in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light, i
treasure you.
the sole familiar thing.

an old, cloying taste
clings to my mouth.
i think you are sleeping.
i know? you are sleeping.
i awoke to silence filled by your silence.
i know you are sleeping;
i felt loved by your silence, still.

i know this is love i imagine for myself in the ways i need it most;
i know how this goes.

in the early morning hum,
in the beat of the drum of the white noise and the misplaced light,
i allow myself to feel a very real fear that you
will be everything i needed
and almost everything i want.

and so in preparation,
a separation:
i shift and twitch and shiver until i am at once here
and not,
until i am at once here
and in the moment,
some way down the line,
that old, cloying taste magnified,
when all comes to pass as i knew it would and i can say
“i knew it would.”
i know how this goes.

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and i, the one to new york.
when sleep greets me and leans my head
gently
against the window pane,
i will let it come.
i will let it try to fill your absence
in ways i know to be short-lived, for naught,
but i will let it try.

i will miss you when i wake up,
miss the silence that i thought you crafted for me,
but which was really just
silence.
i will miss you when i wake up as i miss you when you are next to me.
i want, for us, something infinite:
that which we cannot have and which you do not want,
hard as i wish you did.

but.
the sun rises —
i know how this goes —
and the misplaced light finds its place again.
the silence i thought you crafted for me, which was really just
silence,
becomes noise.
hectic. colorful without order.
i will miss you when i wake up,
but what ache is strong enough to pull something personal
from all that noise?

you take the morning bus to secaucus,
and somewhere in new york i try to live a life as though you have already left me.
if i had my way,
hopeful, futile grasps towards the infinite would not hold ample weight for a haunting.

and yet,
that old, cloying taste.

still.

(a.m.)

too safely tucked under
too neatly folded skin,
as if it will never be worn again.

grow out of it,
it was said.
i might
i can
would i?

these embroidered butterflies on the white blouse
wings-
fluttering, putrid
thoughts
like a runaway train
no destination, and no hint of stopping
afraid that i'd spit out words i was
afraid to say

a spaghetti-strapped tank top
with nothing left under my sleeves
and calls were answered
and among echoes i lay
and try to recall who i was the day before

bold prints, too bold
you know what they say,
a leopard never changes its spots.
true, i wished.
and if i could catch these fleeting moments,
i would
and i would tell you
that it was real

in nothing i felt most comfortable
and nothing i felt
no one will stay
not even i.

drew maps to places i would bring no one to
and out of the sins committed
i wished someone plundered
these mounted trophies
i'd created and soon destroy
the belief that these goodnight kisses i find in the morning
were planted by the taxidermist

some days, i don't do my laundry.
i know it's simple, one two three.
instead, eight nine ten steps,
pick up this little black dress.

it's uncomfortable, but it's not.

let me please my demons once more.

after all,
they are the only ones i could speak to
after every one has went to bed.

my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something
i should already know.
and when she says it,
the shift inside me is something i wish i could compare
to the grinding of tectonic plates,
if only i were strong enough to bring about an earthquake.

but since i am a stranger even to aftershocks,
i keep quiet.
my earthquake is stillborn,
expressed instead as a nod,
as a chewing of the lip,
as a silent, compliant “mhm.”
and the urge that nestles itself at the pit of my stomach
is not an urge to disagree;
it is an urge to forget.

because my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something i should already know,
and she says it in a way that is not meant to make me feel incomplete,
but it is a way that still does,
and if i can forget this,
even for a moment,
i can forget that i am not okay.

i do not like not being okay;
i do not like having problems,
and my psychiatrist,
she tells me i have holes in me and she says it
as though it is a problem.

and so begins a slow disintegration:
i become but a bearer of problems,
a garden growing only weeds —
something in need of fixing.
i see myself a war-torn landscape,
dry and cracked and lacking life.
i see myself the kind of ground you step on and say,
“remember when things used to grow here?
remember when it used to be green?”

i am still trying to be green,
always trying to be green,
but my psychiatrist tells me
i have holes in me,
and suddenly green becomes a color i will never know how to paint.

outside my psychiatrist’s office,
on the wall of the waiting room,
there is a painting of flowers —
irises and a geranium —
and the leaves, i know, are supposed to be green,
but the paint is old and faded
and they don’t look it.

and for a moment,
i think
that maybe,
whether iris
or geranium
or boy riddled with holes,
maybe it is possible to bloom
even if you are not green.

(a.m.)

I SLAMMED THE DOOR SO HARD, THAT IT COULD HAVE FALLEN OFF IT'S HINGES,
THE SAME WAY I COLLAPSE TO MY KNEES SOMETIMES.
I SLAMMED IT WITH THE KIND OF FORCE THAT IT  TAKES ME TO LOVE, AND GOD KNOWS I LOVE WITH THE POWER OF EARTHQUAKES AND TORNADOS COMBINED.