i am the hanging branches
on your willow tree,
you don't wait
for spring to come
to tell me
i am beautiful

i am the rake
pushing through
your sand garden,
smoothing out the edges,
easing through the pain

i am the fog
hanging over
your mountain range,
covering you with
droplets of water
so sweet you can taste them
long after i've gone

i am the v-shaped flock of birds
flying over your turning tides,
calming you with every brush
of my wings against the clouds

but what i really am
is a snowflake balanced
carefully on one blade of grass,
waiting for your careful steps
to pass by me, for you to lift me
off the surface on one fingertip,
for you to bring me to your lips
so i may melt in your warmth

i am a maple leaf, i float
on your puddle and soak up
your dreams and your heartache
until you fill me up so much
that i can't take any more

i feel your cool touch
through my veins, they are green
and they are beautiful, that's what
you tell me
your kindness is
my sustenance

when i stop growing,
when i stop needing you so much,
when i can't let you hold me any longer
i'll remember the breath of fresh air
you pulled through my lungs
while i soared through the sky
reflected on your face

i'll know you needed me,
needed someone to pour
your life force into, someone
you could hold and someone
who would fly like you could not

at the end of the season, i'll stay
wrapped in your embrace

Sometimes it's just a conch shell
I am tired of holding
to my ear.

The birdsong outside my window
fills me more than your affection
ever could. When I say I am in love
with the entire ******* planet,
I mean it is impossible
for me to settle down.

I am not the type to sink
in the river, I want to float
on my back through the bloodstream
of the Earth and let the moon tell me
when it is too dangerous to go
swimming.

I never learned how
to swim. I am far too cautious
when I talk. My body is self-conscious
about letting the chlorine of
a summer pool touch me, fill me
like you used to.

I guess that's why I'm leaving,
love. The open air is a much better lover
than the sea. I would rather burn
inside the marrow of a far-off star
than feel alone at the bottom of the ocean,
only fish to guarantee I'm still alive.

Love is Pluto,
drifting in space searching
for something to hold onto
never knowing it is in orbit
circling something it will
never get to touch.

I wish I'd never touched you.
Never felt the sandpapered scars
that fold inside the creases in
your wrists. Never let you think
I had fallen from heaven, I wish
I'd told you I'm searching
for a way to float on top of clouds
without needing a God to tell me
I'm happy.

Maybe I only loved you
when you were unhappy.
Maybe your shoulder blades
never contained the wings I thought
I could see when the lights were out.

Baby, you were the ink
pouring from Shakespeare's
****** quill. You were the barnacle
in the sand waiting to take in
the blood and screaming disbelief
of a child, you were the whales
beaching themselves in one sorry attempt
to taste the grass.

You were the one
to always keep sinking.
It was your sandpaper
I held under my tongue
hoping it would rasp
long enough for someone
to tell me I was bleeding.

You were always
bleeding, especially when
I was gone. Now,
you breathe smoke
and still tell me it's me
who needs you.

If there's nothing they can do,
nothing I can be taught
in order to push the cold away,
please tell me at least the food
will be okay.

The last time, sauce dripping
over my teeth like I am supposed
to sink down into it, pour myself over
the meaty softness of someone else's body
and rest, being absorbed
into their consciousness until
I am nothing more than
a weight on their tongue.

Tell me I'll be able to sleep. They were
always leaving the door open,
the lights still on, I can't sleep knowing
that any moment something could happen
and it could come for me.

Tell me the faucets will pour out
cold water so I can wake up. Tell me
there will be a mirror so I can watch
the lessons taking hold
across my jawline.

I need to know they'll let me in
to see the doctor. Not the one
who tells me everything will be
all right, but the one who has
a plan, who lays everything out
in the simplest terms, so I can
understand.

The one whose mouth zigzags
around broken syllables
like a crooked train track, spitting
Lorazepam, Citalopram, Trazodone,
I don't understand the language
but I know, he does this every day,
points nonsense words at shadows
hoping someday we'll understand.

Maybe I could. If I could only
pull the sauce out from my eardrums,
clear the junk from my tongue and
the wreckage from my teeth;

Mother,
if the food is good,
then maybe someday,
I'll be able
to taste it for
myself.

