I used to write my poems in the dark, inside a hazy trance,
and cross-legged on midnight carpets.
Specters fanned around my knees like a magic trick, shuffling
gloom like parlor cards at a cabaret and recasting it something elegant.
Magic tricks are just a thing that happen to me.

I’d say a spell and words erupted from my haunted parts;
a sleight of hand for handed slights,
a sleight of heart while handling my own, always wet and dripping.
I collected words like coins and spent them like mourning candles.
Ennui is just a thing that happens to me.

I busked my city for praise, preyed on walker-bys,
stirred up a crowd with my charm and bewitching need,
then watched their eyes lose interest in my illusion, in my luster.
They’d move on, regretting the dollar they placed in my hat.
Dejection is just a thing that happens to me.

My bag of tricks hasn’t charmed in years, but I still polish the leather,
keep my luck tucked inside, try to keep my wits sharp and my candles lit.
I can still conjure up a crowd, spin a pretty phrase, alliterate and allocate,
string words like beads, pluck them like a harp, and hook like a huckster.
Enchantment is just a thing that happens to me.

Dressed for the opera,
abreast in a fight.
Pressed, mixing my mouth
with your gore,
unsure who I’m lighting torches for.

We held a crass kind of funeral
then washed our gloves in separate loads.
I’ve vacuumed meaner shadows from your rug
and ironed colder syllables into pleats
down dress pants, through ribbons for my hair.

You've tried to unknot the longing-
that low ache of a feeling never quite named.
It’s there, somewhere behind your sternum,
stringy, sticky, and bright.
I’ve learned to corrode that carnage
in impolite ways, then wreak havoc all by myself
near the wrought-iron gate where the singing stopped.

I’m making vain jokes,
tongue-trilling venom smoke rings above your head.
You're draining dank drinks,
tongue-twisting for the mouth you had before mine.

Two seats empty in the mezzanine,
two bracelets spoiling in separate drawers,
a too-long gown; hacked and hemmed,
silk gloves anointed by a
carnal evening prayer.
You wear a suit most days,
I want to *****
and gripe in formal wear.

For a moment it’s the feeling of forever,
the inside-taste closing in on never.
Crisp, autumn night,
brisk, dusk fight,
The fall falls, the trees tease,
branches strip their civility-
and so do we.

October- I limber-lithe and lilt,
not even a trace of you in my mouth.
November- I double-knot laces,
bare my shoulders, and start to shiver.
December- I’m back at the gate
singing hymns to an ivy-laced lion face.
I'm searching the dusk for torchlights, groping
for another temper to press my thirst into.

By solstice I’m back on my knees,
ironing pleats atop the hardwood.
I petition ***** litanies to the congregation,
(us; your unmade bed, bare chest,
my inside-taste, our matching bracelets.)
Your heavy gaze and fervid eyes
narrow with each call and response;
ready to pounce.
Amen.

Dressed for the opera,
abreast in supplications made holy
as we learn our echoes and braid
our mayhem once more.
The only mouth you long for is at your feet,
velvet-warm, and full of prayers you can taste
but not translate, sigh but not speak.

My mouth makes your mouth tease like trees,
match our screams,
cross our hearts, drink, and dream.
We’ll tangle in everything,
empty our cupboards and start again.

We put on our evening gloves.
This afterglow is formal.

I’m considering breaking;
something big and essential and shared,
like a four-way traffic light, or a water tower,
or smashing every lightbulb I’ve ever used,
and letting the glass shards spread across
The grocery store aisles,
And I’ll shop for spinach, and caramel, and greek yogurt barefoot,
To show everyone how tough I am.

I’m considering disappearing into the November winds,
I’m untying my apron as a walk across the yard.
I’m already forgetting what the dishes look like
and when the utilities are due-
I’m already exaggerating what I’ve got, and
intonating superstitions toward where I’m going.

A gaggle of humans fleeing the tolerable
should push, should glow and guess,
should smile while they walk away,
shaking off their receipts and sunken science, gratefully.

Ahh, it feels good to decompose -
so good,
so, so good.
Have you tried it? Really tried it?
Anything anxious, or stiff, or sad
sprouting inside of you is severed-
pried out of the baseboards with the hammer’s claw,
and flushed down the toilet leaving a rusty stain on the porcelain.

But then,
then,
you become radiant.

You become a mystery; searing and traveling,
wrapped loosely in oils and gauze.
You become an emblem;
the blackest sun, the proudest eyelids, vaguest plans.
You become a fable,
picking scabs off your fingers, roaming sweaty markets,
utterly dissolved.

My color is whatever makes you ravenous-
I always wear my color.
Snatching some wind along the FDR,
folding it in my jacket for later.

I’m checking my cardinal marks,
hair down, skin salty,
I’m always navigating blooming
creatures like you
away from devoted danger.
I do my work,
then slip away on a buoy tender.
You won’t follow me,
you’re not that tender.

I’m not the first ingénue to show you
that the cross you carry is short,
or how your shadows are companions-
But I am the first swift sprite;
dripping with kindness and just enough allure,
to make you feel fresh ardor,
a new kind of ecstasy.

I say my lines, hit my cues,
and watch your eyes narrow as the ache
sets in. I revel and romp.
You covet and crave.
We dip and I spin you through a fast moment fever.
Now you’re feral on a stalling subway.

I’m not planting language,
I won’t hold your hand,
I’m humming a slow, electric kindle and you’re starting to spark.

I’m glinting, you're drowning like you understand.
I’m glinting, you’re yearning like a boy.
I’m glinting, you're conceiving our future,
because there’s no way you can let this feeling go.

It’s true I want to please,
but your fancy was a little off-
I won’t be looking up to gage your reaction,
I won't be looking at you at all.
Picture me closing my eyes,
grabbing my jacket, driving the tender.
By the time you’re on fire
I’m halfway down the river,
and I’m still glinting.

It’s hard to untangle a supernova
from the hope
that it might explode…

We’re all a little bit in love with it;
our demure undoing and unmade sense,
our limp-wristed magic,
our dour dashes.

We all know some things need to be left unsaid,
but what if the last word is yours and you say it?
What if it becomes the last true thing,
even if it’s not?

When the sky stretches open like a yawn,
and the ground cracks like a grin,
we’re all a little bit thrilled.
Constellations burn like cognac,
satellites swirl like smoke.

The senseless will sharpen the shimmer
of sad-star-ellipsis, then spin them into a wreckage
of exclamation points and full stops, falling
from their own weight and into ours.

We’ll put our spines to the ground like fossils,
tremble with wide eyes and open hands,
and then listen for your last word:

Punctuation becomes a commandment
to memorize,
to moralize,
to misuse.

A comma means a breath,
it means looking up at the sky and feeling very small,
no comma means you run through the cornfield like you’re being chased like your fingers are full of cramps like you forgot your shoes like the tornado siren is wailing and your not welcome anywhere with a door

What would happen if you let yourself be hungry?
Would you reach for the bread or the knife?
Under the table and dreaming;
feral for kindness,
ragged in revile.

Swallow olive pits to allay your stomach,
varnish your voice with vinegar and honey,
twirl your tongue like a teaspoon around
new wild-blue words, hijacked hands,
and a bellyful of burdens clawing up your throat.

The hunger will keep you honest,
the bread will keep you alive,
the knife will keep you from being too kind.
Kind is another word hungry;
and hunger is how you got the knife.

What would happen if you stopped pretending you
were the center of the universe?
You are; but not because you are special–
because you are the only one who’s learned to bite down,
the lonely one who’s learned to look up.

Now that you know this, how would you like to behave?
It’s not up to you, but you should still think about it.
Chew on the questions but don’t swallow any answers;
the center of the universe has a weak stomach, and puking
proverbs only drags out the meal and ruins your boots.

What would happen if you were a little less precious?
Would your fingers still write ******? Would your knife still cut?
Would your appetite ache while your heart howled, ulcerated and untamed?
Your wayward words only tell half of the story;
the other half belongs to the hunger who ate the bread.

A word isn’t a thing to behold, but a thing to be held.
A poem isn’t a thing to reckon, but a thing to wreck.
A heart howls when forsaken; the banished **** and bite down,
There is a kindness in the story, but only when it’s told.

After miles of coasting,
trailing a stretch of steel remembered
more as an artery than a scar,

(back when the sun-stained arms
and scratchy palms
that laid each track across
an endless America
felt ageless and exhausted;

gripping great-grandbabies,
bibles and whittled pipes,
fingers coiled and knotted with stories,
ready to spring forth and croon
if only they were asked.)

They didn’t talk much during the in-between:
that window of time when their bodies
were no longer cracking and howling,
rooting rungs into dry grass
from ocean to ocean;
fitting the landscape
with a skeleton of its own-

but before the true rest,
when they'd let their bones shake
out the tight grip of untold tales,
and sink into the dirt they helped carve.

