ecstatic, lateral / irrational longing
ticktock time bomb waiting for your
slack to tighten, get back to me

whiskey-stung bottom lip under
white sheets and thunder
hollow hands hold out heavy-
drowned secrets from my left lung
make the nights last longer
make the air even against the thought of what you sing when I'm leaving

recount the loudest bouts from which I crumble
worship one thigh at a time, my god
why don't they come with a warning;
the morning put stones on my bowing
another good reason to kiss you
another's lost lover, ocean story
red-wave cravings
I'll pay in great shades of grey & plunder
shave my legs and go
right back under

sunburnt stitches girl
you're early grasp I'm
itchy grass
& I can't, I'm mad
I can't I can and cannot stand
how it still goes
I keep quiet I
still walk barefoot on this shell-sharp sand
still crawl through the memory of your legs
back of the head regret, on top of another body
it's just coffee it's just
time after time
never the right amount of miles

I want to
stop loving you now
cause sometimes
I wish I could scream the word out loud
use your name
so they know all of these were always to you

you're about as
quiet as lightning
& just as much ;
you put the light in it
I'm counting down from two-thousand,
slowly
quitting breakfast and everything early
that bird can keep it like:
what am I supposed to do if I can't have you
what kind of a sudden is it breathing cause I have to \
****** the gasps I caught you stealing-
Saturday mourning on Wednesday's feelings
saying
I like Monday cause, Friday's fleeting

I own the rest of my hair, you know
you own my body
I'm as open as the screen-door you broke
& you did handstands for someone else already
otherwise I'd listen, cause
I can't find the lyrics in splitting
can't find the best in bleeding
that love was airplane-waiting
that love was
silent begging, restless leg\
restless blinking
rip the
day out my weeks baby
till all I keep lie sleeping

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