There are power lines
buried in your wrists,
barbed wire fantasies
dying to escape

You and I,
we were fingerprints,
we were the ink stains
left behind

We were the frost left
aching on the windows
after winter has gone,
we were feathers drifting
down from the sky after
the geese have flown

We were the song
played during the credits,
we were the silence after
the storm, we were the glow
at the end of a perfect kiss

We were the hearts
that had never been broken,
we were the breeze that had
never been touched,

You touched me like
a sandstorm, like the flames
licking up the pyre on the day
Joan of Arc died, you touched me
like a fingernail moon,
longing for the sun

We spent our days in the sun,
our chapped lips turning red
under the sky, the paper dreams
you never gave me, because

if there's one thing I know,
it's that my waiting arms were
always waiting, you never
let your hurricane heart sweep me
up in the storm, I never knew
your mother died until I saw it
on the news, you had a life

outside of this and I never knew.
But if there's one thing I know, it's that
my heart stopped the day you let me
brush your freckles across your face
like wayward strands of hair

That little mouth
open,
soul escaping
through your lips

Desire woke,
carried football kisses
and barnyard blushes

The great American pastime,
getting ****** under the
bleachers with a towel spread
over the grass during the game

Voices rip through the halls
breeding rumors strong enough
to plunge shame so deep
into the heart of a person

that it may never crawl
back out through your throat,
the venom spewing from your lips
as dark as the blood spotted
on the backseat of your
father's car, that night

Through the cracks in the
armor, every girl carries this
burden in her chest: *** is shameful,
it's not to be talked about, and
there are boys out there who cannot
wait to take advantage of your
one warm and vulnerable heart

She found her own monster, one
with blue eyes and a blonde ponytail
like the cowboys in the movies, an Idaho
farm boy with hot breath like the smoke
of a gun, she gave him her secret when
she was fifteen and at night she screams

when she thinks of it, his ***** hands
and where he put them, lightning sparks of
the pain she can still feel, it sticks inside her
and twists, the wound growing larger
every day, she knows it will never leave,
her own ****** spot to carry

Patterns forever crawling up her spine
in the shapes of his fingers, and someday
when the one she loves drags his fingers there
she will never lose the memory of that night,
her promises to herself left broken and bleeding
on the mattress, her crime of passion shattered
in the wake of what she's done

Engulfed in shame like ink dripping dark
from her hair, she's ***** and she knows it,
she's filthy and she swears they can see it
in the bright ****** of day where she can't
hide from the pushing and the smile on his face
split wide, it's the Joker with his ****** grin

She spent years falling for wisps of dreams
she could never quite grasp, those fleeting Sundays
fuzzy outlines in her mind, lust comes with a price
she says, and she means it when she says that she
will never love again. It was a contest, who could go
the farthest without taking that final step.

She lost.

July 29, 1976*

Eighteen, skinny
as a whip, all curving bones
and freckled knees
Your curled hair, that timid
smile balanced above the
pearls of your jaw

The city is dark at night,
you were never afraid but the stars
were diamond-sharp that night
and you stopped, shivering in the cold

I can hear your last words
frozen on your tongue,
"Now, who the hell is this" -
your hand on your hip
voice a knife

A bullet to your chest
breaks the silence, folding
yourself in half, a paper crane
crumpled on the pavement

The papers said you were killed
instantly; I don't think you were
I think you knew, a bullet buried
in your best friend's thigh -
did she watch you die?

The petals in your hair,
they've fallen, years ago
This woman lying here,
the scarred pavement of a
New York City street -

She is someone else, not
the starling you were
in your father's eyes
Wings outstretched on
a fire escape, waiting
for a breeze to pull you
over the edge

Her skin is held together
by a thread, rips and tears
make it hard for her to breathe

Vision going yellow in the
half-light, twilit fields rippling
in the breeze

Holding seeds between
her teeth, her bones balanced
over the concrete

She knows it will not last
forever - she has seen the yard
where she'll be buried

She's a victim still intact,
waiting for just the wrong eyes
to reach her hair, her skirt

Fear presses through veins
and she watches the sky,
remembering that angels

will wait, in the clouds,
until you need them - her
grandmother said, they

will wait, and she believed
it. Her cactus tongue ******,
catches blood there, and

the tide washes through,
its rhythm a comfort
She finds her way home.

I could never paint
your eyes right,
sticky drops of green
plastered among
the warmest browns
Your river's light lost
in the reeds

The walls of our house
stir and shake, children's
fingers poking in between
window frames, pushing
skeletons through spaces
in the screen -

They pulse there, hot
and wet like grass outside
on the lawn, my breath
catches when I think of them,
lungs trampled into the carpet
Our youth this yellow honeyed
liquid decomposing in the sun

Someday we'll sit, together,
and remember them
as they pass - today is not that day
Winds bluster through the cracks
and my highest clouds melt
with the fog

Deep love shoved
as food into the garbage,
moving bright under the grime

Yearning to be seen for
what it was,
kaleidoscope heart
shifting
until it found
what you were looking for

I can feel his breathing
pull
through his neck,
the stream running clear
in his throat, desire melting
from his arms.