You think of them now as dust,
a rosary planted under pine,
a Sunday grace,
a shared plot,
a middle name.
You do, don’t you?
You’re not really looking.

You can’t outsmart yourself.
You wouldn't be land-locked and writing this
if you could.

      Let’s try something different. Let's find a boat. We’ll meet at the bow, and try to forget what we know. We can start over. We can put our memories on ice and our hearts on hold. We can grow new lungs, and new eyes and our bones won’t ache in the salt water. Let's read the stars, captained by someone born without a lily in their teeth or a map in their pocket. They’ll have an anchor to choke and a rattle to keep us awake.
      Let's sip the coffee of a woman with roots that run deeper than the earth, and speak the steady language of not-wanting. We can learn sea songs, cover our dreams with thick, acrylic paint, and bring our ghosts to life at preapproved parties. We’d all get along so well. I’ll undo the sound of my voice. You'll sweat out the nicotine. We'll eat strange fruit at balmy ports, acquire a taste for the rind, and our scars won't open; we'll be positively flush with Vitamin C and the pipes we've learned to whittle.
    You’ll start to crave the way I smell like rain, taste like salt. I’ll show you what to do when your compass points left and you find yourself on the wrong side of the decade. I'll create a perfect starfish staccato, which is a dive I'll invent and perfect two days in. We’ll build a dream house out of sea glass, learn ***** jokes in morse code, and share a bunk with a man who claims he was born a crow and misses it every day. He might take our bones home to his blind wife after this voyage. He might make flutes from our thighbones, hock them around shipyards, or he might ask us to write his eulogy. He might be the guardian angel for someone who drowned centuries ago, or he might be God. We're fine not yet knowing.
      We're on a boat, after all. We can do shimmery things, like tangle our limbs and kiss in nooks where the light doesn't touch. We can dive for pearls in the shadows of our own thoughts, and keep the sun on our faces. We can all learn to swim like angels and walk like saints. I’ll show you how to make a secret place inside yourself where you can wrestle unspeakable things and then send them into the storm.
      Let's drink cider in the hull, lose our sealegs,  and trace bumpy roots to an older, kinder world. Then let's sit very still and believe in it. Let's tie that kindness around our wrists. Practice our knots or not. Let's pass the bottle back and forth while we trade secrets with winter finches telepathically.
      If we feel like it let's fall in love. Maybe with each other. Maybe with something else entirely.    
      Let’s talk about things we've never said aloud, let's try to put some of our sticky longing and heavy heartbeats into some kind of language. Or let’s pretend the city is only as large as our pockets and as static as the space between our chests. Let’s go back in time and see what would happen if I didn't kiss you on the West Side Highway six months ago. Maybe there’d be nothing to pout over, nothing to pine about. (Heavy heartbeats always find something to pine about.)
      Let’s walk to the sea, let's forget what we know. Let’s start over. I’ll take the train in and we’ll meet for brunch. I won’t get red and loose-lipped from too much sun and *****, and I won’t look for black cats in highrise windows. We'll talk about things that don't sting and the city won't mind the bleak things I say.
      After playing on the pier and not kissing, we won’t walk East, swaying. We won’t stumble into a church and genuflect, then slide into a pew, softly join the Rosary recitation. We won’t bow our heads, or stumble through the Apostles Creed (where was that one during ten years of catechism?) We won’t say Amen with our chest, study the stained-glass, and  our legs won’t leave sweat on the kneeler after we stand.
      We won’t barrel back into daylight where we’re old friends who don’t kiss and I’m still a prize- My cheeks can flush but I won’t let the mimosas get on top of me, or you get on top of me. like it was only a little bit inevitable. I won't babble; completely unhinged and hopeful, or drop my grace somewhere on an elevated train as dusk cradled us both in blue. I'll polish that part of Brooklyn with my poise, not my plea. I won't pray again on the train home, (not on my knees and slipping, but still on my knees and slipping.) I won’t have to meet rueful eyes in the window reflection with only one poem on my lips, ‘Have Mercy on me, Oh God-‘
      I won’t have to sit sad and scalloped alone on a midnight Metronorth, bewildered and blanched, because we’re not here, we’re far away and out to sea. I’m still a prize, and we never have to say ‘Amen’ at all.

I tried mining nuance.
I tried burying my limerence in
parking lots and kicking
gravel over the glowing parts.
My tongue was never that flexible,
and my knees were never that strong.

If I still smoked black cloves
with pigeon-footprint-fingers,
cooing with beaded arms,
and dissected birds,
I would be all in;
I would win this game.

A rabbit crosses the field.
Something caws.
Our clock is dead.
This filthy week has been
wind spun in darkness,
I’m inching towards light.

You’re stitching boring words,
every point you knit cheapens
my morning. I’m just here to gleam.
Daylight rolls toward me,
tasting my cheeks-
all light.

And then I’m gleaming,
warm, illusive, bathed
in a poem sunbeams
wrote because they missed me.

Live knee-deep
in language but be certain
of magic.
Dignity whispers
that you’re sleeping.

Not much closed to my kiss,
not much cracked to my scream.
I want to be a phenomenon.
Phenomenal.
All light. All gleam.

begin as a small soul-
stretch the ugly-
mind the dew.

Fill each borough with hands praying across beads,
******* in cheeks.
Here you can use the sky
to help you swallow.

Here you wonder historic in an orange wind tunneling
fierce, fluid, fast;
far and full,
Desperate to exhale
and spit down a subway grate.
No one’s looking for utopia anymore:
no rings
no wings.

Walk through haunted architecture for old times' sake.
What does ‘gilded age’ even mean?
On this block, our pipe’s clatter, burn up, and belly,
and the electricity smells.
We wear our shoes even as we sleep.

My body is a tenement,
families cram and people toil
in each room, room, room.
Layers of walls can be peeled off like skin,
we touch our lips and get dizzy.

I’m low light and no fire escapes, you’re growlers
of ale and some sort of horn in the saloon.
Together we are dangerous,
a public health emergency,
an evening that feels like home.

Laughter like glue dripping and drying;
exploring the oakwoods and getting itchy.
A moment, an arm, a radio.
A pinging kind of dire,
a different kind of parade.

His big issue is not company or crowds;
It’s nice girls like me seeing the same heart
but refusing to trip. I walk to bridges,
he stays sown on stoops.

We grip the same maps
but we seek a separate landscape.
I have bad thoughts and become the opposite,
we meet good omens and tuck them in the furnace.
I hear you aching like a slice of too-ripe fruit.
I remember not to look.

Words stick to skin like bad dreams. Awake,
cold sweat, twisted in sheets with a half-remembered phrase.
Every story has a part of it that's true.
That’s why I lie.

I’m sorry about your bedding.
I’m sorry about my teeth,
about the edge that tells me to laugh when I know I shouldn’t,
and I’m sorry about the way I pull your hair when you’re above me-
I forget that it’s not mine.

I used to collect ideas like friendship bracelets on the last day of camp,
I used to listen to your breath catch in sleep and wish that I had pitched it.
I used to think in stanzas, and sigh into verses,
like a poem about a poem about a poem.

Now I barely think.
I miss thoughts like trains.
I sweat your bed.
I hold your attention like a bouquet,
then knot it like a tourniquet.
I keep patience like a promise.
Now I collect only what I can taste,
only what I can swallow whole.

Wading through humidity,
adding to humanity-
the Lower East Side,
too hot to be still.
Too old to be kissing on sidewalks,
(doing it anyway.)

Let me show you my leprechaun leap:
run, jump, crash:
eight mimosas deep,
then I’m four limbs down
on a subway grate and laughing.

Twirling in the green dress I wore last time,
like a ******* cartoon character,
and you smile, but just a little.
And I grip, but just a little.

You hold my hand, lean me into walls,
where bricks radiate heat,
and I can’t tell you how lonely
Alphabet City feels
even now.

A heavy, dog-day eloquence,
the sticky camaraderie
of a heatwave, late August:
smirking with strangers,
running through sprinklers
like little kids.

Saluting a little light,
something curling the edges
like damnation,
lifting like prayer,
and I still haven't learned my lesson.
(I can’t rewrite my lonely.
Trying to write your name over it
will only stain more.)

Let’s just keep wading,
keep laughing,
and let the heat do the talking.
I will not say the next thing.
I will not say anything at all.
(I will not say anything at all.)

Why do the stars seem brighter when you’re far from home?
How is it possible to feel so much and still be empty?
Was my love too heavy, or were you just afraid?
What if I’m always too much and never enough, like the way the sky bleeds at sunset?
Do you picture my tears like confetti?
Were the vibes sublime?

