My father walked me down the aisle,
But my mother held my arm.
He went with me,
But we went not towards the altar,
But towards the door.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And the ***** rang through the church,
Humming through the elaborate crown molding,
Carved by my ancestors.

He went,
Not beside me,
But before me,
And I watched,
As he was illuminated by the bright,
Overbearing,
Texas sun.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But I did not wear white.
My father walked me in silence,
And I shed tears not for a man standing at the altar,
But for the one I would never see again.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And no veil obscured my face.
All eyes were upon me, but not for my pristine beauty,
Instead for my clenched jaw and furrowed brow,
Severe and fierce to distract from my glassy eyes.

My father did not leave me at the end of our walk to sit beside my mother.
She clung to me for support and sobbed breathlessly,
Loudly,
Unavoidably,
And I carried her with one hand,
My sister the other,
And walked towards my future.
A future family,
Not one person more,
But one person less.
I walked,
One final time,
With him.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And I will never forget it.
Hundreds of eyes isolating my family from the crowd,
Slow and muffled sounds drowning in the deafening beat of my heart,
Blurred faces staring,
Black heels clacking against the cobbled path from the church,
The anguished wails of my mother,
The whimpering of my sister,
And the wooden box that glided before us,
Pulling,
A string tied to our patriarch,
The pin key of our family,
Pulled taut and then snipped with the slam of the hearse doors.

My father walked me down the aisle,
Before I had a chance to grow up.
He walked me,
Out of the church,
Away from the altar,
Never to be walked again.

After you
I became a graveyard
Full of memories
No one else wanted to visit
In an unused plot of land
There is an unwatered flower bed
In another there is a broken headstone
That looks like a shattered mirror
Unanswered questions float around with no place to rest
And every night when the sun sets I want you to return
I want you to come and see
That without you there is nothing left
Without you
Every embrace will be bereft

A good way to feel lonely
is to drive the highways at night.
Fall in love like the headlights
that never touch,
only pass by,
feel like writing poetry
about the margins
that define missed connections.

Go home and make
as little noise as possible,
turn the lights off behind you.
You know how to make it look like
you were never here.
You think this
is a sad thing to be good at.

A good way to breathe
is to wake before the sun
and swim in the chlorinated pool,
partitioned and glassy,
think about brushing elbows
with the body in the lane next to
yours just to
see if you’re still solid.
You know you are less dense
than water. These days it feels
as if someone could pass a hand straight
through you.

Pull yourself out of the lane
and pad to the showers,
scour away the clamminess
with steam and liquid soap,
think about all the lives that intersect
in locker rooms and sit
in silence for a few minutes
just to listen.
You like the way the words echo,
just in case you missed them
the first time.
You always miss
them the first time.

A good way to escape
is to order packages from stores
you’ve never heard of,
diagrammed and backlit, fall in love
with the mystery of receiving.
Feel the calendar days
like empty spaces, hollow and aching,
missing parts of your body that can only
be filled by the miracles about to arrive
in the mail.

The postman crunches steadily
up the driveway, gravel
buried in the treads of his
boots. You think this is beautiful, to
carry pieces of where you’ve been
like last night’s spinach
in your teeth. Shameful and secret. Dark
and delightful. Something not everyone
is capable of loving. Lock
eyes like hands,
thank him as he turns away.

Think about
asking him to shake out his
boots, so all the roads
he’s seen can stay
even after he leaves.
You need
less things to leave.

A good way to mourn
is to write poetry at night,
chasing a tail that tastes like
mixed metaphors and
melancholia,
you have told your story
so many different ways
and none of them
have ever made him love you.  

Think about memorizing
his handwriting
and using it as your own.
Write grocery lists that could be his
and taper your signature to lines
so sharp they pierce and wound.
If you’re going to use his hand,  
make it hurt.

The curves of these letters
do not belong to you.
Your hands are so broken
they can do nothing but miss him,
and there are suddenly too many
teeth in the sickle of your smile.
This may be one fight you never seem
to stop losing and I know most nights
the lines of his shoulders cut like knives
but believe me,
this is the most exquisite
way to bleed.
If you’re going to hurt,
make it poetry.

i want to scream out poetry
that feels like swallowing rocks
when you hear it

I don't know who I am,
I don't know what I am,
I don't know what to do,
I don't know what to be,
All I know is,
When you left you took something with you,
Something that made me feel like I knew things,
Something that allowed certainty to flow through my veins,
You took something,
And now I don't know what it was.

Caught inbetween each moment and the next
riding the one highway to death
sure we wave, but its always goodbye
even when it seems like we just said hello.

we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread