She counted the ringing bells.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
They echoed through the empty church.

She walked down the isle, a knot in her stomach.
Her father smiled at her from where he sat.
He's proud of her recently.
If only he knew.

She sat down and the minister said a prayer.
She went through the motions.
In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned.
It's been almost 10 years since I believed in God.

Her bare feet slapped against the pavement.
Tulle skirt stuck to her sweaty thighs.
The first drop fell.
Rain came that day.

Arms outstretched, she started to twirl.
Until the footsteps came near.
Out of time with the thunder claps and bursts of light.
She stopped and stared.

He was there.
Drenched in the rain.
Watching.
She laughed and pulled him to dance with her.

She puts her hand in his back pocket.
I know they're going home together tonight.

She's about as predictable as a fortune cookie (everything always ends in bed.)
In three days she'll forget the whole thing. (I wish everything in life was that easy.)

The smell of coffee and black sharpie fill your senses
Dragging yourself out of bed, you wrap the sheet around your naked body
Your head hurts more with every movement, every thought.

The sticky note on the door
written in small, squished, boy-like writing
"I never promised you forever."

blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

Black skirts and black blouses,
Black slacks and black jackets.
One hundred black bruised hearts.

Black faces and phrases;
“I’m sorry for your loss”s and “If I can do anything…”s.
I’m burning up and down,
Dying to run from this place like a tiger escaping his stripes.

Anger spills over,
Punches are thrown like whipped cream pies into a clowns face,
Fists fly, crows on great gusts of pain,
Noses bleed and suddenly

                      I am home.

Sliding on the ***** of death
up to see her,
knowing she would be ashamedly proud.
Watching for effervescent soda bubbles,
thinking this a terrible,
terrible April fool’s trick
only to be greeted by her ashen smile
inside a tiny                  
              wooden
                    box.

I am deep sleep in a bed of flowers
I’m the feeling of screaming for several hours
I’m forgetting who you are and forgetting your name
I am self deprivation and momentary gain

I am sweet black coffee and fresh dollar bills
I’m a missile crisis and oil tanker spills
I am cutting sharp corners and making amends
I’m Jesus’ daughter and Lucifer’s friend.

I am Freud’s ******* and a hospital ward
I’m the nurses who go there and the sickness you hoard
I am propaganda, prose, menthol, and medication
I am roadkill and warm kisses and capitalist nations

I am burning Buddhist monks and bleeding anarchists
I am iron maidens, nooses, and human games of chess
I’m the mafias dress maker and a gun pressed to your temple
I am the stranger next to you, and the ocean, and the gospel

I am quiet thawing winters and I am mothers sentimental
I’m the universe I’m a secret I’m everyone
I am mental.

After holding a conversation like you hold your liquor,
I realize that I am nothing,
Just an empty silhouette that stands before you,
I write this for my own self-fulfillment,
Break my bones and I will feel the same,
These days I feel like something on a string,
The way you parade me around and call me every name but my own,
I've got a lot of nothing, if I ever had anything.