I always believed
You would not let me fall.

It began April of last year

My limbs whipped through the air,
Tresses swirling, a day old tumbleweed
Blinding any access to holds

Still, I Lurched for

Your crooked smile
Your magician's hands
Your whiskey slurred "I love you's"
Your sweet tormented eyes

How could I still be shocked that none of it was rooted
None of you was planted
With your swinging knife blade you had slit all that could create
growth

I plunged
My heels digging into air

You threw me a rope of flames
A garland of grey
Wings of a sleepless angel
You reached for me but your arms were a shadow
A glazed eyed ghost
A haunting option of pseudo safety

Collapsed, finally free from gravity
Landing in another's arms.

Was I okay?
I searched among my bones and laughter
behind ribs and under the cracks of my smile
For anything damaged in the crash

There you were.
There you always are.
Within me, never around me.

like a fool in love without you
and still with you

I was not ready for our encounter.
You caught me in the midst of
tending to my own crop
of seaweed,
Trying to farm a plant who thrives underwater
Hoping it would die above land,
along with the cobalt of my sorrow.
I tried to continue
to bury tear.
ash aching algae.
kiss goodby coral.
You took my hand and used your sleeve
to wipe my grieving sweat.
You asked me set down my sow
my sorrow
and put my farm to fire
Start anew
I feared the black rebirth
but you promised me
I would never have to cultivate solo
Ever again.
You reached for my fist
and finger by finger
the freedom of soil and seed emerged
There I stood
As I was always meant to be from birth
a mother
of nature
a snakeskin of anguish
a forever lover of
you.

You laugh like you have never been lonely
You forget that I know you
That I see
the lump in your throat
                                                          ­                                                 hiding

You clean up after others
like you have no mess yourself
that is alright my love
I see the cracks in your elbow grease

You are just like your mother
A warrior in the battle of suffering
How could anyone not love that about the both of you?

You disperse tissues and cotton sleeves and squeezes
to anyone who even blinks a tear towards you

Your mother has a handkerchief for occasions like this.

Behind you I focus on the way your curls twist
Chestnut waves and rings
I've focused on them before in times like this

How is the familiar so comforting?
Your father's glasses and upright chest
Your sister's side hugs and repetitive "how are you's?"
Your mother's matching necklace-earrings and observing,
always on watch
Your husband's one Old Navy button up and dispatched humor
The way, these days, I want to hug you and never let go.

I yearn to be a thief
Can I rob your father's pain? Your mother's pain? Your sister's pain?
                                                   Your pain?
If I am present long enough will you let me help you?

When you called me and told me you could never imagine losing your best friend
I repeated the cadence in your voice and the words for hours on a long drive home
I reminded myself that I always hope I go first
So I never have to see what the world is like without you.

She is gone
and all of us remain
to make sure that we relationally gain
Even among all of life's pain

Seductive emerald green eyes meet seductive full lips that hide a smile that is only exposed at the most genuine of times. A man who has probably fifteen different types of laughs in response to three different types of scenarios. Sleepy, but not in a boring way—a sentimental kind of “checking in for the night”, Chris has only one dimple and only one type of tolerance for people. He isn’t a schmoozer, which is shocking as a salesman. You know where you stand with him and every type of person finds him so appealing that they secretly hope that they are always on his good side. Values aren’t a word or a list for him, they are a way of living. It’s not a thought or an intention, rather just who he is---a beautiful golden boy. Oh, but not in a sweet, novelty way. He has the perfect amount of edge---where you just want to keep looking, keep watching his every move. To say he is interesting in every sense of the word wouldn’t be enough.
I digress.
This is a bio meant to be reflective of his cinematic professional role. He is the lead. He isn’t center stage, but you want him to be. So modest that you have to grab him by the hand and pull him right in the middle so everyone can see him where he belongs: the spotlight. He’s the conductor sitting in the drummer’s seat. It takes an encore to get him to perform and when he does it’s a well that will never run dry. It’s never enough.
A jack of all trades? Would I describe him like that? Maybe some days, but for the most part he is king of hearts, He’s passionate, competent, and the best kind of human-organically sincere. You want to buy what he’s selling, you want him to call you friend, and if you’re really lucky like I am, romantic partner.
Success is in your veins my love. You were never meant to be a part of the crowd and that’s what one of the hundreds of reasons why I adore and love you.
You are all I’ve ever wanted.

