the people look like ache,
shriveled and lost inside
their twisted interpretations of movement.
we're tired here,
spitting out apologies and
niceties, the things expected
of a well mannered member of society.
looking at the hands passing by,
wrinkled and lined with everything
they've loved-
it's exhausting to think of every life you've contained.

1680

Sometimes with the Heart
Seldom with the Soul
Scarcer once with the Might
Few—love at all.

you stole the heat from rose marie and wrote holland on your wrists
all lincoln roses, roving gods and heterochthonous mists
liaisons built on bread and honey
                                                           ­         marred by a dead man's tryst
I have watched you watch me grow so **** old
are you taking in any of this?

the thought of sleep after a cold bath
is just as bad as having to listen to
your family doctor diagnose your insurance:
dying as fast as your childhood memories,
and although you've got the same blood
your grandfather, half-dead, doesn't want to know your name
and he doesn't care about the wrinkles water gives you.

he's got eyes like those charming men you see on the
t-e-l-e-v-i-s-i-o-n.
what's more:                                                            ­                
he can wink and blow kisses at the same time.

two phones
two coffee cups
one long conversation about nothing
and shared laughter over the mumbles we heard
from the downstairs neighbors when we were kids.

remember?
we'd hide in bushes with flashlights,
too afraid to move, too afraid the dark would
catch up to our short-distance legs and
our too-wide-to-see eyes.

I remember:
we'd talk into unplugged microphones
and trap ourselves by climbing fences
with stacks of rocks that we could barely lift.

one time, we found a field mouse:
he died the next morning.
the funeral was alright,
none of us cried at least.

I blame the mouse for getting caught in the heater,
we gave him a house and wrote his name on the front
so he wouldn't forget, but his mother must not have
taught him how to read English.

You told me he wouldn't be able to--
"why is it a boy? why can't it be a girl?"
--it didn't take me long to realize:

you can be whatever you want
or whoever you want,
and that if I was
(as trapped as)
that mouse,
I'd probably choose the heater too;
but I wasn't,
and I had you.

the expectation of sanity
as you emerge from a nine-month womb
is commercialised.
a waving sensation of breathing
overtakes instinct-driven lungs
and that is when your humanity begins to dissipate.

do your invisible friends get recycled
when you decide that society is more
important than imagination?

if we're all hiding something,
why hide?


-


people are entirely too polite
when you sing loudly in their inane
faces. sometimes expression
is the best way to get ignored.


-


stuffing cotton and paper
down your throat, does not,
in fact, shut down your emotions.

shrugging off your body,
in an attempt to be god-like,
even subconsciously,
is human.

on sundays i ask myself questions without question marks.
like: how did you figure out that i hum when i'm afraid.
like: why do my parents call themselves christians when my younger brothers sound racist at the dinner table without knowing the term.
like: how old is the term 'hipster', why do people name themselves after spit-upon-ground-up words, what is the number of swallows you could conceivably snap the necks of in an hour.
like: why
am i writing this.

do you remember talking about mental disorders and broken beer bottles on railroad tracks. do you remember wishing we were younger and then forgetting that in the haze of 'growing up'. do you remember asking me why i never wrote i with a capital and spewing on about the underlying self esteem issues that represented and why do you say that, you don't have any self esteem issues, do you shen. do you. do you remember talking about rubbed pink thighs and ladder arms and elbows too bent out of shape to hug someone. do you remember the month when i would only eat rosemary and olive oil bread and you didn't speak, not once.

some people write about bones and teeth and the skin scraped under nails when you blackout twice in a row. some people write about the decay of humanity, and some people blather into the air on buses, the stale air between business men and crying single mothers, some people blather and whisper and write about the space bar and aluminum foil and finding themselves when there is nothing to find, because that. that is quite a feat.

volcanoes and thunder storms, bolts of lightning and heavy clouds, heavy eyelids, lead coffin words and the whirling dervishes that spin holes into your palms sometimes. these are the things little girls are made of.

i was going to write a piece using the word we entirely too often. talk about the slip of your palms down my cheeks, the floaty high after you don't sleep for forty-eight hours and then skip gallantly through the albertson's parking lot. i was going to write this immense prose with weaving metaphors and phrases that begged to be spoken. a piece with a moral, about a boy and a girl, or maybe two girls, or an animal and the voice that haunts it. about a willow bride with gauze wrapped firmly around a puncture wound. describe the inner monologue of a park bench. but maybe not, because that would be deleted.

i could write you a letter, because you know who you are. or the empty waterbottle that is staring mournfully at me, or burlap sacks, or the words that i speak of constantly but never speak.

the boots could stand without a body
or lips to kiss
her essence was in them full like water
she would shout and not be heard through all the smoke
now it is clear, but she is silent

there's always too much to figure out or trust or not trust
when you're seventeen and gorgeous and sorry
but he should be sorry, not me,
he never looked at my **** like they would fit into his hand
or into my eyes like they were oceans/moons/something surreal
milk tastes better with chocolate syrup
until you get older: you like bitterness in your hot mug
and in your eyes

roll up the bible like a pillow in your lover's bed
you are your lover
i am my lover
we are lonesome
scared of touching feeling lying asking knowing scared of being scared

now i'm tired of not feeling things that need to be felt
I see it in so many crevices like bookshelves
and cd cases
hiding behind some sort of transparent anger
and now it's about him again and his thick fingers and immature, un-trusting ways.

i keep trying to make things about you,
but maybe I need to stop looking with my glasses on.
there are no secrets, only words that mean nothing.
I collect them in tiny jars and cabinets.

he held my hand like he deserved it
and i'll hold yours like I want it
if anything in the world made sense then i would stop trying to figure it out
but i'm here listening to my parents yell at my brother for sleeping
and listening to my brother say **** and **** and ******* and words that only sound good in the daylight

if I wasn't alone on this couch,
things would make less sense.
but we are
and I am
with **** yous seeping through the walls to remind me i'm at home

next time
I see a train coming fast enough
I will not
fail

|
teach me latin, so i can write dead words in a dead language and gift them to you in a skeleton leaf.

||
count my freckles and divide them by your lips.

|||
write lists of places and plan trips and pack our things, but never go. instead, build tents in the livingroom and sleep there for a week.

||||
dance with me when the frogs and crickets strike up a concert, dance me straight to the edge of the river.

|||||
polish stones in your pocket and hang them around my neck with a jute cord.

||||||
write books with every word misspelled and give them to me with most solemnity, a crooked knee and a bent head. i'll decipher them and paint the phrases in the clouds.

|||||||
paint the grass white and roll down hills until we're coated and stiff.

||||||||
hang mirrors on every wall and leave notes with scribbled words about the groceries, ps you're wonderful.