To choose my own life
meant releasing myself
from his grip. The one
unholy touch I'd ever
known. If he had not
caught my scent, then
maybe his hand would
never have reached me.

To say ****** abuse
is to say I was not quite *****.
There is some dignity
I can still hold onto, a weight
I never felt threatening
to crush my body
into the dirt.

To say I am woman
is to say he is animal,
to deny him the right
of remaining ******
from the stink
of his mother's womb;

to insist on calling myself woman
is to forget the terror of knowing
I was child, I was bone
and I was sacrifice, the flame
on my tongue had scarcely
scorched his teeth before
they closed in on me
to drag me down.

To say I loved him
is to puncture holes
into my pelvis, let the marrow
drip until I was unrecognizable
as human, only a
thoughtless brainless creature
could love the knife
as it ripped them apart,
to save the hawk who grabbed you
from the river by feeding it one
of your young,

to say I was too young
is to say it gets better with age,
as if the signs become easier
to recognize once the baby fat
has shed its protective casing
from his skull.

To say depression
is to say I wasn't born
this way, there was a disease
inside his bloodstream
that erased me, it was
something from his veins
that made the doctors
hover over my wrists
like vultures waiting
to snap me up whole.

To say victim
is to say there was a perpetrator,
is to say our love was crime,
is to say there was nothing holy
until I learned to make it so myself.

To say ****** abuse
is to say *he has taken everything,
there is nothing left of my frame
for anyone else to hold.

If there were a formula
for the way her lips seek out
for mine while I am still attached
to those of a boy,
I would plug it through with
the determination
of a scientist, feeding it
back and forth through the
machines until someone
could give me an answer.

She visits me
in my sleep, bleeds
through the walls of
our separate dimensions
until she finds a way
into my heart. From there,
she rides my bloodstream up
into my brain, she puts
her hands on my controls
and guides my dreams

through to her childhood
home, where she knows
I'll fall in love with the gap
between her teeth and the way
she practices the word
"kindergarten"
when she thinks no one
can hear her.

I could never find her
through the keys
of my Macbook,
she calls to me
through typewriters in
store windows, when I think
I've lost her, I go into bookstores
and flip through the pages
in the poetry section until

teasing

she gives me a word,
just enough
of a puzzle to hold me
until next time. I think
when it's completed
it will look like her freckles,
the eyeshadow she spreads
over her heartache, the lipstick
she wears to feel like a woman
on the days when she needs to act
like a man, if I were a man.

I'd no longer be captivated
by the mysticism
of their skin. No longer see
the revolutionary twisting
through their spines. But
if I were a man, I wouldn't have
the same parts as my lover.

Maybe then
we'd be
just different enough
for me to tell her
how I feel.

If I could climb every tree in this world, I wouldn't dare. There are far too many places where the trees aren't worth the climbing. I pick my trees like I pick my teachers, there are lessons in this world that I need more than the others, lessons that make me gasp with the grip they are holding on my tongue. If there were a temple at the base of Mount Everest, I would be the first person to go there without asking for anything in my prayers, knowing that this mountain held everything I could possibly use inside of its belly and I had only to reach its core. But if the temple were at the top I wouldn't bother, there are things I need to learn to do and climbing mountains isn't one of them, I've got plenty of problems here on Earth and I don't need to touch the sky to know that Heaven's got 'em too. I couldn't imagine a Heaven without a good climbing tree. There is no such thing as pure unadulterated joy, if I'm going to be happy for eternity I'm going to keep climbing knowing that boredom will be the one thing that is always out of my reach, because joy without anything to compare it with is completely and utterly pointless. My God, She'd understand that. She would bring me up above the clouds but continue to put obstacles in my way so I could know the glory of feeling proud for what one has accomplished. But my God exists only in my poetry so while I am still alive, you can bet your *** I'll still be climbing. Those trees will not have a branch untouched, there is a whole forest waiting to breathe its secrets into my veins and I plan to live there until I'm full. When I am full, I will be happy to go to your Heaven so long as it has volcanoes with bellies deeper than I think I will ever reach. There is always something different to learn.