Why does the thought of you getting engaged on Facebook
make me want to throw up pretty bushes?
Why did I feel I was asking too much, when all I ever
wanted was for you to mean what you said?
Is longing always this loud, or am I the only one screaming?

How do we keep going when hope is just a rumor we tell ourselves at 3 a.m.?
When did we decide that falling apart had to be done quietly?
What if love is less like falling and more like standing
outside a door I’m too afraid to open?

What does your therapist think about me?
How long have you been saying my name in that room,
throwing it against the walls like something you can’t figure out?
Did you lie to me, or was it yourself you couldn’t face?
What if the map we’ve been following was drawn by hands that never touched?
What if we never touch?

Remember ten years ago, before this got so knotted,
we were learning lines in basements and smoking cloves behind the theater?
Did you think you’d be the one I shatter for?
Why does happiness feel like something I’m never allowed to keep?
What if time doesn’t soften the edges but teaches us how to carry the sharpness?

Why do the faces in old photographs seem to know something we don’t?
Is there a difference between being brave and being reckless,
or does it all depend on how the story ends?
What was the tipping point, the moment you shut down the parade?
What was the endgame? Why was it a game at all?
How many times have you pressed your ear to the silence,
hoping it might tell you something new?

Why does the idea of forever sound like both a promise and a threat?
How do I stop feeling like you’re the only poem I write?
Have you read the poems about you?
Are they easy to decode? Are they eating you alive?
Do you want to be eaten?

Do you ever wonder if the fire was always just fire?
What if the love I gave wasn’t meant for you,
but for the version of me that needed something to believe in?
Was I crossing a line, or was I drawing one?
What if I never stop mourning something I made up?

How do you carry an atlas under your tongue?
Does my voice still sound like a howl? Does it pierce your night?
Did you really have to detonate us two weeks before the release of The Tortured Poets Department?
Will the story of us linger like smoke in those songs forever?
What do you think about when you think of me—my voice echoing off the walls,
my *** in leggings, or my ceaseless need to be seen?
Will I ever stop dreaming about you?
Why do I know it’s been exactly 200 days since it happened?
Who’s counting?

How do we reconcile the person we thought we’d be with the one we see in the mirror at 3 a.m., wide-eyed and wondering?
What did you get out of keeping me in your orbit, spinning in circles while you stood still?
Why does your name still taste like blood when I say it out loud?
Will I ever stop wondering why I wasn’t enough?
What if the real betrayal was how easily you let me believe it was my fault?

A secret in my palm
and a secret in my mouth,
and the two are not the same.

God says He’s sorry,
and I say I’m sorry too.
The truth is not the same as the lie,
but they have the same taste,
the same weight,
so I swallow them both.

I ask God if He remembers
the day He knit me together,
with fear and wonder,
all thoughts and thorns.

He nods His head, and I nod mine,
and we both agree
that He should have been more careful.
I say I'm sorry again,
and this time I mean it more.

A plea in my fist and a plea in my throat,
and the two are not the same.
God says He knows my heart like
I know His mercy, and I feel bad,
I think He might be as lonely as I am.

God tells me a new song is coming,
and I tell Him hurry, I want to sing.
We both know that wilderness
is a state of mind, a state of grace,
and I let my mind wander.

Pretend it’s just another party—
an apartment filled with ghosts in rented shoes,
the air so balmy-slick and regret-thick
you chew it between clenched teeth and canapés.

Laughter echoes like it's hollow—
like it's searching for a way out.
Smile anyway, teeth shining shields,
polished by all the swill you've swallowed.

Conversations carry and carry on,
half-truths wrapped in nicer clothes, familiar faces
wrapped with softer shadows, words slurring to silk, then blurring to tilt.
Wave at someone you used to know;
pretend like you have any say in how you’re remembered.

Pretend the warm hands on your shoulders aren’t anchors
dragging you back to conversations you’ve outgrown,
then pretend your feelings were never knives
dressed as whispers,
and strangers in your skin.
Pretend you've never been the best thing at the party.
Pretend you've never been the worst.

The ghosts taught you some tricks;
pour drinks and flatter, don’t spill souls and blather—
the art of being just enough, but never too much,
your heart near the door, the gravity of leaving,
a muscle that’s learned to scheme and stay still
in ways your body can't, your mind never will.

Pretend just another party—
just another night to swallow or score.
You’re so much younger than you ever were, and braver;
one eye on the exit and one foot out the door.

Exits beckon another entrance:
but that wouldn't be pretending,
would it?

The best thing at this party
only pretends to leave-
the worst thing at this party
is smiling anyway.

LOST:
A dream about a staircase with no top step.
Last seen circling my brain at 3:14 a.m.,
with no place to land.
Reward: One uninterrupted night of sleep.
Contact: riddlesnotlullabies@askytoclimb.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A laugh that doesn’t fit anymore—
sharp, too loud,
like it belongs to someone braver.
Please take it before it cuts me deeper.
Contact: clankingtin@softsolace.com

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—on the other side of the street,
waving like it was still 2015.
Me—too slow to cross,
too afraid to shout.
If spotted, please circle back.
Contact: my number’s the same, but maybe you deleted it.

FOUND:
A treasure map to nowhere, folded into my coat lining.
No roads, just dotted lines,
and an X I’m scared to dig up.
No need to claim; it’s already mine.
Contact: (don’t.)

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—wearing a yellow raincoat,
laughing like the storm was yours to own.
Me—stuck in a doorway,
too afraid to step into puddles.
If you see this, let me borrow your courage.
Contact: meetme@bridgeofmysong.com

FOR SALE OR TRADE:
A reflection that doesn’t belong to me.
It moves slower, smiles at things
I haven’t thought of yet.
Will trade for a mug that doesn’t drip.
Contact: smokingmirrors@unstablefaces.org

LOST:
The way my name sounded when you said it,
soft and certain,
like it was the only taste there was.
Reward: The strength to stop listening for it.
Contact: sacredsyllables@windwhispered.com

FOR SALE:
One fractured moment in time.
It split clean down the middle—
half yours, half mine—
and hums like static when held.
Warning: Reassembly not guaranteed.
Contact: timesabitch@xrayfractures.com

LOST:
The ability to distinguish between a memory and a dream.
Last felt in a room full of books and musty yellow light.
Reward: A map with all dead ends marked in gold.
Contact: dreamfugue@unreliable.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—crossing the street as if it didn’t exist,
leaving footprints in the air.
Me—watching from behind a pane of glass that wasn’t real,
wishing I could step through.
If you see this, tell me if the other side is softer.
Contact: glasswalker@phantoms.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A mirror that only reflects your mistakes.
It’s cracked but still works.
Perfect for someone braver than me.
Contact: onthewall@mercilessmirror.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A scream swallowed too quickly,
leaving the weight of what it couldn’t say.
It hums at night, sharp enough to cut silence,
soft enough to still feel human.
Contact: wailingweight@humsandhaunts.com

FOUND:
A version of me I didn’t know still existed.
She’s smaller, softer,
but hums with the ache of wanting something bigger.
No one’s claimed her,
but she feels too familiar to let go.
Contact: echolalia@layersdeep.com

FOR SALE:
A jar of lightning,
trapped mid-flash, flickering faintly.
Warning: It won’t light your way, but it might set you on fire.
Contact: sparksfly@volatilenight.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—standing in a crowd of people who looked like you.
Me—shouting a name I wasn’t sure was yours.
If you see this, tell me which one of us got it wrong.
Contact: facelessblameless@nowronganswers.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A shadow that moves faster than I do.
It drags me to places I swore I wouldn’t revisit.
It’s loyal,
but it doesn’t listen.
Contact: runawaytwin@goingnowhere.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—just out of reach,
your voice fading like a star going nova.
Me—chasing echoes through rooms I don’t recognize.
If you see this, tell me how it ends.
Contact: graspinglight@foreverandnever.com

WANTED:
A gas station map that folds wrong.
Not one that shows the way,
but one that erases it completely,
leaving only the thrill of getting lost.
Payment: Breadcrumbs I don’t plan to follow.
Contact: wanderorlust@uncharted.com

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—at a bus stop,
Me—watching you disappear before I could prove myself.
If you’re still waiting,
I swear I’ll catch the next bus.
Reward: a Metrocard, but refilling it costs more than it’s worth.
Contact: NYMTAhopeful@thatlakeinQueens.org

FOUND:
A photograph that doesn’t make sense—
faces blurred, the room stitched from dreams:
a log cabin leaning into splinters,
a Vietnamese superstore where shampoo and morning glory
share aisles with áo dài and gnocchi,
my first-grade classroom—pine-needle air,
metal chairs sparking against old carpet.
The photo shifts,
but the context stays the same.
Contact: dreamsindanangand1996@framegames.org

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A moment of clarity that burns too bright to keep.
It sees everything,
even what you wish it wouldn’t.
Take it before it blinds me.
Contact: keepithidden@callouscandor.com

FOR SALE OR TRADE:
A clock with teeth.
It eats seconds like they’re starving it,
but spits them out just wrong enough to notice.
Will trade for a moment that doesn’t bite back.
Contact: devouredtime@bitingsands.com

WANTED:
Someone to tell me if it’s too late.
If the road I’ve walked is the only one I get,
or if there’s still time to take a left,
a right,
or turn around entirely.
No qualifications necessary—just say something.
Reward: My charge to pay attention; ***** coins and all.
Find Me: I'll be wearing a yellow rain coat.
Contact: universeswap@prophecy.org

I went to war with trouble,
daydreams dropping gentle.
I’ve stabbed too many
precious provisions
to wave my flag now.

