just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess,
addicted to the feeling of something that could be
a distant cousin of loss,
but can’t be loss when it wasn’t there to begin with.
a cousin of loss and brother of bereavement,
a lexiconical gap
in the english maw,
a space where the definition slipped out
but the word never grew in.
a gap where a word should be,
a word meaning missing something you never had,
losing something that was never yours,
grieving for something that never looked your way
or graced you with its pain.
insomnia of the soul,
unable or unwilling to droop into the catatonic stupor
of love,
until my eyes ache with open,
and my heart aches with empty
and just beautiful aches and pains,
like stiff joints filled with sterling silver
or arthritic necklace clasps.
my tongue is tin because the argentine
is in my hands,
silver in the space between the carpals,
oozing precious metals
onto the page.
writing in second-best so that it’ll stay.
writing second-rate love letters
and pretending they’re real,
like the words i moan mean something other than
hello
i’m lonely
who are you?
like i’m not the girl who cried love
because the village had already learned
that wolves are lies,
and vice versa.
because faking it has always been my favorite pastime.
i’ll write love poems forever,
keep feeding my addiction for as long as it stays,
let my loveless track marks bloom cantankerous sores
on my ribs.
while i’m young
i’ll write poems of arthritis and weakness
and death,
because oh now i am immortal
invulnerable and omnipotent,
but when my bones are brittle and my flesh is loose
and my spine makes me bow to the earth,
my poems will be of life and strength
and god
because darkness is only beautiful when it isn’t
an imminent looming
future.
when i know i may die tomorrow,
i will write of bluejays
and of a love that never found me,
though it knocked on all the doors and called all the numbers,
waited on my porch while i hid in the closet,
nursing my ache
trying to fill a lexiconical gap
with bukowski
and insomnia.
supersaturated with emptiness
because all the words in the dictionary
can’t make up for the one that’s missing.
it changed the locks when it came,
shutting me out of my skull,
taking residence in my chest
and growing larger with each slow breath.
every huff of oxygen fed my
resident,
every injection of
late nights spent just writing,
every pill popped -
the lies that went down better
if i said them with a gulp of gin.
so my lovelessness cracked my ribs as it grew,
replaced my marrow with sterling silver
and i watched it happen like
a glacier devouring a desert
because i knew i would never survive loving something.
deserts were never made to run bounteous
with water.
just addicted to lovelessness,
i guess.
addicted to silver joints
and words that don’t exist.

The night, my face, your hands: The world is damp.
What else is there to do with all this weight,
but sink into the autumn grass, sedate,
sticking to the lawn like a fresh new stamp,
feeling the pulse of a steady bass amp
filling spaces between us like a freight
train, roaring to a new country, so late,
bearing fragile cargo to unknown camps.
I want to rage against the worst of me,
to keep deep down that brassy, dismal light,
wailing after you pulled me from the road;
your shirt's sweet warmth smelling like wet birch tree.
It hounds me to the core, the ifs and whys
of ugly nights, the drive to overflow.

My birth was christened with a curse
but every year those parties were flurries
of bon fires and candle sparklers.
My feet didn't touch the dance floor
it seemed, not once, while
the orchestra was playing
a whirling dervish of a waltz
bangs cropped carefree
across the plains of my tanned face,
swishing and twirling the knee length
pink gown,
kicking off pinching white flats to steal
across the June-hot grounds
only to drift back to father’s feet
for another dance.

The orchestra packs up,
the courtly ladies yawn behind trailing sleeves
as I am tucked in
my bed of feathered down, only to wake up  
thirteen years later, with cricks
nestled in the tendons of my neck
and rickety cramps twitching like
the seizure flickering of lightning bugs
through my thighs, as dust billows and rises
with my shifting in the strange light.

Sleeping Beauty wakes up
eighty-seven years ahead of schedule
in the suburbs, the curse a dud
with no prince to sweep her into syrupy swoons
with no words to name this coiling, clammy heat,
this suffocating musk.

I drag my weight
through the two-story house, teaching myself
a new vocabulary
so I can learn to breathe
through the ugly fits of orange tinted panic
at the spider webbed frailty of magic
the kismet pinprick of a spinning wheel
and the helpless sighs of my parents,
a King and Queen dethroned, overthrown
from their untouchable, eternal pedestal.

I couldn't dance
at my next birthday celebration,
when the orchestra was playing
a rollicking rondeau,
mostly because
my hair was too slicked and curled,
framing my fickle new skin,
sitting and twisting a silk napkin in my lap,
ribs locked in the powder blue grip of a whale,
resting poised to turn my toes into graceful
creatures, ten crippled wood nymphs.
To run I would have stumbled,
and it was impossible not to notice that
while we stood, my eyes grazed the top
of father’s thinning, speckled head.
I would break his feet with one more dance.

It was like the time our cat died
And we buried it in a shoebox
And made a wind chime out of the bell
Carved her name in the tree we buried her under
Just says Beans

I imagine this confuses the family who now lives there

Coffins shouldn't exist for things that small

I asked a friend to sew you a quilt out of her clothes
So you still might know her warmth

Babies grow fast
So much clothes from the shower
It will be a big quilt

Your belly still a bulb of life bursting
But hollow
In thick black sharpie you wrote
                MORGUE
Just above your belly button

You maker of life
Giver of the good stuff
Holder of the second heartbeat

You can only make good things
Your body is a mess
Genuinely ugly on the inside
But it creates good things

Remind it of that
When it rebukes its purpose
And lets go

The next one will stay

Because there shouldn’t be coffins
For things that small

You said I could be Uncle Jon
I have never been given that
I’m not allowed to see my own nephews
Because of how the past eats us

The past is a morgue
Of heartbreak festering

And forgiveness is not a time machine
Set to 10 minutes before regret kicked in

When my own children bury me
I hope they do something with what I leave behind
So I know that I actually have something worth
Leaving behind

You did not leave her behind
Even though you named her
Ellie
Elizabeth
But we knew it would be Ellie
She is not how you will be remembered

You do not make mistakes
You make life
In everything you do
As long as you are living

You make life

So when your body forgets this

Remind it

With breath
And tears
And sleepless nights
And anger
And happiness

Make life