I've spent my morning on adjectives,
trying kindly to describe her. I couldn't make them fit. I'd lost the joy in remembering us & saw under my eyes what difference the kitchen floor made. Quite sad a way to look at something so beautiful. One heartbreak away from holiness, I'm afraid I've forgotten how to long for something. I found metaphors under the rocks I'd grown too large to hide under and sometimes it's just worth digging in dirt to find the proper use of my indignance. My not-so-subtle search for dignity. & after all the cigarettes and kicking, I made my coffee and a vow to myself. That I would leave my bones where they were from now on. That I was a woman, full of blood and empathy and feeling sorry for myself was useless. That I hadn't fallen in love after all. I'd leglessly tripped face first  & from now on, I was going to watch where I stepped.

3pm *****
a ballerina learning to slow-dance in jeans
is the stolid way you call me pretty

I've known better, never to settle
as I order another, please
I can forgive me
But we've just been kissing
& pity breeds missing you, weak

I'm never bored, never sorry
watch you pull me from the ground
much like those Macbeth witches
I could have guessed
you aren't around

but you talk like you're so sorry
only to wipe it off of your belt
Steel-toe folktale, go home
& tell it to somebody else

the heart knows what about love ?
that bleeding fiend, knows more about drums
ask my thumbs, ask my lungs

I'm holding a hand or
the back-end of the blade
& waiting, waning
away from away

We aren't made of sunsets
or cartwheel hangovers
I didn't find you standing under an apple tree & you never held me the longest
even when I prayed for it

a leftover beginning, midnight snack;
lie down under a beautiful stranger like you love her, like the air between the sweat & sheet meet my intention of a mouth doing everything at once isn't love but
somehow it's better

aren't you
sorry for leaving ?
I've dissolved like salt
because I've become it
I'm fluent now, in being silent

Paced myself over and over
breaths because I have to
naming them after you,
because I forgot what need was

flatline me another time, love
tonight so I can sleep &

these are weekends;
those are mouths meeting.
I'm going to quit calling it love
& call for a favor cause

the wave is wild like the whale
just ask her;
I'm riding all of them on
shoreline shoulders
a continent of rhetorical knuckles
buttoned toward my throat

no mercy in floating through the roof
it was never a boat that saved us
only bones
my moral roots
doing whatever you say

I've quit calling it falling
all of the
gulping that I fend

Now that I've bent all my limbs backwards
I'm having to break them all back in

buried in what I play the fool for
always the liar and then friends

dreading that I should fall asleep
knowing that this must somehow
end

always i'm
packing up my reason,
freely & giving up my time
I'm tired of
dragging this body behind me
fearing the
damage it's done on my spine

silver cup reflection
sip watcher
I'll have it, I'll take two now

let me die beside
something beautiful
even if it won't love me

& say thank you
a hundred times until tomorrow
good morning
late thought hangover
my mind can't wash it

I don't want to say
poetry
during poetry
but nothing helps, so

count down like a rocket
for something less than
a show of sparks
honey, it rains like we do it's
only March

gorgeous doesn't
do you
justice
when I just wished for the chorus
singing our lousy song, I
stayed up late with it
I
counted the sheep
they fell asleep
I'm
clutching the sheets
stop thinking there's a
Dreamgirl
quit pouring that red-cheek idea
down your throat
a few more
fast
the song should end soon
sore knee love
should end soon
professional pretender
bending blinks
more drinks, bartender
loving you gets
expensive
I'm paying with my
well-being
I'm being lied to by sunlight
cause I can't trust anything
after it leaves