Every stoop in the Village exhales
in moon-words beaming electric.
I crave a language
as mean and antsy
as your fast, feral fever.

Tinsel secrets slip to the street
from high-rises and fire escapes,
we only stop kissing to check if
the skyline will confess.

My mouth tunnels
to epiphany,
your hands' twist
toward apocalypse.
Together we can core clouds.

Force a laugh,
lead the light like a vow,
paint the night like a song,
teach me to undo
the deep parts
before they undo me.

My hand on your chest- relishing,
your hand on my ***- savoring.
Everything between us pulses
something torrential.

Everything inside me buzzes
wreck, wreck, wreck,
wreck, wreck.

Spin our night with fingers crossed
across charming evening plagues,
past spines I stitched like statues,
to bridges where we stole steel,
then drowned
our senses in the river.

Not touching you
is where it hurts.

What happened while
the manuscripts choked?
Lighter shoulders,
stranger testaments.

Pardons reflect an ark
where shine means shout,
wind means worship,
and we stopped placing wonder
on anyone's elegy.

I used to be so young and severe,
trembling under any movement.
I played a ghost
until I became one.

I'd be crimped into vails,
rushed through verses,
roused from rest;
sighing
and hunting for your hand.

Echoes of ether-
loose-limbed and hearkening,
barely blinking;
saluting fences,
planting poems,
heeding baby-teeth.

Interred with you in
this chaos,
this grass-
fermenting fate
forevermore.
We tried to rise,
but failed to become the sky.

Since you cannot
take testimony seriously,
I had to rip it out-
our two wills colliding,
our pine coffins dissolving.

I was buried with jewels in
my open palms;
still offering,
still not atoned.

Your hands were buried empty
with nothing to answer for,
still tense,
still clenched in fists.

We harbor things-alive from our dead parts;
mice warm in your nest of ribs,
beetles declare squatters rights
in the tent of my pelvis and
raise flags from hip-bone heights.

Worms slink along fingers
and unite our pieces in peace.
In life we follied;
underfoot we fuel.
Tenable terrain,
we transform tomorrow tender.

The manuscripts soften to us,
the archives are kind.
We let ourselves sink into the rattle
and double into strange dust
so that new things
become.
blooming from us.

I think about purity;
the way I allow things in and out of my mouth in different rhythms-
sometimes gnawing, sometimes cramming,
sometimes clawing back up with bile and belief
until I feel empty enough to try again.

I can’t put any of it into words.
I can’t write short poems.
I over-explain. I overwhelm.
I over-draw and they oversee.
I start to stake but there’ll
always be things I can’t do-
or, I mean, things I won’t do.
That’s a lie.
I try, try, try
to feel alive.

I like the secret,
tipping towards transgression,
tidal, treading.
Nothing in me belongs anyway;
every piece is trespassing-
breaking and entering,
bouncing on chicken wire,
listening for sirens.

Nothing in me is solid enough.
I’m so many stanzas in and out-
each with its own wavering threshold,
each dependent on someones waffling regard.

Water around here isn’t clear,
puddles and streams pulse with
mud and leaves,
trash and scuttley insects.
My reflection exists only,
wholely,
behind a layer of milky film
and unclean things.
Things from nature.
Things alive.
Things also pure.

Purity like looting
when the wires are down,
like a cracked mirror,
a stagnant pond,
perfunctory ***,
and slow-seeping Lyme
thinning your legs and hollowing your eyes.

Trying a new rhythm; things still in,
still out,
but better aimed.
Still trying, still living,
still too many words,
and still not empty.
Never empty.
Never impure.

A vile sort of silence drapes my summer
with white-silk cheeks and gauzy sighs,

it's been ages since I've killed my darlings;
drenching them in light, hoping to be surprised.

Each poem is steeped in saline,
each line laced with sparks and sour,

but the syllables still sing, sing, sing
for their own satellite-sake,

the stanzas still dance, dance, dance
like drunken angels in heels and tulle,

the metaphors still spin, spin, spin
with bits of gold through my mind and muck.

Each night I feed myself tales of my own glint,
each morning I warn myself to get a grip.

If you can keep a secret,
you can keep your distance.
If you can keep your word,
you can keep your head down.
If you can keep score,
you can keep your eyes on the road.

Night crawls toward hot-morning on its belly,
dawn breaks like a thousand tightrope hearts,

hot-pink pain seasons the sky with oozing, vivid blush,
blue-blood bats flutter from my hair like disgraced prayer they rushed.

The last larkspur dies,
the first swallow flies,

each hairpin I lose in my mouth is a line,
and each hairpin I find in the field is a sign.

Darlings,
we both know you should be dead by now;
all shiny and benign:

Darlings,
I’m all summer-soft and quiet-taut-
no ****** on my mind.

You can play
with the tension
and not get caught,
but you can never
break it;

not when nerves
are taut telephone lines
purring with electricity;
thick enough to chew.
The cracks are deep
enough to bury a secret,
swallow each perforated promise,
and each broken beacon.

I can feel your pulse
racing against mine.
I can't tell whose heart is beating
and whose is beat.
We are two sticks of dynamite
in the same trophy tin:
sparks of breath singeing skin,
we hold each other up
until we hold
each other down.

The rules of war change
with your mood,
the laws of physics
are putty in your hands,
and the tides of time
are your own
collapsing conspiracy-
a house of cards you reshuffle
and repossess as the candle burns
a circle of wax on the table.

I can’t decide if you want to devour me
or decimate me—
adore my halo
or annihilate my hope,
love me with your whole heart
or wreck mine with your whole weight.
And you can’t decide either,
can you?

The light is unkind,
the land unforgiving,
and you are all
my favorite lies;
the canvas of my
incomplete portrait,
the crossed out pages
of my abandoned poems.

You can play with your edge
or throw me off it.
Either way, I'll be yours to keep
or yours to conquer.
I won’t tell you how to ruin me,
or beg you to spare me
from your rabid reign—
I’m not that kind of country.
I’m an open border;
a shattered compass,
spinning wildly.

But I will say:
the ruins
are all that’s left when
the empire falls,
all that’s real when the
games are done,
all that’s preserved
when the tension eases
and the maps are redrawn,
again and again.

I'll send a postcard
to your grave.

Sanctified and starry-eyed,
I thought I could have bad thoughts
and still sit dauntless
and debrided
on my mighty throne of miseries.

I thought I could pocket poison
and still polish my poems
with punch-drunk hands,
still bleed revere into the wide-open
unbearable,
still beg for big words to break
the uncanny uncertain,
still dance with a demon in a moth-eaten skirt,
still giggle like a new tango for your ballroom
brainwaves and barricades.

I thought my gaze could pin
your fancy and fury to my wrist,
let the rapture steal through the window,
burn down your pretense,
your pathological provocations,
and find us intertwined and divine.

Lovelorn and luridly-lit,
I thought I could spin you
to a dizzying depth of sirens and stars,
diffuse the bomb in your mouth
and be the ballast
for your throbbing, cracking heart,
your writhing wilderness,
your wretched wreckage.

I thought I could buck up-
brush my hair,
and rose-blush my way through
your strange dark and
your winding labyrinth;
the coiling curse
of your unquiet heart.

Jilted and jagged-pricked to the quick:
I thought I could be the saint of your history,
the angel of your archives,
the verses you could not flee,
the name you could not outrun.

I thought the city I built could outlast
your spite, I let you burn bridges
while I slept under them,
collect your sharpest flares,
your longest shadows,
and postmarked daggers,
then drown them in my last-resort lullaby.

The flames I stoked could do the dying for you,
and the sky I swore to keep
would not fall for you like I have.
I thought I could find the key to your riddle
and wear it like a necklace,
we lose our thread,
then find it as matching knots on our wrists.
It’s really not that hard to be
the answer to your own question,
you just have to know what to ask.