Three steel hinges,
pronged finger,  holding hands with wall and door.
They represent
land and ocean and continents
Isn't it funny how grief and longing become a sixth sense?

When my marriage ended
I couldn't stomach a welcome mat.
The door became
a safe functionality to the entrance of my home

(can I call it home? When my heart is only at home with you? And I didn't have you, until the three pronged moment)

Anyways, I get caught up in the details...

Your eye contact was my sustenance
it was the first step off of a 15 hour flight,
My flip book,
where I shove  
thumb, pushing pages
Snapping your sweet smile.

Can I create a crane out of these pages?
To hold onto them in some physical form

All that matters is you entered my (home)
When every wall whispered your name for months

Those hinges waved
and the corners of my residence
within my heart
within my breath
within my physical walls
were at last, hushed.

My miss. How I never want to ever miss you so.

Two weeks ago you said,
"We went through the wringer"
Five words
like sumo wrestlers
sit, legs open
comfortable on my chest

Three "best friends"                     Australia                           ­             me

When did it begin?


When I was pushed up against a wall in some basement bar
And he spit at me, "****" "*****" "Worthless *******"?
Shoved so hard that strangers

Had to "go through the wringer"

I walked home alone that night

You were not who I called.

Or was it when I was stalked and threatened
And then showered with adoration and the love (lip service) I never received from the man who is responsible for my birth

Was it then, that you felt like you had to go through the wringer?

You were not who I called.

Could it have been when I was forced to **** his ****?
Was that when you were "going through the wringer"

You were not who I called.

Or was it when he let himself into my apartment
And I ****** myself when I opened the door
He was eating my food standing over me

You were not who I called.

I think I know when it was

It was when he showed up to my work
When he threatened me
Then left the most eloquent love letter at my doorstep
Told me he loved me and would do anything to make it right
And tried to punch my childhood best friend's boyfriend in the face

What a"wringer" to go through

You were not who I called.

I am confused.

What wringer were you going through?

Because you were not who I called.

When I dream
I grab myself by the shoulders
I squeeze deep into the bones
that flare on the corners of collar bone,
just enough to feel the ridges that reach my back blades.
I take hold
and shake myself in a way that the halo of curls around my head
turn straight
I scream,
                                        RUN

                    I am nothing but a blank stare.

                                      NUMB

from the veins screeching out of your forehead
the liquor leering over your hateful sentences
the manipulative maze you force me to walk through,
blind folded

I keep apologizing
for your rage.
I disappear with every "sorry."

Please free me.
Leave me.
Please.

The all of me is a desert
Cracking at the surface
You withhold water
from your hands,
the skin is curling up
into greedy wrinkles
Seeds struggle underneath my lips
They could burst through
if you would just

I  am
a soaking secret at best,
Drenched in affliction
I am
a ghost gripping your shadows,
Hunting for the sun
All the while
You are
a voyager
Seeking hands under tables,
Locked doors,
Alleyways,
Elevators,
Vague descriptions and
Protective platonic stances
You are
a true modern day Columbus,
You find me, a flat dimension of self.
You are
an alluring Copperfield,
Hiding my declarative "no's" under hats
and turning them into whispered "yes's"
Your audience in awe
Unaware of what they are actually applauding

You are
sawed in half
"This can be enough," I tell myself

It isn't.

Should I dig up the roots and expose all that has brought my limbs to stretch towards the sky?
Or should I shave the bark to bare fleshy wet rings?
Naked to every year that has brought me to where I am now?

Small clenched fists
Dukes up
Resistant and Rioting against smiling in pictures and diamonds and last names and flaky white dresses and those ******* five senses that flood memories
They knock on the door of my hearts sinking ship
There are lifeboats I don't board
on purpose
As if being a martyr could take back all the wrong I've done to you

Should I press my veiny leaves on wax paper?
So you can preserve the road maps of my pain
And changing colors
With every season
So that I never crunch under foot and mold among the purity of the first snowfall

Should I offer you sips of my sap?
Poisoned with placating people and pretending to be okay
What a sour sticky substance
No, that will not do

Alas, I will offer you my soil  
Dig your fingers into the minerals
Into grainy brown slivers
This is where I have been quenched by the relatable tears of my clients
And fertilized by dear friends

Is that enough?

