you are a bird painting another bird as it flies off the page
magnifying the moon, a white smear across the face of the sky
beaming directly upon the cream colored paper
as your brush draws inspiration from the violin around your neck
and ink from the half-full vial of poison on the floor
we all look the same in the dark, the walls curve upwards steadily
another bird pecks food from the checkered tile
another bird flies to the window where there is no glass
your palette rests on the table and rainwater drains
onto it in blobs of red, blue, and yellow
nights revolve in imaginary loops; bare feet, feathers, words
half for me, half not for me, but for the other version of you
keeping my hands to myself as you sit on the edge of your seat
still painting the birds to freedom, black on black in the distance
how do i tell you i love you when i say it every day?
i didn’t mention it at the time but the nest was gone from the bridge
and yet you continue creating wings and beaks
and everything is good when i’m with you,
everything is satiated inside me, and everything is a different time again
this world has one sky that will last a thousand years
two miles high and ten long outside
but infinite within us both as we traverse it.
this is the creation of the birds.

Letting new heads sprout from my chest,
Each cloaked in green—
Another way to give myself away;
Vicious dreams of a fever of wispy hair grasped
In my closed fist, attached to a pale head
Nearing death
Gathering alternate faces

Two doors behind me
Heaving behind the cobblestones
Ending the same as before

Put a vial of poison, half-full, and
Syringes, tick-tocking, into my basket
You believe me to be an illusion
Coming from somewhere else
How do I tell you
Orange walls are everywhere?
Leaving the psychologist’s
Office with my infinite masks and multiple personas
Guiding me onward
I question my memories
Staircases remind me of how I befriended radical thoughts
To show you
Something

Of course there are ominous bells
Fitted in the doorway
For someone to ring
Isolated in their thoughts
Crying in a hundred different mirrors
Expecting another one tomorrow

you cut your bangs and now you look just like my mom did when she was your age

and even glancing at you feels like leaping backward in time, like gaining

a year but losing space on the surface of my fingertips; blades of grass interwoven

through my hair as i sit up suddenly. you cut your bangs

and you look like my mom, which is ironic, and

there is no echo without a wall, so do i remember this moment?

the smoke alarm beeps occasionally because it’s running out of battery

but i don’t have a ladder to fix it, i don’t have a ladder

and the echo rings. impossible to describe the noise of

something i am still hearing.

functioning on no sleep, or lots of it, so are you; and your bangs

whisper to me about the caskets of golden days ringing false

and, oh god, you look like my mom.

I sit on the white bench under the willow tree near the funeral home.
I miss the haunted house, light blue like my childhood home used
to be, and I think, can I visit? and where shall I stay?
The picket fence was broken, you mended it; someday I will return
only to bend it again. Thinking of you all the while.
Thinking of you at Hy-Vee stealing someone else’s groceries
from their cart because I told you I liked to rebel,
and you listened, and we both understood
why we wanted to take the apples we wouldn’t eat.
Ants spilling from the ripe fruit as we bit into it,
like dawn, like perpendicular lifelines.
And all this is imaginary, like the blank playing card
you found on the ground in front of a different person’s house;
but I think about it like it’s true.
I’m at a funeral home, after all. And I swear,
I must have conjured you out of the dark. The stars splintered, the
moon split open; fingertips sinking
steadily into lunar grooves, lattices, plaits of long black hair.
I pulled you from the silver dust— breath to bone. And I love you,
but I miss you all the same, for we were made from the same stardust;
we passed each other before we slipped out of collective conscious into the human race.
And the sky ends six times before I get up from the bench. And I knock
six times on the front door before passing through it.
Wrapped in a black cloak. Accustomed to the taste
of ice as it is handed to me in small plastic cups,
brought to me as I lay in a hospital bed; everything pale, sallow,
the nurses gazing absently with pity on their faces. And I chew my ice.
And I will come back to the funeral home, to the haunted house, to you.
I will come back.

i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
my mother’s many
miscarriages
i imagined her
weeping, kneeling
over her womb
laid out on a stretcher
above her
no longer feeling
a small heartbeat
bouncing around
the silence of
her tongue
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
the fact that i was
sitting here looking
at birds
as my mother’s
daughter flew
as if there
were a sun in the room
and i cried
as if she could
feel my tears inside
of her
like my tiny fingers
and feet
when i was in
her beautiful
stomach
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
the event
of being born
i do not remember
my birth
nor does
the doctor
whom i cannot claim
to have never met
hands scored
with disinfectant
touching my newborn
body
delicate
i grew up to
tell people i
was born in texas
and they tell me
all about texas
and i learn more
than i would had
i not been born
there, had
i not lived elsewhere
a box
of tissues on
the nightstand
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
how i was a
completely new
person to her
(my mother)
when i was born
and does
a parent ever
truly know the
stranger they created?
so i sat
and wondered
all the while
my mother
in a car
reassuring my every
turn, dodging roadkill
flies on the antlers
more carcasses
than yellow lines
on the road
i saw a bluebird
and a cardinal
out the window
and i thought of
my mother and i
and how are we?
and how many?

