats
Rides
Outside
My makeup is
Too thick
And your
Mind
Is choking
Your sense
Mutual desire
But singular
Pleasure
Depression
On both ends

“black velvet
Petunia,
coming of age.
Early-blooming
Petals spread eagle
on the bed.”
|| shoo.shu ||

Because when you held my hand and said I was pretty I thought I loved you,
and when you kissed my neck and spread my young legs I thought I loved you,
but when I told the nurse that I had fallen down the stairs a third time, I realized I didn't love you.
I just thought I did, like I thought I loved history class when i really preferred science.
and you, you thought you loved me but really you loved the way I withered underneath you.
because finally someone other then you, was begging for mercy.

Two o'clock sober
might still be hungover
you're begging for my tongue while I beg for your love.
I never thought I'd love like this,
one-sided and founded on ever unstable lust. I shouldn't even call this love,
I think it's love and I think you're just in it for a ****. Writing
poems about you is "hard" because I can't admit
what I can't bring myself to say out loud. You told me your secrets
and I swallowed the seeds, letting your admissions
bloom inside of me.
How could I have been so stupid? I should have known
you would plant a garden just to leave.
Girls made of gardens wither without affection
I must not be your favorite flower. I don't think I ever was
but you keep coming around just to see my petals unfold
every spring and I let you leave dew drops all over me

We've done this before. Lines and rows of blooming pinks and red,
scratches, finger prints, bruises, hickeys, marks that fade
after a few days. No matter how many days it's been, weeks, months
we find our way back to the patch of wildflowers
where we first decided to make love.
There will always be changes to the scenery and
I can't think of anyone else that I would plant myself anywhere with.
One of us is always leaving but somehow the wind blows us back home.

I'm not religious anymore but the Ten Commandments
seared inside of my psyche flash
before my eyes and I hear myself repeating
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
while I make myself ****** to the pictures you sent me. One night,
I wrote everything about you that I idolized in big letters on lined paper
and ripped it into squares. I twisted the paper bits
into your godly shape and whispered
your name as I dropped you into a floral candle and let the flame
eat your tiny body. Have you ever felt crazy?
Have you ever been so in love that it makes you crazy?
Until you've made a lover into an effigy
and tried to force your passion for them to rest
by cremating their paper remains
I don't know if you understand how close love and crazy really are.

I swear. I swear, I'm done.

But I'm not done. I pretend to forget
the way your name feels for a while, I pretend to idolize
other things but when you appear
uninvited to my dreams I can't forget the things I've seen. You kiss
my forehead as midday sun
settles on my skin and a garden of roses
start to bud where you've planted love. You pick the most precious one
and when you cut the stem I **** awake, facing the candle
where I tried to destroy what I thought of you. I don't know
why I see you everywhere and I don't know why
I keep asking questions that I'll never have the answers to.

Once you're actually here my laugh bubbles
from my throat and chrysanthemums and lilacs and daisies
fly out. When you kiss me I swear I feel ivy
entwining itself into my hair and my eyelashes grow tuberose.
I bloom with you and when you leave I become winter, waiting for you
to tend me. Every day with you is spring
and I know exactly how fast the seasons change. "Thou shalt not covet"
but god, I want you
I want you to trust me with everything and I want you to sow more seeds.
I can't tell you the last time I read my bible,
I thought it didn't have a hold over me anymore but I want you
to choose me and I don't want
to feel like I'm setting myself up for heartbreak anymore.

I've been thinking
about touching you
for so long
And now that I am
it feels euphoric

Your skin,
as soft as
I remember it

I melt into your words. I catch the flame
flickering on my bookshelf
where I burned your likeness and look into your eyes
flashing my most devilish smile.
You're back in my room and you've covered my body with sticky honeysuckles
and forget-me-nots. You, imperfect as anyone else but I see you
like you're some walking god. You, human as me. Your hands
left prints of hibiscus on my skin and when you leave
I open my diary to the page where I pressed cherry blossoms and maple
leaves and they fall as I write about how happy I am to see you.

"I just don't think that men like you like women like me who have moonstone eyes and crazy day dreams, women who dot their poems with inky pearl tears, pressed poplar leaves and, well, I wanted to write you a poem but I can’t think of any creative words. I want you to read how beautiful you make me, how your eyes drink me in, how I overflow for you. I want you to feel the conflict in my heart... so rarely that I see you but every time we reunite we are even better than the last. I don't know if you want to read it but I want to write you a poem. I want to write you a poem that makes you cringe because I write with honesty. I want you to feel the rhythm of my words the way we feel the rhythm of our bodies. You should be happy to inspire someone’s poetry. You, you don’t love me. And that’s fine, because I’ll always look back at you and see sunshine streams on your skin."

My room is all white and pink, floral print and my African violet.
You look perfect in the rosy glow
of my feminine sanctuary and I feel so appealing,
I trust you enough to show you everything, I say, luxuriating the words in the sunlight.
I want to absorb this moment to keep me warm. When I lay alone
thinking of drifting to sleep in your arms, it is this moment
with you around me,
the way you kiss my face like I mean something to you
and this is the place I go, when I swear
all of this means nothing to you. Doesn't everyone want to feel home?
Maybe I think being with you feels like the kind of home
with a nice garden I want to live in. Maybe you feel it too.

Maybe I'm reading too far into everything
and not saying enough of anything
maybe both of us say nothing hoping the other will
be the one to admit the feeling
but you, as soon as you leave and I tell myself I’m done. Swearing
I've burned up the last of you, I’ll never do it again.

I can't stop thinking about you

And I'm back thinking about you, too.

I know why the little girl cries
Because there were so many planes, it blocked out the skies
The bombing and raiding of the island side
Where the planes and the boats and the people collide
A place and time where so many died
I know why the little girl cried

I know why the little girl cries
Running away from it all with a disguise
All of her friends and family, packed up and gone
Taken to a camp, never seeing the morning dawn
A place and time where so many died
I know why the little girl cried

I know why the little girl cries
Because the bomb was dropped with no denies
Two cities fell and not a soul survives
All to the purpose, that so the nation thrives
A place and time where so many died
I know why the little girl cried

I know why the little girl cries
Because the troops marched so hard that the ground subsides
Through the blood and the sweat and the tears they all fought
Destroying everything in their path with the entire world caught
A place and time where so many died
I know why the little girl cried

I know why the little girl cries
To escape all the pain and the struggle and lies
She cried so hard that the little girl died
And now the whole world knows why, the little girl cried

The first time you kissed me, flowers bloomed;
From my heart unfurling, lilies, roses, fragile
things, so gentle and so new, so sickly
sweet, they clogged my veins with
scent, and wrapped their vines
around my heart.  I still feel
them now, slowly wilting
away to nothing, slowly
dying and decaying,
these little buds
of something
gone.

I remember the first time she said it.
I was fixing a bike for the kid upstairs.
It was in a soft voice almost a whisper.
She said " I love you honey."
I was dumbfounded.
Getting oil from the bike chain
all over my shirt.
Say it again
I whispered please
say it again.
"I love you"
she uttered quietly.
I looked at her
so unsure of herself
almost quivering in fear of
my unknown response.
But there was something
about her that grasped my heart
and I knew I would want
to hear her say it forever.
Then she got braver
I Love You. I Love You, I Love you
she shouted at full voice.
Like the words had been
on her tongue for a long time.
waiting to be said.
waiting to be heard.