There is a day
away from here
where you'll be safe.

The space of an
afternoon, or the bubble
within a coming dawn.

Stay. For the reason
your hands are cold
when you bring them

out from beneath your
pillow. For the break
between the tracks

the record skipping
over. I am laughing,
it is old and it is new.

It has always been there,
love. These fingers are
constantly stroking

your cheek. Those
rays of sunlight fall
perfectly on your face

every single day, I know
there is a blue sky
beyond every ******* cloud,

a paper airplane in every
rejection letter, stay. I want
to walk with you through

the trees in California.
I want you to tell me
where they came from,

how it hurt when they
were born, tomorrow's longing
whisper can be yesterday's lost time.

I didn't have the time. This
glowing wish inside my chest,
longing for your eyes. I saw

the moment when it missed
me, I watched it as it passed.
You were the rain, love. You

were always falling,
every
single

day.

There is something about the skin
of a woman that makes my fingers
want to sandpaper their bones
until they curve like
her waist does.

I want them to bend
around her hipbones,
come out the other side saying
Baby, my knees are so weak
you could carry them away
in your prayers.

And I bet she would.
This girl, she would pray
so hard it would move
straight through her,
every breath is a dance
and she's trying to move
so fast that the world
couldn't even touch her.

I want so badly
to touch her. I wish I could,
if only I could rewrite my story
until I became someone else,
I would find her eyes at the bar,
let her teach me where the cold
comes in so I can fill it
with my lips.

I want to see the way
her God anoints her forehead,
how He shows her the light
in the times she needs it
the most. My God, She tells me
I'll never be able to love you
with the lights left on, and
I think She's right.

My body quakes whenever I
step onto the sidewalk, because
I think they can smell it on me.
I think they can smell her on me,
these trees they whisper
as soon as I turn away,
and I think that means something
about the way I've learned
to make love to this Earth.

These girls, they love so much
differently than a man does,
a man can tell you that you're
beautiful but a man's hormones
have learned to speak for him
in order to get the job done, so
you never know if it was true.

If I could hold a woman, I know
I'd cradle her cheek against
my collarbone, I'd tell her I know
it will be all right, I've done this
before and I know exactly
how it will end.

I don't know how this
will end. I don't know how
I'll manage to keep her a secret
inside of me. There is a dust that waits
in her attic and I know I could climb
until I reach the sky.

At the bend in this river,
I know this course will carry me
to a clearing where she can teach
me how to smile in the sunlight. Where
the breeze will show me that my soul
is not stuck tight as the bonds
they push me into.

As soon as I can laugh
the way she does,
I know
I'll be able
to come
home.

The car in the handicapped space
of the parking lot with the
Iraq Veteran bumper stickers breaks
my heart. I wonder if the sand in his boots
can hold the pedals down. I wonder if the
visions in his head can grip
the steering wheel. I bet some nights
he remembers that a hospital bed can be
a prison cell.

That hospital bed was not
my prison cell. It was a welcoming back
to the life I thought I had before, it was my anthem
careening through the dark. I heard it in the spaces
between their words. Their words were holes
drilling themselves into my muscles, I felt them
spinning toward the grenade that was my heart.

Once, my muscles were strong enough
to cover me like a blanket. I remember how
they sheltered me. I remember feeling proud
to wear the covering of my skin. I was a tiger
when he touched me. I prowled in darkness,
I slept during the day, some nights I remember
that a bedroom door can lock me up, my parents
locked me in a tower, they told me I'd be safe there.

Maybe I should have stayed inside. Maybe
it would have kept me from the car, the hospital,
it would have kept him from the war, maybe I'd be there
still. Maybe he knows how it feels to hold
an animal inside your chest, maybe he knows
what it's like to feel it shaking in your bones.

Maybe this man in the parking lot
can tell me what a gunshot sounds like
between the windows of your ears. I think
it would sound better than my own voice
singing me to sleep. Some nights, the lights
outside my window are too bright. I bet
he could tell me what that means.

in some way
maybe the milky way
swirls rose pink,
i'd like to think
this flower petal blessing
might have come true
somewhere, so far away

space to me has never seemed
quite empty, to me it is full
all the words i send through my chest
all the ones i don't pick for my mouth
they make their way there, hide
among the stars until i select them again,
compliments for someone else, ones
the last one never deserved

somewhere in all that space
there is a hollow made for me
my niche is not buried in the earth,
a cavern beneath the surface --
it is open sky, open stars, i belong
above the universe looking down
that way nobody can ever look down on me,

and when i can't catch my breath,
there is a planet there
who exhales for me, gifting me
with a strength only something
with that amount of gravity
could ever hold

my gravity is small and i huddle
against the dirt, wishing i were
small enough to float up
through the clouds
and join my brothers
and sisters
in the black

my mother's strength
could rustle tree branches,
knock down houses and
push through walls.

and her hope,
that feminine aching
for things to be better,
she shows the rest of us
what it's like to be warm
even through her shivers,

my mother knows
the soreness in my knuckles,
she asks me every time,
my mother strikes a chord in me
tender and careful, she carries
the child i will continue to be
even as i move on from her

the way she holds us,
her arms are temples to me
i've never known another
shelter so holy,

and every time she cries
i want to open up a wound
within myself, so i can cry
along with her, i walk beside her
so she'll never be alone,

my mother
never deserves
to feel alone.

this forest heart
will go on longing
for my mother's open skies.

It is difficult to ignore
the run-down playhouse.

The ivy running
up the sides.

It has belonged to spiders
for seven years,

the yellow paint is
chipping, you cannot see

the ladder inside, how tiny feet
clambered up the wooden rungs,

the windows clouded over
with dust.

And I start shaking,
only a child could understand

longing like this,
I've never been sheltered

like they've sheltered me
for all these years.

In the absence
of childhood memories,

this house is how I know
I was loved.

i must have been drinking
concrete, swallowing
gasoline, eating ashes
and chewing dust
if i thought
this was going
to be easy

i've been holding my breath
and stopping my thoughts,
sleeping for far too long,
this house pulling around me
until i thought
it could hold me
forever

something in my skin
has died, there is a graying
underneath my eyes and
i'm still afraid of what's to come
this fear is breathing,
bulging beneath
a layer of my skin

i can feel my heart hiccup
at the thought of leaving
all of this behind