I can't imagine how this looks
Me, face of clay
Silent windchime mouth
Aquariam glass eyeballs
Snowglobe life
Swimming in glitter
Tsunami at your hands
Plastic toes stuck
Until I lunge
Eyes flare heat
Stove top face
Coiled brain
Orange is the color I saw in you
Finger painted pianos
Mole rat grass
You took my monocle
Smashed glass in the garden
Next to tulip bulbs
That will grow in as your teeth
Fingers on mice
Like your genes
Granola girls take paths
I am glued, plastic feet
You walk around me

By this, all I mean is
am I paying enough attention?
or more like,
is the attention I am paying enough?
or maybe it's,
are the conclusions drawn from perception correct
and by correct
I mean
are they mine
are they systemic
are they volatile
are they tired
the poet has the strange position
of interviewing their consciousness
sometimes telling it
you are wrong, so far from anything right
and that is after the poem has been written
what goes on before, or during
if I had to say
it'd probably be close to ******
you feel it building
you pay close attention when it starts tingling
warning you of its course
then it is driving
rushing, clarifying, spreading, spilling out
it is you. consuming. enveloping. all.
editing comes next
the fighting with the you that has risen and went
looking for insight in the hardened cotton of *******.

I said
Don't!
Stop!

He said
He heard
Don't stop

when my momma took her fingers
to a keyboard and slapped down #MeToo
my boyfriend saw her post and said something like
"thats a little public, yeah?"
and i said
"yeah."
because the conversation had not been normalized
and she was the first on our timeline to do it
and i am ashamed to say i felt embarrassed.
of my momma. telling her truth.
i participated in the active silence and shame.
the quiet that is full of wishing you could go.
i didnt post #MeToo,
even though i have been *****, groped, cat-called.
which parts of me are suffocating in the tightness of my lips?
where do you go to learn to speak?

I am dying.
I am dying.
I am dying.
I am hoping I am making space
for something new.

words whirl
and seem to swirl
into the smoke
that twirls above us

each sentence
lite enough to fly
and float into the sky
flowing out of our mouths

you could ask me tomorrow
what you had said today
and I could not repeat it back
but I  could tell you in a way

I could say
how you made me feel
and that the moments were too real
in a sense surreal

you sat there
puff after puff
some how peeling
at my bluff

revealing
a piece of me
i forgot could even be

you are so dear to me. my confusion sits down in your company and spins together with your murkiness. if i had known what to call home, call love, i would have come sooner. dont call on me if I leaven. don’t call on me, I used to say. I bend over like willow in this suction and I mend all that my fingers can manage. I design, stitch pink into satin and forget the navigation I had ruptured in the past. the stems of us are laying down or blooming or moving inside but none of it matters. you matter. matter of fact it isn’t even the hum in the neck that shadows. it is the ugly closing that opens my sails to your beckoning power.

big ***** belly beast dont you ever wonder why the leather and the lace dont really meet where they said they would? chomp devour eat taste lie down and tell me which way you thought the valve was facing. dig and spill and weave and spit. i do not mind as long as you are someone who can tell me things like the dragon did. arent you that dude i met on fifth street? the one who was carrying a canister and a banner and wearing a purple glove? oh, nah? anyways where did the pig toes go and if they are in your bowels don't you feel weird about that, just a little bit, a weird that lightly tickles, doesn't scream? i once tried to hang a banana from a window sill and it wasn't at all what i thought it would be. are you even listening? can you hear me? when we built this underground tunnel i dont think we even considered that we might forget our shoes. why the **** are pathways full of pebbles and where did i leave my calluses? last time i saw them they were under the living room sofa. i heard that forgetfulness is a sign of adult ADD but i cant just go around diagnosing myself and my Medicaid card doesn't work here so i crawl around. never seizure. search. i felt like a peacock today, i had acne coloring my face and i had eyes all over my tail. i was just trying to eat some green beans. isn't it frustrating to have legs? it can be. it can be. it cant be their fault. or their fault. or mine. or his. no where to put it. it is everywhere.