You almost kissed me,
and you shouldn't have.
On the gingham tablecloth in the yellow light,
you lifted me from the counter top onto my feet
putting your hat on my head and tickling my ribs.
You know it's my sweet spot,
leads straight to my heart if you're gentle enough.
I told you to stop and you walked away,
eyes lingering on my bare skin between where my top ended on my waist
and where my dark denim jeans began to hug my hips.
I flipped my hair back around, joining in some conversation too late
between a girl drunk on grape juice and a wedding crasher straggler
in a forest green flannel with camel cigarettes in the pocket.
That's when you came back over and started yelling
some story that happened to you the night before.
You told it well,
the circle captivated, me mesmerized
by how blue your eyes stayed all this time without me noticing.
You  had the whole room laughing with your wit and stupid vernacular,
but I was smiling because you looked so beautiful in those drunken
honest moments
where I recognized the person beneath the banter
where I saw you.
I was saying my goodbyes to the carhartt boys and their one night girls
when you grabbed me by the hand and spun me around
like we were dancing,
pulled me in by your hand pressed on my shoulder blades
the other around my waist
I gasped as your lips almost touched mine,
but then you looked down at me
with those same blue eyes
and took a deep breath,
slowly letting your hands glide down my back then to your sides.
I just stared back at you,
wishing you'd forget the logic and put your hands back where they were,
tracing your lips with that almost kiss,
and I could feel how much you wanted to be in this moment
desperately searching for a way to my lips
but something stopped us.
And I think it was because we knew it would only lead to something messier
than where we were at
it would be a backwards romance, reversing our ***** footsteps
in something we've tried and tried to understand
that it never works out the way either of us plans.
We were both doing so well, moving on
but in that moment we almost gave all that strength up
gave into something too tempting and too wrong.
Because we can't really stay away from each other all that long.
I mean,
you almost kissed me
and you shouldn't have,
but I swear
I wish you would have.

You eat a lot of things from tuber ware containers with a ***** fork
you haven't washed in weeks.
You pile mounds of ketchup on anything
literally everything you eat,
and you hold your utensils like a sandbox shovel
just stuffing the food in your mouth, filling your cheeks like a chipmunk,
yet somehow you still think you have the ability to talk.
You wash everything down with beer.
One kind of beer- nothing else.
I always ask for a sip and you just pull it away while pulling me in.
Your lips are warm and taste like venison, and the yellow light
of the kitchen makes your complexion look a little off
but your eyes are bluer than they've ever been.
You should see yourself stand there at the counter
trying to tell me some story I can't understand about what happened to you that day,
or that night, or maybe it was last week.
Your timeline's never been quite accurate, your memory skewed.
Sometimes I'll look at you in moments like this and mumble, "you're so ******* weird"
but truth is I love all the things you do.

It's bits like this that I miss when you're not there.
Like how you sleep with your elbows under the pillow, snoring so loud
I can't hear myself dreaming.
How you think just because you've memorized every movie ever
that means I have too,
and why it is I just laugh when you quote something I've never seen.
Especially, those times you look at me with this quizzical look
a great idea just sitting on your tongue, expecting something
when really it's just some silly thing you've thought about all day
just didn't know how to say.
I tell you constantly that I can't stand how you wait until the very last clean shirt
before you do the laundry,
how those loads and loads are a ***** to fold
but truth is I love how worn everything is.
I even love the way you sing in the shower, or in the car, or in after dark, or all the time.
I love the way you moan as the sunlight peaks through the window in the morning.
I love when you rustle up my hair after I just did it.
I love how you smear my make-up.
I love you all the time, when you're smart, a *******, rude.
And even though I'll say 100 times in a day that you drive me crazy.
I love all the things you do.

to beware of what you spend for love

a woman’s devotion should never cost more
than what your sanity is willing to pay

But you wouldn’t listen
or couldn’t listen

either way you're now a slave
a victim of your purple head’s desires

Ironic since the passions dead and gone
replaced by numbing hatred ten feet tall

If only when your primal urges swelled
you would have satisfied yourself

and spent your time attending nobler things
the arts, your education, -anything productive

then maybe what you spent would not be gone
and maybe who you are would still be you

but how could I expect you to not
make the same mistakes that i made?

