I see my body in the night against white sheets like a dark shadow there’s a pale face in the window illuminated by the porch lights my throat’s closed up with shock so I can’t scream he’s absolute stillness eyes wide watching me the darkness all around him starts to melt and move I’m frozen in the bed
When I was little I used to have escape plans steps in my mind to play out the moment the windows break or the doorknob starts to turn I’d hide in the hamper under the clothes when I woke up from a nightmare I’d run to my mom’s room and get in her bed
Now I’m grown up so I live alone and I have nowhere to run and nobody to save me so I don’t run or scream I just lay there looking back what else can I do

i wish i could just forget it,
but christ-
there's a hook somewhere inside of me
and it's wedged in real deep.
the only way out is through
and the only way through is you
but there's only one you
and the last time we included you
was the time you got out of my car
and left me with a mouthful of
buddha says this and taoism says that
and blah blah blah i know what i'm talking about
but i don't know what i'm talking about
and you know just as well as i do
that i don't know what i'm talking about;
oneness and demons, we're all god and ego and prayer, just stop it!

you could have sat there and listened, though.

but you still got out of the car
in that construction zone with your friend
and did you look back? i don't know
you never said before you left for italy and left me
antique shopping at just the gosh-****-cutest shop
this side of the PA/DE border
don-cha-know.
i wanted to buy everything there and say
"let's have this one. let's have that one."
let's register for this one.

its just you always have a script in your head,
but i always fumble my words when they mean something,
and i can never talk about what i feel-
never say what i really believe.
maybe there's just no words for it,
definitely there's just no melody for it.

but if there was, it'd be all like...
capo on 1: amin, g, f, c.

say the word and we'll start heading home.

The woman in the waiting room
In disembodied space,
She dug a hole,
Pale,
And fell into it.

She digs holes and dances ‘round them.
She dug a hole and danced around it.
(She…
…She…
She uses gendered language)
In the next room they try to fill holes by digging them.
She tells them this is backwards.
You will just make a larger hole.
In the farthest room someone sits across from you, telling you how to feel.
But all things become lost in the hole

All things but the pale

Underside of a leaf floating atop an unnatural calm
Wind
Or water
And the pale face
Standing atop the bridge
Drinking in the cold,
dark,
space
reserved for the unborn.
She cannot enter it;
The hole will not go deep enough
This time.

I am waiting for the moment where I pivot and all that I can envision now is a blacktop and white dotted lines, maybe lanes of rolling white whipped green churning pinwheels going long down the road with a stalk of cud in my mouth can I ever go and unthink like the caramel burnt stained car chair that I rest in as a finger comprised of ash that will collapse in any second and Im telling you its beautiful to let go and see the small blue insects mixed up in a whirlwind of gray flecking flickers that you may capture with a white plastic bag it reads “shoprite” you remember times at the a&p; that was ay-em-*** to toddlers who were smarter to not distinguish between what seems and what is according to the strangers who walk the street, seem foreboding, and yet retreat indoors to steak dinners and why weren’t the tater’s in the oven at half passed six? Maryellen. I told you. I told you patriarchal. I sing from my molehill. My mother always fixed me a cherry pie told me I had the nose of a rodent and so I found my fathers gun, JOhny, white America, puh, would you think I’m on drugs because twenty-one and throw up when looking like chalk smeared on top of cheeks, these bones are feeling a bit decayed wont you examine what you’ve done to…who are you? And nowhere it goes. Nowhere it goes. I sit here im ****** you think it’s a joke but this blurb is worth
Less
Bag of blue sanddollars
Dipped in wax
With a wick
And a pick
A guitar string
And a tick-
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick


Give it a lick
Peanut butter off a stick
I dunno whats to do or did
But theres a whole lot of mess out there
And we all are using it to smear messages in the listless purple filaments that cloud the sky

I’ve heard admonishments and thin mints in girl scout boxes ive eaten around glass patio tables with blue waters squarely pooled im sure your hair gel is swelling the heart of some hungry shewolf who will nibble or bite or swallow you, I do not know which one is which. But ive heard laments about nations and ignorance and I’m not sure who is more to blame or what could be a solution but to speak largely and loudly id need a microphone and a lot of ears or no a telescope and a broadcaster or better yet digital tools and the internet. Communication is the sopping soggy wet piece of bread that floats in my milk bowl and by the time my orange kitty paws move at it, the loose and expanded bits disintegrate and sink. A sink has a drain that gets clogged and we all must stare at it until it is cleaned and if I’m not the one cleaning my drain then who is the one cleaning my waste?

What did I pause about the other day- was it at the kitchen table? I think so- I was sitting down next to my fluorite crystal- something occurred to me- it was a pleasant thought, I remember, something a bit marvelous, I winked at my pretty little stone and she winked back. Oh! I think it was sparked from Arundhati Roy’s novel God of Small Things. Or no, I think it was the smell of spring wafting through the window that transported me to sweet grass-stained jeans at six. (How Consciousness can subvert Time! Making past present, making present eternal and infinite- undermining order imposed and idealized- tirelessly trying to give itself, but faltering before the closed fist of human conquest). Or perhaps it was the language and sensation simultaneous that lifted from within me this deep affection- for what, I do not know. For everything and nothing, I suppose. For all that is and all that be—and all that must cease to be.