I was already mourning you
Before we even met
I was wiping waxy black mascara under eyes with the back of cotton long sleeves
I was already on hardwood floors closed up like a locket
Weeping into shiny silver hands
holding pictures of you
We hadn’t even met yet  
I was already calling my best friend while in the bathtub drinking wine
Listening to Leonard Cohen croon the pain my heart could never write through vein
I was already remembering the specific part in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Where she begs her doctor to take out her olfactory nerve so she can’t be reminded of her lovers scebt
I was already anticipating
the way you would haunt me through
all of the ******* five senses
I was already regretting how I shared all my favorite dishes around town with you and anticipating the weight loss to come shortly thereafter
I was already cutting off the vessel of my heart you would in roam
And attempt to inhabit
You see my dear
You were doomed from the very beginning

I walk along cobblestone
With childhood sterling bracelet
clanking on left wrist  
stacked with personalized pieces
sagging on linked chain

I drop charm by charm  
into cracks of amber granite

my last name
a diamond heart
a pink pony
a cross of roses
a ballerina slipper

a civilized timeline of marriage and kids and golden retrievers

my vowels
my lungs
my lips

I continue walking
wishing I could
Drop
my name at the end of your sentences
And all of the exclamation marks that usually

followed.

My silver bracelet emptied and open for

LGBTQ flags
DV advocacy
anti-trump
****** expression
poetry
the full moon
Zodiac signs
the *******.

A crimson curtain
Like a pleated skirt
You pull it back
with fibrous ropes of pain
Ten years, barred by rib-cage

Alas!
Ladies and gentlemen!
The main attraction
Has finally arrived!

Throbbing and cut
at the nape of aorta
Hailing hurt
valve. by. valve.
Bleeding cats and dogs
and
the animals within me
neighboring ribs
a shelter for the stray and wild and cross breed
                                    
                      ­                                  Center Stage

A moonbeam spotlight
shining light on age spots and pale pink vessels

Come and see
Is it all that you hoped for?
My sawed open vessel splayed on a single stool
barely pulsing.

A spectacle
of what my chest heavily heaves
A daily occurence

Nothing but a miserable audience.
Just me

Black and green scale segments
My coat of arms
I twisted around sage brush for 30 years
I had predators
and potential nests
Always
Foregoing eggs
Alone but capable of swallowing the world
Moving through long narrow casing
Like a jawbreaker swallowed by an ostrich

Then I met you

.Ecdysis.

I shed thin snow skin
A layer of suffering slowly flaking off of me
A new dermis of
a love I have never known
Affection I've never shown
and a part of me never grown.

I wore your long ratty red tank
all night
then the next day
then that night
and then I had to go back to
my buttoned up bereavement
my starched sadness
my dry cleaned darkness
I had to go back to it all

but at 5 o'clock precisely
I put that red racer back
back on
my brick bearing
back

During weeping grief
Clothes wear me
they sag heavy over bones
Cotton is cloth owner
over core
Concealing ribs
that, during loss, are useless
They merely cage a shattered vessel

During lengthy anguish
Food consumes me
Water sips me up
Sleep abandons me
Oxygen breaths me
Until all that is left
is an exhale
Lungs and life deflated

Dear loved ones are gone. Some of them still on earth
and some of them raining sweetly in my dreams

You are visiting OUR friends
Only YOUR friends now
They met each other through US
And I met  YOU through HIM
they just adopted a baby boy named Finn
and as you cradle babe
I spend twenty minutes steaming a dress I'm going to shove into a suitcase
and the bags under my eyes
could hold enough dresses to last me the rest of summer
Last week I taught myself
how to stop from flinching
at your ghost
Swallow the lumps you shove down my throat
wash it down with whiskey
My therapist called me last night
She said "it was out of protocol"
"I don't want to be invasive because enough people in your life already are."
Do I think I'll end up with a man?
I don't know
I don't feel anything anymore
I turned myself into you
thinking only with stagnant organs
only breathing with logic
only giving a **** when I feel like it
Only grabbing and gutting
only hunting and harboring
my soul
my vessel
my streamline sailboat
a river of loneliness
man-made and full of fish to ****
I am a salmon's skeleton

It is a crawling
a snake of emotional creeping
an ache of mishaps
pushing up, seeking an opening
a release of pressure
a leaking gasket of **** ups
a painful agony of woes
it is zap of intestinal torment
it is numb lips
a haunting light
all of it leading and glowing into the
being
the being I keep avoiding.
the feeling I keep translating into metaphors
and unoriginal analogies
I keep trying to define it
like I can touch any of this
thought bubbles float above us
To think I could grasp any of it
I reach anyways
Separating immediately when I'm clutching air
holding hands with an empty ancient lover
I disassociate from pain
trying to beat her at her own game
I try and cut off limbs that steal from
my bliss
but they remain phantom
floating around and mocking
all that is left of me.