We kiss on the roof,
disturbing time and space.
We hold tight to each other,
watching the landscape quake.

(I point out fires for him to see-)

Six stories down, this street
mirrors my marrow:
young, velvet, ******-
a little bit further than
he’s willing to go.

(I light my torches and set them free.)

The dark parts flare and
we are alone.
Forget breathing,
now we pant.

(I burn things before they burn me-)

The heavy parts leak and
we are alone.
Forget tasting,
Now we take.

(I burn things before they burn me.)

You said, “If I loved you, I’d make you my wife,”
I smiled with my eyes while that cut like a knife.
I shrugged, “Playing house in the forest just isn’t my thing,”
You grinned, “I know, but someday you’ll look good in my ring.”

Then, “We’d make beautiful kids, no doubt,”
Pan to me spinning out—
the ****’s that about?
You cast palmy lines out in lakes of blue,
Reel them back just to watch me bruise.

Every glance is a bait, every word a disguise,
Painting me futures with half-open eyes.
You string me along with a touch and a tease,
Like these promises don’t steal my breath and my sleep.

You talk in circles, keep me halfway there,
Trap me in snares, gasping for air.
I’m the half-written story you stash on a shelf,
The pretty idea you save for yourself.

But I’m done waiting for a life you won’t start,
Done being a muse in your second-rate art.

Hypotheticals shuffled in black and red,
A game where I’m playing, but I’m underfed.
You bluff with a tell that’s more tale than truth,
A plot spun from lips that lie more than soothe.

You tuck the truth into creased, hidden folds,
Like secrets are currency you get to withhold.
Bits of confession slip through your jest,
Building a house of cards in my chest.

I’m done with your “someday” that drips with delay,
You paint futures in grayscale but I’m done with the gray.
I won’t be the punchline in your past-tense tense,
No longer the girl caught up on the fence.

I won’t be the footnote you write in small print,
Or the flash in your memory that’s starting to tint.
I won’t be the whisper you keep on the side,
Or the “could’ve been” girl that haunts your pride.

Cruel summer in viscous reds and pinks; wine stains,
sweating cans, margaritas in plastic cups,
everything pulsing on a sticky dance floor and sad.
Screaming and flirting with the easy and the lost as the sun drags bodies
to a place where hearts are haggard and hungry,
where the hunted steer to survive.

Cruel summer in tangerine-dream and traffic-light-greens,
the slant of bruising metals, the hollow of a hollow,
hot-hopes of the blue of blue and more blue.
A polite laugh, a memory’s memory, a wish on a still-burning candle.
I’m nothing if not a witness to superstition and the way faith tastes like fear.
I’m everything if I play my cards right.

I’m roving about;
a derelict architect, a soul with someone else's name carved across it.
I’m in and out of the city,
in and out of the conversation.
I’m in and out of his vision like suspicion-
he walks past our claw marks on corners and song-scratched streets,
he looks at the city and the city looks back, and he thinks of me.
Planted and planned and made to be.

Cruel summer in jaundiced yellows and mauves,
the pain of​​ the sun on shoulder and bottle,
the ache of a smile and a lie on lips.
His hands on my waist, my mind in a hot room,
my glint swimming in his eyes,
his voice snared between my sharp, sharp teeth.

Cruel summer in grimy greens and stained-glass jewels dripping
another bartop, another night where just friends melt and merge,
another morning spent tangled and giggling,
like all of this exists to see each other smile.
Like this wasn’t a dutiful ritual and a route to ruin.
Like it wasn’t the most marvelous game to play.

Cruel summer in royal purples and gold beading, holding his hand and my tongue,
meeting the train with a sinking chest and a straightened spine.
Another kiss before I hop the turnstile.
Another three months wracking and whirling;
cursing his hands, howling the night, willing him to pitch me the ball.
Just waiting for cruel summer to bloom in shades of blue,
beaming because cruel summer doesn’t lose.

‘I just started feeling like I was hurting you.’
Your narrative, not fine but okay.
If you want it then ask for it, don’t show off for me.
Cringe and grin, loaded questions, uneven answers:
Your ******* between my ears,
my rot at the center of your chest.

Your mind’s a weapon of my destruction,
my heart’s an insurgent on your tongue,
war crimes and an urge to confess sins
I’ve yet to commit but pray to.

Your conquest, my damnation,
my crown, your thorns.
The best laid plans of mice and wrens,
and all the flesh that must be shed-
******* it up again.

Diametric wonder like impenetrable alchemy,
'I just wanted to use the word penetrate.'
like I didn't know that; like I'm not flushed,
tripping and dripping at 'alchemy.'

A single shadow for two ghouls,
born from a short play and two ****** fools.
One grave, two lives,
one coin, two sides-
‘my head, your tail,’
poetic every second of every day.
Ease into this, okay? Sometimes it works out.

You’re not that horrible, you know what I mean.
The taste of something like a target ****** upon me.
You told me you love damaged girls,
and I’m unparalleled, all broken and brilliant,
all twirling, starting fires,
all strange and wonderful, relentless and ravishing;
already here, all ready here.

You told me I’ve never really played along,
but I played merry hell with our ransoms and struck more nerves than we thought I could reach.
I have plenty of your secrets,
and you’re the milk-silk viscera
weaving through so many of my poems.

Whiplash, so it comes to nothing.
Whiplash, and hardly a tool for self-harm.
How dare I turn your hollow eyes into a lens that looks back to me?
How many lives do I owe your blue and burning?
Whiplash, a quick, heart-drop minute, a long, wretched second.

‘I did not see that coming,’
listing tautologies, I have so many reasons
to believe you but I don’t.
‘The right thing is to walk away.
Not string you along, try to use you, ******* around,
all the things I want to do.’
and what are you actually looking for?
You imagine you’ll die before you find out.
It doesn’t have to be so hard.

I still think there’s hope under all the blood and terror,
the unholy mess and the violent red,
your commitment to torment and a stubborn that’s just stubborn.
I still think there’s a place where we can lay our weapons
in the grass, sign a treaty in the dirt, and call it a covenant.
I know there’s a place where our hands are clean
and the poetry isn’t tangled in throats and fists,
where the light is warm, the sparks are softer than you think,
and whiplash is just another way of seeing stars.

I’ve thought about what absolution will feel like in the dark,
how forgiveness will sound in my hands,
the smell of clemency in the morning,
and where the sun sits in the palm of a man
who hasn’t let himself get used to anything.

I’ve thought about the resound of effusive, earnest prayers
when I finally mean them,
what the poem will look like when it escapes its cage,
and how the night will unfurl its sparks then
shatter stars along the promenade.

I’ve thought about what would happen if I stepped on his face
and kept going– if I’d hear any bone-snap.
I’ve imagined how fun it’d be to drown his gaze in its own
reflection, to be the echo he chokes on.
In my night-struck existence, I’d giggle while he stumbled around,
a charred-orange wreck, a muted-barb affect.

I’d plug his mouth with a sharp-edged, holy silence so
that the next girl stands a chance; so she won’t be
gouged into a ghost, all violent and vanquished,
a lacerated light who still has a soul to save.

If I cut his lungs with a poem, would it be a mercy killing?
Like a priest praying for his own death,
would I be breaking the sacrament?
I’m still consuming a body; a different kind of lamb.

Could I slice into his side and crawl back into his rib,
hold the pulpit, perform my own liturgy, and seize
the forgiveness that wasn’t offered?
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned-
Deliver me, Father, my light has dimmed.

This is my first-ever life. I’ve never been anybody's,
I’ve only ever been any body.
I’m not brave because I’ve never had to be;
I’ve never had to call my own bluff, or learn
the rules; I’ve been coasting by bad beats
and dumb-luck, and the boys always
fall until I flush, tilt until they fold,
love me until they don’t.
I pocket the chips anyway.
My clumsy hands get antsy;
always dropping hints and pennies,
never dropping hands that drop pilots,
barely dropping hands that drop bombs,
and my fermented dreams;
my sweet turns so acidic, I can't see
the color of an aura over the bacteria and bubbles.
I go to sleep with yeast on my fingers
and get drunk on my dreams.
I’m a bad poet and an okay bird;
I spend my midnights pecking on the keyboard
like a sparrow at its reflection, tapping out
a list of things that might be.
I have this thing where I try to write my way
into myself, but the vocabulary makes me lie;
the syntax makes me slink,
I use semicolons wrong,
and always too many commas,
but if you’ve ever seen the inside of my mouth,
you know that I’m doing the best I can.
My first-ever life is shaping up to be
an entire sentence so run-on
and run-down that it
almost doesn't matter if I get to the end;
inmates don’t get to choose where
they serve, even if it is my first-ever life.