I never needed anyone,
he says
from a warm hollow down
within, I only needed myself
and I liked it that way. His tears
contradict him.

We share one of those
dark, sweet
kisses and he keeps his
eyes open, straying from me
out to the colder places, where
I've never been.

My crushing heart never
needed
anyone like this. The aching
locks where keys will never fit,
where cups lie emptied on the
***** ground.

Those long fingers I love
pause
against the grass, sunlight
breaking over his face, streaking
swirls across his clouded
brow.

His wild jungle heart bubbles
alive
beating crimes into the hollow
of my cheek, I never try to resist
when I find a heart so deliciously
lost and broken.

The baby bird in his chest has
flown
and I come home to the blues of
my windowpanes, grace in the
unholy whispers, thoughts engulfed
in the tide.

The peaks in your voice crumble and shake
as you laugh
Rocks tumbling down the cliff,
boulders crash into the sea

This mountain life is tracked in your veins,
the cracks and breaks
shattering against me
in the rough hold of your arms

I never knew someone so holy
Your eyes held up to the sky, watching
the snow on the mountaintops,
whispering their names in the sunrise

And when morning comes, your lips
crack open, that precious smile
breaking free
from the traps you've held it under

I breathe in the years, wish
my mountain veins would peak like yours
Swallowing bruises under layers of skin
rocks settling in my blood, magma melting hot

Your dusty eyes my compass, I've come home.

Pay attention,
she said, to these good hands
you're inside.
To the air outside, as it freezes
through your bones.
Pay attention to the names
of everyone you've ever loved, and
pay attention to the way they sound today,
the way they never will again.
Pay attention when you speak.
Your words are muted, stilted, muddy,
your clarity is gone. Pay attention
to this paper cup, the champagne bubbling
within. The sparkles in your eyes are spots,
there's a surgery for that. Pay attention to me,
pay attention to my lips, these unholy things
you love. Know what you love, love what you love.
Pay attention to the clock, remember to wake up
when you have to. Get to work on time. Then come back
home, and I'll make you dinner, and we can watch television
like we used to. Pay attention, and maybe we can fix these spaces
in your bones. Pay attention, and maybe you'll let me hold you
on this windowsill in the dark, the rooftops shining with moonlight.
Maybe this time, you'll look at me when I speak. Pay attention.
And maybe things will go back to the way they were.

Staring into the puddle
like it might open up, a portal,
and let him in,
falling through the sky.

My tongue is cold against my teeth
and I tell him not to think too deep,
not to feel so much, just for a second.

He is the ivy crawling up the bricks.
He is the patterns in the dust, outlining
stories against the pavement, scattering in the breeze.
He is too much a man for me, and still never quite enough.

The sawdust in his hair clings too tight,
and when I get the call someday --
the one that will tell me if I should have believed him,
the one that will fix everything and tear it all apart,

I will remember his mouth.
The parting of lips and then the teeth,
stark white against the black.

At the center of the planet,
I believe there is a fountain.
I think that once you've made it through
the Earth's core, its hardened shell,
you pass through the curtain into the heart
of everything, and there,
you'll see it for the very first time.

The fountain would be simple,
shaped from rough grey stone.
The water rushing softly over pebbles
tossed into the pool at its base, left
by every traveler who's passed through
before you.

You have a pebble of your own.
You've kept it since you started digging,
and it's stayed with you since, lighting
your way when things grew dark, and
showing you where to go when you've
gotten lost. It's kept you company, when
no one else could.

Let the pebble slide through your fingertips
like a cool summer's rain, and keep your hands
held outstretched, make sure you don't
miss anything. This is important.
This is what you've been waiting for.
The Earth receives your blessing.

She is waiting for you outside the curtain,
and as soon as you pass through, she takes
your hand. The evening shadows in your heart
pull back, receive the light, and you fall into step
with the tide. And this, never forget this:
the moon will always sing you home.

