I decided to let things wash over
like glitter, which doesn't
wash, but scrubs
into paradox
between the ends
of *******
not touching

I'd like to tender again.

I punctuate the days
with water and fill my stomach
with seeds, inchoate
and young.
I don't have to be today
what I desire tomorrow.
Still, I indulge,
beneath its question,
in the period,
before its deluge,
in the holm. Root
into malleability: an island
passing through time.

I'd like to be again.

I'll walk with a dove on my shoulder:
wary of the wings;
weary of the fall;
the beating
that comes before
the flight.

I'd like to be tender again.

I don’t know where I’m from
but I’d like to
call you home
and run through your halls
with the innocence of new fingers
pressing preserve prints
against your skin
and staining the walls.

The way my mother
warned me
I would.

I’ll let you spill
sun across
my swollen eyes
as I sigh the sleep out
of this house that’s still
settling. I’ve never stuck around
long enough to know
how long
that takes.
But while we wait,
I think I’ll settle
in and sip your
coffee, pressed
fresh from France—another place
we don’t belong to
but the sound of it
is sweet enough
that I don’t need
to call it your sugar
to know where
it came from.

And just before the sun goes someplace
we’ve never been
and the cold air creaks in
through your bones,
we’ll open doors
and see the rooms
we built together
in this place that
we didn’t grow up
in, but learned
to call our
home.

You were growing warm in the tongues of spring
and I was soft.
You wove roots in between my fingertips
and planted yourself
on ground I hadn’t known
could bear
fruit.

But summer was hot
and I was dry.
So we struck
stone against stone, breathed
ashes onto skin
and let settle
into fossil.

We fell back in heaps
Of leaves that scattered
my body, no matter how softly
you brushed them off.
The bramble said to the tree
“If in truth”
and I tangled
myself to shield you
from a sun
I knew would cease
to burn.

Then the cold changed your face.
And I was giving you my warmth
to keep you from growing
frigid and icing
over.

When it all went dark,
I reached my fingertips
to trace the grain
of your forehead
and when I opened
my eyes it writhed
like snakes
that were not mine
to charm anymore.

And then the Light
was waking up the face
next to mine. And the birds
were whispering
softer than I could ever be.
You were growing warm.
And I was stone.

I think of you when I make eggs
scrambled, the way that you like them.
I think how you’d tease
And tap the top of the garlic powder
1,2,3,4,5
times. I always thought
It was too much
But you would’ve laughed
If I told you,
because of the stereotype.

So now I make my eggs
scrambled, the way that you liked them.
tapping
1,2,3,4,5
As if your hand were still
telling me when to stop.

I pull apart
pieces of ham,
that I never really liked
in my eggs.
And American kraft cheese,
that sticks
to my fingers
and sticks
To the bottom of the pan
When I’m scrubbing it out
In the sink. Tapping
1,2,3,4,5
filling the kitchen
with the memory of spice
tapped on to fingers
that are not
mine or yours
but an approximation
of ours.

And you’re eating
the eggs that I made.
The way that you like them
And I’m sitting
down next to you. Tapping
1,2,3,4,5
onto your back

and onto the top
of a table
that you’ve never seen,
or smelled or spilled
scrambled eggs on.

And I’m sitting alone,
eating the eggs
that I scrambled,
the way that you like them,
tapping
1,2,3,4,5
on the top
of a table-turning
too clean with time.

your body tastes like the warm
fruit left on the windowsill by the bed
where you held
me by the wrists
and let me rot
among red
sheets and potted
plants.

wandering hands
feel wonderful when you’re wanted—
when you want to be
wanted and warped by watched
wrists against red
sheets and warm
fruit.

forget it
and let it
rot

and drip from the edges
of my mind or this cot.
I wish I could call
it a mattress. but it’s
too thin and
too cold to keep me
warm, like the fruits
of your labor.

You’ve been working
too hard to get
me here to hold,
by the wrists,
and wrench
from myself.

let me
write these words
for me— hammered together—

nailing myself,
by the wrists,
to the tips
of these bedposts
in the bed framed
by the broken
plants and the rotting
fruit and the red
blood on the red
sheets.

You can’t see
the red in
the beds of my eyes
through the sheets of your
eyelids, pressed closed,
like the door is
to keep the demons

fresh as fruit
could be,
if it wasn’t left
on the windowsill
by the bed
in my head
that never leaves.

I am my
self and your
self and her
self and his
off-rhyme of a frayed encyclopedia—
the crippling arch of a fingertip and the kink of its self-
awareness.  

I’d like to keep me trapped
in the amber of this moment
but I find myself,
in chemical waste—
and fumigation of my miscommunication—
tasting the smoke,
ripe and ripping up
soil and self .

I am my
self if the self you are
is you and her self,
is her and his self is
the afterthought of a decomposed anthology—
made mechanically—
the wrapping of roots.
The dipping of leaves
into steamed puddles on
cement streets, evaporating,
*******—
mechanically.

I’d like to be
a rock,
excellently.
The telos of my terrain trembles
beneath the benign boredom of being
myself,
excellently.

Gritting my teeth to the chalk of a smile,
I ******* tongue-tied tipping
points of platitude and innocuous
glances. I’d like to take
a dip into the powerade
of an eye—poison
my electrolytes and throw
up the unconscious effort to keep it all
down. Bellow
the belly of this
bending in binary is the mending
of mind
body
and soul—the syrup to my cynicism.
I’ve been bundled
together tight enough to taste the tingle
of anticipation just before the
fall
into cool, quiet cotton
candy. I could scream if I cared
to. My madness mumbled and muttered
mulled through and muted—
passed from eye to mind—
mind to measure—
measure to mechanism.
The hum of
impetus. The creak
of rising action. The screech into
final release.I’d like to
plunge my plasticity in a pool of electricity—
singeing all but just the edges.
Rattling rails of self imposed righteousness.
Tattling tales of presupposed hypocrisy.
Only I can mold my moment
at the peaking of this pinnacle
to whatever my mind would
make it out to mean:
a death
a daredevil
a daydream.