I wish I could have spared you this hell
 
Dad

My forte has never been          chemistry
especially              in matters of the brain
that delicate science                 eludes me
but give me a knife            and I’m a pro
a      butcher      in      a     cesspool       of
a        drowning         stagnant            me
where   the   water   under   my   bridge
does               not             flow              out
but backs up tighter than
                                a meat packer’s drain
overflowing with            ****** blobs of
broken   promises  and good  intentions

Don't tell me I have your attention when I don't.
Captivated you in a church dress with the hole in the stockings,
eating salted tomatoes between two slices of bread
feet touching mine under the table
on a Sunday after my Confirmation ceremony.

Don't tell me how naughty a catholic school girl can be
with your hand on my thigh and a thumb on my cheek.
Kissing me hard and heavy, leaving a bite on my lip with a grunt
smiling while you whip your hair back from your tan skin and brown eyes.

Don't tell me you love the way I look when you don't know me yet.
Cigarette drag me out
breathing smoke behind my ears as you lay your hand
out the window beside your bed,
while my mama's sleeping and doesn't know where I am
and my white blouse is on the chair
hanging next to my purity.

Don't tell me how unholy I've been when you don't know faith.
How it's not worth praying for something I don't have any more,
lost in my own disillusions that you created out of words you swear you left unsaid,
with a tear pressed against the part of me that felt like it was falling in love.

Don't tell me that it's all my fault.

Don't call me your lady
when all I ever wanted was for you
to settle down with me like a safety,
anchor your trust in my belly
made to keep my body warm, but your icy cold.

Don't rip or tear or strike out your own mistakes on my body.

Don't tell me how ****** up innocence is
when all I was before you came was a Mary Jane
shoe with some of the leather worn on the sole from walking
too far to find someone to caress my hair.

Don't leave me open and dry
when all this ever was, was an advantage you took too easily
on an infatuated girl who was too young
and didn't know the difference.

We don't look at each other anymore.
The hurting is its own kind of sad
that I've framed with the words you never told me.
And you'd think because I gave you
so much of my own self-requited happiness and help,
that because I did pull you up from the trash can facade
you threw yourself in
covering your skin in your own garbage and alcohol rain
that you'd see me.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

No, I didn't ******* in the back bedroom
like that sophomore did the weekend before.
But I did clean up the beer you spilt that you couldn't afford
on the night you shouldn't have been drinking.
I did let you hold me when you looked around the crowded room
of people you didn't know
realizing you were alone.

No, I didn't laugh when you smashed your hand
through that window on a dare.
But I did wash the blood from your cuts with a gentle cloth
when you weren't looking so it wouldn't hurt.
I did call your brother to tell him you were alright
when you were supposed to be home an hour ago and he couldn't find you.
I took a lot of your pain away.
In different ways than the beer bottles in you back pockets
or the empty body you left lying on the bed.
I did talk you through a long night when you didn't know what to do-
I did that for you.
I did help you pack away the parts of you you didn't like-
I'll always do that for you.

And you'd think that'd make you look my way.
Because all the things I did do
should outweigh the things I didn't.
You'd think because I loved you that things would be different.

But you don't even look at me anymore,
it's like I'm some broken angel on your shoulder you can't see.
I just always thought I was more important
than the things I couldn't be.

Everyday.
I sit with you
In a never ending sea
Of algebra two.

How I wish we were as simple
As solving these problems.
One question at a time.
With an answer,
Or many answers,
Or no answer at all.

Now that I think about it,
This isn't that simple.
This doesn't always have an answer.
Are we pi?
A never ending, irrational number?

Well, I am definitely irrational,
Being with you.
But maybe you,
Maybe us,
Is the only real
Thing I would really find happiness in.
I know you feel that way too.

I'll be pi with you,
Pi is real.
Pi is something.
Pi exists.