there is nothing to do in this small, small town
rain falls smoothly
a store closed when i wasn’t here
and a new pizza place opened
i’ve never eaten there
but i’m told it’s good
or awful, i don’t remember what they said
god, i need to get out of my head
it’s killing me
and i want to shoot myself inside the art gallery
i just want to die poetically
there’s no other way to go since
i’m not alive anymore

Many of our cells
are not long-lived,
or lasting or permanent
in any way

(although some are there
for a lifetime)

Consequently, sometimes
cells self-destruct
and die
in a controlled and orderly way
preventing the spread
of damaged (or unwanted, or abnormal) cells

(this is a normal part
of an organism’s growth
or development)

It is essential, in fact
(this programmed cell death)
to an organism’s health

And it is natural
but it is not a complete
or total death
(which is also
a natural process)

This is called
apoptosis.

stars on the ceiling
missing out on
the florid and melodramatic twilights outside
the stars out there are gold and glorious like
goddesses with their disguises flung off
assuming their true celestial homes
similarly,
my body and soul are two separate entities
that remain six feet apart from one another
knocked apart by the explosion that killed who i used to be

gentle wind
cold as we sit, and i pull my sleeves up over my palms
as a barrier to the world
it’s a glitch
—a habit i’m still failing to break
the good key lies in the soul of the one who holds that key
i am all locked up now
just how it looks
like tree trunks in the snow
sleek and readily fanciful
i want to push them all down the hill

except, in appearance, they are firmly wedded to the ground
and they are individuals
but the only thing that hasn't changed already is the train tracks by her house
and those planks of wood are collectively sorrowful
who even understands what a goodbye means these days?
it’s a glitch

i’m the one who put ribbons around the white necks of the public doves

i saw
a track without a train
but does that mean
it’s changed?
trolley problem except the people are dead at the start
which ones do you save?
glitch

it’s a glitch
it’s broken pearls and hammers all day
“she’s making wings again
wooden wings
—they won’t fly”
but you can’t stop me from jumping off the roof,
you know i have to try

it’s a glitch, it’s just a glitch

still tucking myself into closets and cupboards and slow-cooking pots of rice
i make endless cups of coffee and dump most of them in my front yard
my soulmate watches from the window
but one day i will find the thing that doesn’t change
i’ll catch the garment that the moon will shed and wear it like a shroud
invisible rainbow all the time
like mistaken, fawn-colored beauty; or a blind rage

yellow sign
private property
someone just beyond, screaming obscenities
bubblegum on silver

tell me how to balance my life
talking, nearly falling from the tree
by the elementary
still tucking myself into old schoolbooks and pencil sharpeners and washed-away chalk
i am a domino on an altar
quartz in the mouth
i remind myself to roll up my sleeves again

so artfully taken away, my smithereens
the gifts i laid at the feet of the dead queen
it felt like
a glitch
a calf at the wooden fence, flies milling around the eyes
a familiar face among passerby
a picket sign that reads “**** the rich”
broken pearls, hammers, long sleeves
a glitch

just how it looks
like tree trunks in the snow
sleek and readily fanciful
i want to push them all down the hill
a glitch if they let me
it’s a glitch

I sat at an old poet’s desk with blank paper in front of me
As she reread his text
It was as if we were whales in the dark
Singing above the telephone wires
And neither of us could feel the water around us

I sat at an old poet’s desk with blank paper in front of me
As she reread his text
Trying to coax flames from a lighter, sparks
To set everything in the world on fire
When it happens my palms will have been covered in dust

I sat at an old poet’s desk with blank paper in front of me
As she reread his text
She got up and went into the closet
When her phone rang she made it sound dire
I wasn’t good enough to be the supportive friend

Later, she asked how soundproof the wall was, I said I heard nothing
And she sighed with relief
But I had been staring at the ceiling
Listening to her crying quietly
And it was ironic, neither of us slept that night

I sit at an old poet’s desk with this paper in front of me
And I kind of want to die
Because the world is drifting apart
And the fractals are raining from the sky