The first few lines of a poem always sound like they should be the last,
the last few sound unnecessary,
I'm not sure if the next line is a metaphor or just
a way to keep my hand in the fire;
I think it might be both.
I think this might be it.
We’re all just a few lines away from being forgotten,
but we have to keep writing like we’re not.
We have to be careful not to die before we die.
We have to say goodbye before we say hello.

You know what I mean, don't you?
Like the poem should be written in ashes, but
the lines are too long to fit in the hearth.
You try to keep a notebook and end up writing on the wall,
you try to fit the words into your mouth before they're swallowed,
you try to taste them before you choke.

Brevity’s a virtue, I’m a vice.
I have yet to see a chasm that I couldn't swan-dive into-
I have yet to wreck a heart that wasn’t mine.
I still can’t describe what I really mean.
I take up lines like a layer of locusts, like I’ve got a plague in my pen.
I’ve never finished a poem in my life, but I’m still careful not to die.

I know what I mean, but I don't mean it.
My sentences sometimes look like the death
of a small animal, blood and fur, feathers and bone,
twisted muscles all tangled together,
rotting in the sun with no one to bury it.

Decay in blunt, angular letters and a mottled pink sky,
a rusted machine, the worst of me.
The pulpy feeling of sentences clawing their way through my skin
just to get out and get away, to gnash their teeth,
chase a phrase, or find new mouths to fit into.

It’s the last line again, the one that belongs five stanzas up,
the one that wants to kiss your cheek and leave a stain,
that stokes the flame and knows what you mean.
A last line that clings to your skin,
drips into the next poem, because it wasn’t quite right,
but will be remembered. It will be buried.

I keep setting my mind on fire, but it’s still so dark.
I hold my breath, and hold burning torches for your ache.
I have taken a thousand flowers to bed and none have bloomed,
I have held a thousand sighs and none have made me cry,
I have broken a thousand hearts and all of them were mine.

I’m on the wrong side of the river,
laying in the weeds and getting itchy,
waiting for the buzz of a motor,
praying for the sound of a train,
thinking of you.
I’m looking up at the sky
to see if there are still stars,
half convinced they won’t be there,
fingers stuck in the dirt and holding on to the ground for dear life.

I’ve thought of your body in a thousand ways,
all of them have been wrong.
I’ve thought about the room you keep locked away,
how it smells of a mother, the air like a grave.
A cabin without windows, like a body without blood,
a grazing patch for all the blows you’ve taken to the chin,
for all the heartaches you can’t put into words.

A ripped map, a bed for dead feet,
a closet to stow forgotten things, a radio that isn’t plugged in.
It’s a tomb and I won’t disrupt the dead.
I can offer to blow a hole in the roof,
string Christmas lights on every wall,
and lay a gladiolus bouquet at the door,
but I can't turn a haunt into a home, and I won’t try.

There are so many ways to touch you, I’ve imagined every one of them,
but none are enough. I can taste you on the back of my tongue,
I can smell your gloom some mornings. I can find you in the empty wine.
I can feel you in my bones, and see you in the light
that filters through the cracks in the blinds.

I want to destroy everything that destroys you.
I want to make you a home you don’t want to burn down.
Has your mind been on fire lately? Has my love been a flame?
I’m drawing a new map for you to read, I’m reclaiming the wrong
side of the river. I’m building a bed where everything blooms,
Where we can lay on our backs and see only stars.

Less a flirtation than a duel,
you take the hit and then you hit back.
You know I won’t die of you.

More a free-fall than a slow burn,
I clear my throat and you reach for yours.
I know you’re keeping score.

You are not the last word,
but you are the only one I’d speak aloud.
You know you won’t live forever.

You are not the worst thing I’ve done,
but you are the only thing I can’t confess.
We will never be strangers.

Less a revelation than a metallic plea,
I come undone and you just come.
When I choose my words carefully, I choose you.

Betrayal is a heavy word I won’t hold against you,
and you won’t hold me.
More a truce than a treaty, we do this until we don't.

We blur out the edges then circle back around.
You are not the endgame,
but you are the only one I want to play.

the dream where we made a truce of our bodies
in the belly of a boat,
ignoring our stutters and stings for one small
and sublime
passing note.

a nest of warm-wood walls and soft,
faded sheets,
something like mercy in our quiet-
redemptive, or at least,
semisweet.

your hair caught
in the buttons of my
sweater,
my white dress flitting
behind me like
surrender.

then white knuckling the bow,
bruising my knees,
slain and sickly,
retching in the sea.

your roommate braided her hair as she
watched me and laughed,
your eyes blinked heavy with the weight
of ache, fore-and-aft.

at sea we can see what we really are:
the kind of love that eats you alive,
a tangled affair you may not survive.
the kind of slow motion implosion
that cracks the sky,
the blind devotion explosion;
a shattered lullaby.

you ask a question, I answer with the dream.
this was months and miles ago;
the dream and my hands were wet with salt,
your mouth and fingers cold, your eyes aglow.

your brain is really protecting you,
that was your response.
from what? from the yearn of man
who can
only haunt.

a piece of penance smuggled in your
trademark nonchalance,
and all the grace that the dark can give,
all the
rust and want.

Introduce yourself to the word scour. Break in your boots. Look in the mirror but don’t fall in. Find your way back to the city. Be sad. Pray with your mouth shut. Paint the breeze with your fingers. Scream at the sky. Make someone else a statue and never tell them about it. Run faster. Breathe harder. For the record: you are every scribble from every pen. For the record: profound things happen when you expect them to.

Stitch the word havoc into the sky and watch the clouds tangle themselves around your fingers. Be careful with your tongue. Let it be a secret in your mouth. Let it keep itself, and keep learning. Be careful with your mouth too, there are teeth and spikes and claws in there. There’s a reason for the blood, but there’s no reason to be afraid. Remember: there are no monsters, just open wounds. Suture or salt; you can cut your own hair with the same pair of scissors.

Soak in the word desperate. Drag it to the coast and see if it floats. Spell it out in the sand next to your name. Follow it into the water. Drown in it. Let it sting your stomach, burn your chest, infuse your lungs. Puke it up. Bury it in the earth and watch it bloom. Every word is a little bit of sky and a little bit of grave. Keep in mind that a word is always larger than you, and always more complicated. You are not a word, but you are inside of a word, even when you’re using it wrong.

Become familiar with the word unyielding. Hold it like a torch and see how it catches fire. Read it with your eyes closed and remember how much it looks like a window. Know how it sounds when it creaks, how it smells when it singes. Keep it burning. Hold it to your chest. Keep it near your heart. Remember how it feels to keep a flame inside you, a burning wick, a glow of your own. Glass shatters and panes splinter, but you can still see through it. You can still breathe through it. The only thing that will ever stop your heart is your own hand, and your hand is busy holding the fire.

Be wary of the word indifferent. It’s slippery ivy. It slinks around the garden and climbs the fence. It jets out of the drain and spills into the street. It sways in the wind and the crows seem to avoid it. It finds you as a heap on the lawn; hemorrhaging from another too-soft song, another too-familiar funeral. It hides in the hedgerow and waits to bite. It will show you a dead branch and claim it as its own, it will wrap its arms around you and make you feel dead too. It stains the sun and drowns the rain, then drinks in the fog and swallows the dew. It devours all the light. But you need the light. Rip out roots and demand light. Make yourself a bouquet of light. This is the only weapon you have, so use it. Use the light.

Appreciate the word tender. It is the word that sings the most, that draws the longest breath. It is the closest you can come to an answer and the only word that can stand up to the question. Earnest and pure, always meeting you at the door, always taking you by the hand. There are no innocents in this world, no unscathed souls, or unmarked hands, just a mess of water-stained, dented hearts, of coins greening in the fountain, a hand-drawn map of a sinking city, and an endless tunnel of light. There’s a wide-open mouth that wants to be a door and a door that wants to be a mouth. There’s a window that wants to be a window, and there’s a word for this. There’s always a word for this. You just don’t know it yet.

You wrote yourself a note and taped it to the window,
now it’s sun-stained, ink-blurred,
typeface dripping, tapestry ripping,
another thing you let pass,
another ring slipped from your grasp.
Another night alone in your empty rooms;
waiting for a glimpse of golden.

Stutter into sleep, wring awake,
forage your phone for letters that haven't moved.
The world's still the same; bills seep your numbers,
alphabets plait your nerves.
The city won’t cower before you,
the summer won’t buoy you into anything
other than forward; tanner and older, unfound.

What do you dream of these days?
And in what shades of blue?
What’s dead in your head? What’s kicking?
What do you hope for in the vacant morning,
and who do you miss in the lingering night?
There are no wrong answers.

