finally, something
has gotten through.

I'm craving fields
and painted skies,
I want to choke on
the poems that burst
through my throat,
I want them to sing
the way your eyes do

finally, I want
to do everything I can.

I want to throw open
the doors, draw
on the walls,
swallow my clutter
and exhale my own kind
of laughter -- I'll submerge
anything I don't want to feel
beneath the waves

finally, I can smile
the way you do.

my spine has grown
softer, there is a magic
in my fingers and I'm learning
how to release it, it's coming
straight from the peace
I'm finding inside my chest,
somehow there is no longer a war there

finally, the reeds
are untangling themselves.

my gift is to hold, to
cradle, because i know
that whatever i am holding
must be deserving of my love.
maybe someday soon,
i'll realize that i can hold
myself, just as well as you can.

finally, i feel
like dancing.

nights take passion forth
into an abyss
of hundreds of arms
swirling under the weight of
bodies yearning
to connect

your destruction came
in moments, you fell beneath them
and growled, you were
the rabid beast
hiding in my closet
or behind my bathroom door
waiting to spring,

and you and i,
we fell for each other
like children, we fumble in the dark
like teenagers, we talk through every movement
like we've known this dance for years, years, years;

my hands, they're too small
to spread over your heart
like i want them to.
your hands, far too big
to cradle my face between them
like you meant them to.

we make it work
in the darkest of ways,
the black hole in the floor
of our bedroom
opening up
to swallow us
whole.

there are rose hips
swirled in
with the peace
of your womb,

they made their way in
through your nerve endings
and they crashed in
with the tide,
bringing newfound calm
to the child
who rests there

underneath
the cigarette slick
of your lungs,
the dripping hot flesh
of your stomach,
the stiffness
in your bones --

she swims
in decay
and swallows it
like a fog, she
simmers pink
with tender arms
and clouded eye,

she waits
for you
to notice her

heartache is
a penny, leaving
greenish glows
in the palm of my hand,
its slick caress a kiss
against the inside
of my pocket.

its weight yearns
like a kindergartener
whose voice
wasn't heard,
who knows
everything there is to know
about outer space,
something she can feel
wrinkling, biting a hole
through her chest.

and this tadpole heart,
it struggles and flails,
gulping to life
between words
it never knew
how to say.

silently,
somehow,
this monster
in my mind
falls gently asleep
with the tide.

maybe
there are earthquakes
in my skin. maybe
they hollow themselves
into the arches of my feet
and maybe i walk on rocks,
crumbling and cracking
under my toes.

maybe
i taste in color,
maybe i hear in
visions, maybe god
built a temple in my mouth
so its roof would fill my tongue
with the perfect words
to say to you.

maybe
heaven is not
shining white, maybe
it is green, i want to see
a forest when i get there,
i could never go an eternity
without a good climbing tree
and the breeze that blows
through my heartache.

maybe
when i tell you
that skeletons are
gorgeous, that
these empty bones
tell stories i can feel,
maybe you'll tell me
that even the corpse
has its own beauty.

maybe
you'll teach me
how to fish for crimson,
how to cast off my years
and be glad to the brink
of fear. maybe you'll teach me
what the Earth felt like
in 1836, maybe it was
a mystery, one not even
you could ever feel
working through your chest.

maybe
this familiar ache
inside my eardrums
is only my spirit
learning how to
listen
to the dawn.

i rope in your lungs
with my fingers,
there is a space
between your bones
and i want to fill it,
pouring in the lines
they told me
before they left me,
one by one,
leaving you
to carry me home

your fingertips,
they are riverbeds --
they are waiting
for the moment
when i can grow gills
and swim with the words
that crowd inside your chest
when you can't find
the right ones
to say

there are stars
tattooed onto the underside
of your stomach, there are
tiny planets swimming
in your blood stream
that i wish i could
dance my fingers through
just to remind you
that there are heavens
stirring in your heart,

this heart,
it chokes with shadow
some nights, but there is
a beacon shining in your bed
that i can't wait to discover,
submerged in the wreckage
our bodies left behind

and someday,
let me stir clouds
into your eardrums
let me breathe life
into the caverns
you've forgotten existed
let me fill your skull
with salmon finding
their way upstream,

you found your way
through the stream
that flows in my wrists,
you kissed the reeds
growing in my blood cells,
and one night, you held
my jaw together
as the sickness threatened
to break through it --
you always knew

how to unlock
the fastenings
in my vertebrae,
the ones who beg
to pull me down.

if somehow
the darkness
in my throat
began to spread,
i know
you would be the first one
pleading
to be dragged
along
with it.

the half- moons in your fingernails
fell that night, the soul
within your nail beds
filtering out with the grace of god
and you shuddered as they went,
wishing you'd had
some kind
of warning.

that grace,
it surrounded you
like silk, there was a candle
in your chest that flickered softly
just waiting for someone to notice
its quiet and tender smoke

and when desire filled you up
some nights, you held a violet close
to your heart and dared it to catch fire,
watched it turn to dust in your hands

this ashen life,
you couldn't find
what you searched for
in the sand -- you bit your lip
and cradled your own brokenness
in your palms, the heat from those
blue eyes tried to keep it warm
and my god i wish they had

because that morning,
when you kissed me?
i could feel the ashes
sparking on your tongue