Continue to act within these walls, infinite in time as we console ourselves
Pack up the sun and dismantle the moon
The clouds are a cold, thick gauze above all of us and our misplaced empathy
And my tears are a continuation of the sky and the rain,
The only affluence in this barren decadence.
I stand upon the quay, see the fish swimming as if they are free—
Only ten feet away.

i am still thinking about how i live by a cemetery without a fence
and a sign advertising cremation
you said you’re not sure what to think of that
but this is how you know me,
this is how i let myself be known
starved and dying and silhouetted
against something i don’t own
like the sky or the trees or my gravestone

i think you should know that i love you, or used to love you, or will love you
i think you should know about the incisions
three over your heart and around it
like erosions of faith

i will fold into you, become a bullet
this is a way of being close to you
and i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
imagining your fingers curved over my collarbone like you’re afraid you’ll break me
because i know how that looks when i have a knife gripped in my hand

i am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together
like days of the week,
normalcy perspiring in the air behind us
because we were getting used to feeling somewhat alive
i am still thinking about the short hand of the clock
digging into my ribcage harder than your fingernails ever could
and i’m sorry
i swear i’m sorry
i am kicking and yelling and throwing sand in your eyes
despite the fact that i know you love me
and i am still thinking about the normal length of a pause
when you’re telling someone you love them, too

i think you should know that i love you, or used to love you, or will love you
[pause]
i love you too
[pause]

i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
i love you too
i hate to admit i think i am hurting you
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too
i love you too

if i died, my left hand over my heart keeping the bandages in place
while i lost consciousness
if i died and you had my journals
i know you’d read them and
i would fold into you, become a bullet
a way of you being close to me

i am still thinking about how i live by a cemetery without a fence
our hands interlocked
how can we tell that we are outside the cemetery
if it has no fence?

days of the week degrading freely

i am hurting you, i hate to admit
i think i am hurting you

[pause]

i ran barefoot through her torso
now i am buttoning up her sides with silver thread
as she screams and kicks and breaks her wrists on my back
painting a mural in red;
“sweetheart, this is how you look best”
i don’t want her to hurt like this and i don’t want her to stop needing me
so i just sit and listen, criss-cross stitches
i am her seamstress

i heard, once, that vampires are vengeful angels
i don’t think i still believe that, i don’t think
i ever really believed that
but i don’t know what to believe
when she tells me
she loves me and she wants me here
i wonder how long i’ve been faithless,
fantasizing about burning witches
sitting cold and hungry as i sharpen my spear

i don’t have the heart to tell her the truth
tracing her fingers over my wrist, searching for a pulse
if only we could stay like this forever

we hold too many dreams for our bodies—
she knows how much it’s hurting me
she reads aloud eulogies
for the poisoned paint that i’m still inhaling the fumes of
and she tells me she thinks that shade of blue is pretty
i sit and listen; i must keep her seams from splitting

and she kisses my fingertips and hisses holy words
into the spaces between them
reciting something i don’t recognize; but it’s nice
she is mismatched cupboards
and drafty windows, and uneven floors
she is unlike any comfort i’ve ever known before

You said you wanted to jump
Off the porch
Instead you sat out there and smoked

You asked me to braid your hair but
I didn’t know how to,
You bedazzled the TV remote with red rhinestones

I listened to you rap in Spanish
I let you make me ramen–
Our shared comfort food

I didn’t know how to reply when
You called me beautiful
I wrote poetry in the dark
So the light wouldn’t wake you
I stayed in our room
Because the door would have creaked
If I left
And I didn’t want to startle you
We’d just been watching horror movies
Plus I knew you needed some rest
You were tired/hungry/cold from living on the streets
Yet somehow you had the energy
To bother taking care of me

And I wanted to do the same for you

searching for beauty in
the pain
or at least the envelopes in which it arrives
I'm deep in debt from feeling too much
at this point, solvency will never come

I see my shadow standing still
on the white wall of an art museum
it weighs on me that this is something I cannot undo

at what point of taking something apart does it
become something different?
because I’m pretty sure I’m someone else
at least, I’m not myself

“how to drown yourself”
a white quilt
suspended
unknown, undrown
bottom two corners sagging
top two pulled taught

tangled air knotting itself throughout my lungs
interwoven with my vital organs like threads of unconsciousness
my breath is never left
undone
unknown, undrown

“to allow yourself to be forgiven,
to find a way forward,
to follow yourself back”
three phrases—
stitched in red
on three white flags
“the future is a hopeful past”
I lowered each to half staff

unknown, undrown
two people seems to be the right amount
people puddle, standing
unknown, undrown