There are lights you forgot to turn off,
there are epiphanies you forgot to remember.
There are days you forgot to dance in the kitchen and touch your skin to grass,
but you haven’t forgotten me. You just don’t care.
Does that make me a ghost or a regret?
Both leave sand in my mouth, both ricochet an echo;
neither feels like an ending, and both make me shudder.

I’m looking for something to fill the space between my ribs
that isn’t a calamity and isn’t a marvel,
just some kind of ballast that won't see me at sea.
I need a tether for my tongue that doesn't look like you,
and a compass for my eyes that won’t point you-due.
I need a berth for my grace that won't let me drown
as you **** a cigar, and angle to watch the shore watch you.

My library-heart roars and aches with every story ever told,
my big feelings hold up the sky and call in the waves.
I’ve never been so close to something that wasn't mine,
I’ve never blinked more golden than when no one's looking.
I’ve never been lonelier than when I was
holding on to you,
so why can't I let go?
There are no wrong answers.

This summer is the apocalypse.
July gnaws on her dress,
the hem a serrated knife,
the shoulders too hot to touch.

July has a way of sifting its scorching
into every kingdom crevice,
of shattering and scattering,
and flogging the fleeting.
July tries to maim memories, choke
daydreams, forget I’m waiting for you.

This summer is the apocalypse.
August twitches like a viper,
scales iridescent,
eyes empty as wind.

August has a way of biting back,
of wringing out bygones,
extracting grit from muscle and gut.
August turns thoughts into sirens,
words into whips, my pride into porcelain,
And I'm still waiting for you.

This is a river that runs uphill.
This is a lake that​​ swells with silence.
This is a field that keeps its secrets.
This is blistered lips and a clenched fist.
This is you howling my name.

This is the thirst I couldn’t drown.
This is the shadow that stretches.
This is the echo of an almost, the heat of a not-yet.
This is the other half of the premonition.
This is me, still waiting for you.

Summer sharpens its teeth, whittles light down to
bedroom shadows, narrow eyes, and last August’s howl.
I’m counting hours, yearning gentle,
dreaming blue and nothing new; heart-heavy on a blank page.

I’ve been working my way back into the world,
licking the dead off of my fingers,
scraping back the hair on my legs,
reacquainting myself with dirt-days and sun-skin.

I’ve searched the streets for a midnight-blooming,
but found I was the one who was missing,
I was the one who forgot how to breathe.
Now I meet the sky on my own terms and glow.

There’s a lot of green out there.
There are lots of little suns and stars,
glistening, waiting to be drawn into frame,
ready to make a wish or watch it burn.

There are so many ways to tell a story.
There are so many ways to say “I am.”
I could find the world in the slow stretch of July,
in the way light fights back when held up to heat,
but I can’t find a way to say “I’m not.” and mean it.

Sharp summer cuts a furious lesson,
a swollen sketch, a yearning hand, and a bruised map.
I am still learning to tuck in my tongue and to taste softly,
I am still learning that my thoughts are mine for taking and breaking.

Something is clicking and it’s not my bones or my pining;
it's the sound of my own name in my mouth and my own hope in my hands.
It sounds like a horse galloping and like water boiling.
It sounds like a question. It sounds like an answer.

Sinless summer: sharp but I’m sharper, beckons
me from springtime’s sleep. It waited so long to hold
my face and sing me forward with a shimmering song
that sounds like a promise, that sounds like a way to say “Yes.”

You’re always going to be a bit of an open wound.
Are you running lines or running away?
I can’t tell if my labored breathing is a testament to
how fiercely I am trying,
or how loudly I am failing-
a strange mouth full of pointed teeth and honey.

Breath; bated and
muttering words I can’t get right.
Breath; rife and
barking to any ear that might hear.
Breath; soft and simmering,
begging to be set alight or
extinguished, or buried among stumps and limestone.

I was born soft and everyone knows it.
I was born soft and every time I put my palm to my chest,
something shudders. No one taught me how to be.
Soft and sad, like an old song you dreamed of,
soft and solemn, like the last time you tried to pray,
soft and sinking, like the flag of a country overtaken.

I was born soft and every time I’m wrangled
back to earth, it​​ rips me open.
I was born soft and every time I’m touched,
I bloom to bruise the same color as the wind.
Softness is the color of mercy, not the smell of dust.
I am always on the brink, my edges are sharp enough to cut,
my fingers always bleeding and my mind always jangling.

Magic and cruelty- another line I cannot hold.
I was born soft and I know how I look to the world,
but I will never understand how I look to you,
or why you keep coming back.
I’m shimmering, glimmering, rare and hard,
a spectral glow in the reeds,
a lake without shoreline to leave a drowning girl.

I’ve been lonelier, but I’ve never been so haunted
I’ve been rustier, but I’ve never been so stiff.
I fight myself to do things, I can’t write poems.
I’m up all night, throat raw from licking wounds.
My appetite for anguish is colossal,
and my calamitous softness abides.

I’m talking to myself about you, I never shut up.
Born soft and inarticulate, I wrote a whole script for us.
I’m not always sure what I am saying, but I know that it’s true.
A girl floated around a lake and never got wet, a girl with a boat in her heart meant for lovers and the lost, a soft, swaying girl with delusions bigger than the whole sky. I’m talking to myself again and your line is soon, do you know your cue?

There's a subtle violence to the way we interact
your eyes linger, half a dare, half a dismissal—
waiting for me to say something that will make it easier,
like my mouth will invite you to betray me before you even start.

You say my name like it's a sigh you can't quite swallow,
and I answer with a laugh that tastes like a talking doll,
plastic and metallic, sticking to the back of my throat.
We sit in the silence that pulses between us,
thick as the secrets we keep beneath our tongues.

A smarter girl would have seen the strings,
a dumber girl would have played along,
a bolder girl would have set fire to the toy shop,
and a braver girl would have never
let herself be a toy in the first place.

There's a subtle violence to the way we pretend;
clinging to skin with fingers made of willow and ash,
clinging to diving boards with the same desperate grip.
I wonder if this is love or just inertia—
a habit that clings like the scent of smoke,
***** and aching, lingering long after the flame is gone.

But you hold me at arm's length,
just vague enough to haunt,
just close enough to hurt,
and I know better
but I still reach, I still grasp—

I still fall like a dream dissolving at dawn,
a fall that feels like freedom,
weightless for a fleeting second:
no strings, no metal, no violent subtleties, no smoke at all.

And when the ground rises up to greet me,
a cruel embrace that whispers
what's been in my mouth all along,
what the doll tried to say before she burned:

that letting go is never the hardest part,
it's surviving the landing that shatters you,
and knowing you were the one that jumped.

I write in fragments, splinters of bone and honey,
syllables cracked open, spilling
the sweet rot of almosts, an ache left raw.

Each word wears two faces—shadow and shimmer,
tiptoeing like smoke across split lips,
dressed in disquiet, cloaked and crooked,
and, and, and—

each line drips slow, a fever-burn with sharp teeth.
Commas scrape their knees, a bleeding scab
I can’t help but pick clean.

I leave bruises on pages, backwards and barefoot—
not wounds, not quite, but something
that lingers like woodsmoke in the morning.

My lines stumble like drunk apologies,
guttural and gripping.
You don’t read my work;
you trespass, you crawl.

What I say and what I don’t—
they hold hands in the spaces between,
like shadows slipping past each other.

Sentences flex limp and knotted,
stones in my throat waiting to choke.

This isn’t a poem—it’s a map of missed exits,
each word an ache left half-sewn,
stitched by hands too tired to be careful,
fingers too numb to be precise.

I write in whispers and warnings,
half-lives and half-lies, spurting soft and sideways,
graffiti on walls in rooms no one stays in.

This is language as ruin,
syntax frayed, stretched to ache
till it tears, a glimmer of tendon beneath.
Not a story, not even a sentence—
just pieces scattered like dry leaves,

prose unmade, too jagged to hold,
but clinging like sap,
sweet and hard to forget,

leaving you haunted,
a little lost, a little found,
with edges sharp enough to cut.

December is still lucent,
winter is still scratching its legs in the grass.
Our bruises are yellowing, our swells are endless.
The scorn is still hot in my mouth,
the tense is still past.

I don’t want to lose the taste of red,
or the weight blue brings in its throat,
but I’m ready to peel your scent off my skin,
scrape the sanctified from my sinned-in-bones,
and burn the map to the hidden rooms I built for you.

I know the fire is slow and the years are not.
I know the burning is mine and you are not.
I know the stuttered-tongue is a cliff and the knife-edge is in my hands.
I know that silence is an answer and that you are not.

The ache of August is more static
than buzzing bugs and cracking thunder,
more stubborn than stop-motion memories,
more constant than our stop-and-go days,
more shameful than our pay-to-play nights.