I come from a pair of hands, one nesting within the other, raised upwards, toward the sun.
I come from the darkened pigment of henna on one's skin, of prejudice unmasked.
I come from the sights and smells of a foreign place, of culture shock and a mind full to the brim but still empty enough to learn more.
I come from a pen, from ink, from a desk in the corner of a room with empty picture frames covering the walls, waiting for worthy people to fill them.
I come from a legacy of change, of peace as a movement instead of an idea; from strong-minded individuals who knew what really mattered, and knew what really didn't.
I come from a puddle of light on a windowsill, waiting to be captured under the scrutiny of a careful artist's eye.
I come from silence.
I come from apprehension, doubt, and a graceless fear of falling.
I come from my destiny, something I intend to fulfill.
I come from starlight, from a fingernail moon, from something not me altogether.
I come from death, voices unheard.
I come from underwater, ready to seek my fortune on land.
I come from the past, unclouded by memory and dreams, the cycle beginning anew.
I come from the vibrant heartbeat that is life, reverberating in my skin.
I come from a voice above the crowd; a lunar eclipse; a light, universal, mine.

As he dived headfirst into the
kiddy pool, he was thinking of you,
and the roses gathering dust under
your bed that you wouldn't find
until next year, when you were packing
for a trip into the countryside
to clear your head.

He remembered your dreams as he
plunged hard into the concrete floor
of the place you spent your summers in
as a child, the one you loved most
when the sun was shining and no
bodies clouded the path between light
and what we perceive to be darkness.

In love and lust, he mourned your
freckles upon hitting the bottom,
his bones floating off to sulk
in the corner somewhere as his brain continued
to think of the possibilities when one has
gone and broken his own spine in a
reckless attempt to somehow get born.

When you pack his tongue into your
briefcase someday, I hope you'll remember
the way the sky felt on the day you told him
you weren't in love.

Like eyes,
      the pond stops rippling,
      its happiness too strong to bear.

Just rest,
      this is your home now,
      stars where bricks should be,
      holding the ceiling above your heads.

She is everything,
      her fingers breaking
      every promise you've ever made
      in the twilight.

Outside,
      the farmhouse as day breaks,
      you are crossing the river
      of every love you've left behind.

Your tongue
      held across your teeth
      like prison bars,
      you shudder into silence.

She waits
      patiently in the darkness,
      loving holding breathing life
      into the spaces in between.

You are
      the spaces in between.
      She'll follow you there, a field
      beyond right and wrong-doing, as Rumi said.

She is
somewhere
beyond the sky.

My lungs stop working when I look at them.

There is a happiness on her brow that never stops, not when she blushes and breaks their staring contest to rest her eyes on me.

There is a happiness that never stops and I knew it as soon as I woke up this morning, stuck under my bedsheets like I'm nailed to a cross. There is a rain that never stops, and something shifts in her eyes; she follows him when he turns to go.

My lungs unplug like a cork stuck in the neck of a bottle I can't reach, and somehow I am home.

--painting by Chris Brodahl at the Seattle Art Museum*

Legs bent over the chair,
her pants wrinkle as she moves
rippling

My face tilts back and I close my eyes;
she bends her fingers over the table
like she’s playing piano.

Images cross over and I can’t keep track,
lost in eyes pasted over fingers
lips glued onto hairlines.

And still she moves,
staying silent but shifting
rippling

I had a dream the other night
of a farmland in grayscale,
black and white movies in my head.

My mother in her pink cotton nightdress;
bluebirds mocking me from their roost in a tree
And still this silent farmhouse, soft in its slumber.

But I can’t move when I’m asleep,
and she can’t move when she’s awake
We’re perfect in each other’s hands

I wait until her eyes are closed
and then I kiss her, her eyelids fluttering
rippling, as if to say hello.

The stars who carry an old man's face
in their bones stop to take a rest on
an uneventful day, laying down their burdens
for just long enough to make it count.

His nose is the first to go, cracking
decisively down the middle like a
half-moon breaking at the seams
of a teenager's whispered prayers.

Next are his eyebrows, splitting
at the roots into a forest which calls
like the girls at a high school football game,
just waiting for him to call back.

Then come his cheekbones, splintering
in one shuddering gasp like the mothers
who have borne a child and still aren't prepared
for the day he has to leave home.

His lips are the next to go, crumbling
into a dust that will never speak again,
like the girl he should have told to stay,
but who walked away before he could.

He breaks in the silence
while the stars still have their backs turned,
ignorning the stories that escape, shimmering,
into the cosmos from whence they came.

Blue plastic cows
munch green polyester grass
on a hillside next to a warm
pale blue farmhouse in Iowa
on a sweet Sunday last June.

You knew how to dance
in the barnyard under the roof
your father built last spring
when the sun was shining
through the clouds for once.

My feet stirred up months of dust
which got into your cornflower eyes
and turned your eyelashes brown
until I couldn't see you, just the
light shining from within.

The indigo Tuesday rain
painted streaks down your arms
as you harvested my heart
from among the tired wheat, ready to be carried off
into the flour mill, where it could get some rest.

But you left me standing there when
your father died on a Wednesday night
under a brilliant full moon after the kids had all gone home;
there was a rock at the bottom of my shoe.
The dream was never built to last.