It’s the smell of sunshower-damp pavement;
the heavy breath and sweat of the city,
all the restless, anxious bodies filling up bars.
All the things that keep us up and keep us tired,
the sad swarm of souls on their way home
again.

This ache that slithers around ribs,
presses with cramped fingers, until it finds the bottom
of a spine and squeezes.
It claws and clutches,
grabs and grabs,
hooks and holds.

A grip, a fist, another white lie,
another calloused hand.
Another crook making a mess of my words, stealing
color from my eyes and hope from my voice.
I August-ache. I August-break.

The sky hasn’t been blue since April.
The A train hasn’t run express since the last time we talked.
The universe is an oil stain that will never wash out,
and it’s been a while since I believed in anything,
but I’m still trying. I’m still looking for light.

August sighs, hot and empty,
daring us to flinch or flee, remember to regret.
Springtime-thrills smoldered,
nights by the mouthful,
hands in hair, all burned down.

In August we ache. In August we break.
We hold our hurt like a secret and our fear like a crime-
then with whispered mornings and honeyed winds,
September comes and shakes the ashe out of our sheets.
In September, I’ll be in the light.
In September, the sky will be so, so blue.

I wasn’t born alone but I’ve been alone ever since.
I’ve traced lines of fleshy eyelids with stub-fingers
and wondered who I was before
the world was.

I’ve held my breath while holding my tongue, then counted
to ten and went to seek anyone who’d hold my gaze.
I've walked down ***** streets with knives in pockets
and scars on hips,
I’ve stumbled through the night with headlight pupils
and sirens lining my boots.

Brown eyes the color of the river as seen from above,
and hands that can make love but not hold it.
I saw the light through the trees and thought
I was going somewhere-
but I stopped going.

I don’t want to go alone.

October wears the wrong shoes, wears out her knee,
wears days passing like ****** rings on each bony finger.
I’m getting quiet again;
tucking my hands in my jacket,
tucking my scraps and starlight in sidewalk cracks.

There are days you can convince yourself of anything,
but they don't come as often as they used to.
I feel like I should be the one singing,
I should be the one watching the moon rise twice in one night;
skimping on sleep and feasting on frisson.
I’m not that old, but I feel like I could be.
I’m not that jaded; I prefer reverie.

September was made of sighs and swords,
August was slow-marching shadows and tiger-tight dreams.
July was nothing but waiting-
nothing but stringing beads on an endless thread,
nothing but erasing the map and starting over.

Months have a way of slipping to the street
as you loosen your grip;
like coins storm drain-clinking,
like jewels gutter-glinting,
like time spilling, time seeping;
time swallowing you whole.

There are days you can still get away with anything,
but it’s getting harder to curtsy to the mirror and feed it a lie.
There are days when it’s fine to forget the name of your city,
But you can’t forget the names of your teeth,
or where you buried them, or when you’ll need them again.
Dirt is always shifting, names are always changing;
I’m still singing, still counting, still naming.

There are nights when I know I’m dreaming, but I also know I’m awake.
How many moonrises can I count in a day before I run out of fingers?
How many streets can I name before I run out of breath?
I’m a little anxious, but I mostly get out of bed.
I’m a little sad, but I still meet each month with hard hands and rings.
I’m a little anxious, but I keep my scraps and starlight.
I’m a little sleepy, but I still sing while counting my moons.

No one tells you what to do
when your heart is in your mouth,
when your toes cramp and tangle,
when your body aches to be a better bouy.

No one tells you how to act
when your tongue burrows thick and cold in your throat,
when your knees buckle,
when your chest reels six slow shackles to the ocean floor.

No one tells you where to run
when hope is thin on your lips,
when your feet drag and the sand burns,
when the whole world thinks you're a coward
and they’re right.

You can’t tell if you're singing or screaming,
dancing or decaying,
miserable or marvelous.
a galaxy or a ghoul.
All you can do is stand and sway.
All you can see is the tiniest scrap of light.

No one tells you when it’s time to go;
when to strip the bed and when to sink in deeper.
You can't know if your eyes are the right color while looking through them,
or how your heart could be a burning match when you hold your breath and wait.

No one taught you to gag promises and jagged teeth;
to pluck moss from your hair and rust from your limbs,
but your fingers know what to do in the dark,
your lungs know how to keep a flame alive.

No one taught you when to be brave and when to keep your mouth shut,
but you’re learning, aren't you?
Your mouth stays sealed and your anchor stays secure.
You’re learning.

All I crave is love-shaped, all I see is light.
I’ve held faces in my palms,
and held my breath for weeks;
the only soul I’ve cradled is my own.
The only sighs I hear are screams.

I make ghosts from epilogues of once-closed books,
and write them into new poems for safekeeping.
I ask for a sign and get a stone,
I search for a home and find a haunting.
Each garden is a cipher for the other and each creek is a clue.

I pray to saints and saints pray to me.
The nicks of my body are staring at the sky, saying:
wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.
I don't recognize the saints, but I see their eyes behind the slits of mine,
and trust they are as soft as I am.

Kneeling across moons and seasons for the hope of it, the poem of it.
I know love because I am love.
I believe saints because I am one.
I am everything-shaped. I write words that crawl out of graves, resurrect nuance,
and whisper, wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.

May of last year, I became a girl again—
not one I’d been before,
but one I met for the first time,
bejeweled in a New Jersey parking lot,
singing with lungs
too used to holding apologies.

When the stadium lights dimmed,
we stood at the blockade,
a constellation of strangers orbiting
the same star.

It was the closest we’d ever come
to being fully ourselves—
sparkling, loud, unabashed,
together.

We were women relearning how to be girls,
unfolding ourselves in a carpark,
peeling back layers of too-muchness
we’d been taught to hide.

The years had pressed us quiet,
shrinking us to fit spaces
meant for us to be seen,
but never felt.

But here, under the floodlights,
we found permission in the shimmer—
sharing shorthand glances
and whispered secrets that sparkled.

Someone spilled a White Claw;
someone else sipped their heartbreak.
We nodded solemnly at both,
because ravishment and sorrow
need no explanation here.

The music reached us on delay—
her voice traveling not from the stadium,
but from the sky,
echoing just far enough
to feel like it already belonged to the past.
We sang anyway,
daring it to catch us.

There was glitter on the asphalt,
scuffed into galaxies
by the soles of cowboy boots and Converse.
We spun and swayed like children unlearning shame,
our bodies moving freely,
finally forgetting how they’re supposed to look.

A security guard, middle-aged, glowing white bob
mouthed All Too Well like a prayer
she’d carried for years,
her female gaze—
not surveillance, but sanctuary—
the kind women save for each other
when the world isn’t watching.

She nodded as we screamed the bridge,
her eyes sparking,
as if unearthing something long-buried.
In that moment,
we were all the same age.

On the upper balcony,
a silhouette waved—
a shadow carved by backlit glow,
as if the universe greeted us by name.
We waved back,
because what else do you do
when kindness feels that big?

The glint and glimmer turned
strangers into sisters.
We clapped for the ones who ran to the gates,
even two hours in,
hands clutching miracle QR codes.

We whooped for them
like it was our own triumph,
because it was.
Together we're storming the barricades
of a revolution made of rhinestones.

Someone spun with their arms wide,
spilling bliss into the night.
Someone else stood still,
eyes closed,
holding the weight of a lyric
they didn’t know they needed.

It wasn’t just a concert.
It was a reclamation—
a bead-strewn riot of tenderness,
a reminder that we’re allowed to take up space,
to hold everything,
to feel it all at once—
even if it's messy,
even if it's ugly,
even if it spills like light too wild to gather back.

A woman with long braids
and Bluetooth speaker in her Hi-Vis vest
blasted Fearless at the station,
while directing us to our trains.

We sang it back to her,
off-key but perfectly in sync.
Joy spreads like stardust,
and what else can you do
when you’ve carried something
so vast,
so bright?

For once,
the world paused—
not as an audience,
but as something softer,
a witness to the sound we made.

We were there.
It was rare.
I'll remember it.

I’m dreaming of boats again—
white dresses, cruel lines,
the way your laughter sounds
when I can’t see your face.

I surrender my subtext and sigh
in rooms small enough to swallow
everything unsaid.

And you—
half-light, half-shadow,
saying my name like it’s yours.

The air is salted and stifling.
A girl I don’t know laughs—
her hands in your pockets,
her voice a blade, stitched neat,
and when I see her face,
I’m afraid it’s mine.

“This is not an answer,” I say,
as if boats know how to be honest,
as if white dresses don’t drown.

Outside, the water churns.
Inside, I am heaving—
lungs full of salt,
mouth full
of you.

This is how you haunt me:
small, quiet,
always below deck.

And when I wake,
the dream asks me:
‘What did you bury there?’
I open my mouth to answer,
but only salt comes out.