Your body is nectar
It shifts and shakes me
Into a yellow and black beauty
I grow wings
But I wouldn't dare to use them
I keep them tucked behind blades
And **** up the honey
That I rinse out of you
I become a fiend
My habit is your hands
I crave **** and ****** and
Collar bone
Your pores are pebbles
My ache comes in currents
And soon I am sinking into your soft sands
Your lips are morning dew
That still drip with dusk
I become every hour of the day
And I'll peer into your kaleidoscope way
with wreck less abandon
For as long as you will let me.

When it first happened
Everything in sight
Taller than I
Seduced me
Urged me
To flee the earth

Western red cedar
Sooty brick chimneys
Rainier caps
You.

I could climb and clutter and choke and caress and cling
Oh to have a moment of solitude
With the blue
If I was vertical enough
Would the fever fade?

I could mutate into molecule
A drift of snow
An aphid eaten leaf
A maroon berry
Caught in a sparrow's beak
Would I be alleviated by elevation?
If I get close enough to God would I be washed of my sins?
I vow never to touch soil again
Tree limbs would be my salvation

Meet me there.

I dug up the roots of my front yard Hawthorne
And squeezed tears out of ducts
To water soil
To nurture limbs
To bare berry
That round maroon flesh
Plucked by sparrow
Then **** out on your freshly waxed Subaru
I hope you are out of town when it happens
And it dries and crusts and mutates
And you have to scrub
And sweat
Right back into the ****
That was fostered by my sadness

Our words turned into string
Soft carrot angora
I used my size 6 needles
And begged you to whisper
Up to the stars
Off up to me
Your first thoughts
When you think of the first time you slipped your fingers
Around mine
Ah. Aren't I egocentric?
Fine.
I'll go first
It was the warmth of the first sip of black coffee Monday morning
It was the roughness of falling asleep to the sun, wrapped in the grains of sand
It was the familiarity of the pale pink walls of my childhood bedroom
It was the yearning I have seen on a homesick sailor's face fantasizing of land
And it was the sound of melancholic jazz ballads

I wait for your answer

To pearl off and offer a sweater, poorly knit
To keep you warm.

If my dream state
was in charge of my awakened form
I would contort and transition--from mouse
to praying mantis
to your eyelashes
fanning out your dewy dropped ache
Offering permission
allowing all of your pain to taper
trickle down to nose
down to  curved lip
down to chin
avalanching onto breast bone

And what if I was a megaphone
Or a confident white man
in some overrated leadership position
Or a scooped out couch cushion
I would let you sit in the same spot for years
I would stand at the podium
and declare that I have never felt alone
or insecure
or flattened out
or in yearning to trace the calic in your hair
or a triangle of *** and feminism and woman

Could you imagine if we were voyeuristic with our touch
with our chaos
with our close eyed kisses
with our eye contact
conversations

The world would not be able to handle any of it
at least our world.

If I could curl back up into my mother’s womb
And find comfort in her heartbeat
To nurse off the cereal I made her crave
And get lost in her dreams,
Instead of mine
If I could be swaddled in soft cotton
And shushed to sleep
My only vision-- a dream catcher mobile
Warding off the demons
That sat at my crib, licking their fingers
Hungry for my years
If I could disappear into the color of something
Or someone
The olive in the fir
The amber in my brother’s cheeks
The milk in the snow
The yellow in the breeze
If I could climb down within myself
Trudge through esophagus
Down to my tangled gut
I’d lay there, use my web as a hammock
Finally find rest from you, my dear
Then I would trek south
and dig under patella,
sheltered by a knee cap cave
If I could precipitate
Go from a solid to a molecule
And rest on the back of blue bird feathers
I would drip down to the earth
For you to step on and soak up the rest of my softness
I would finally disappear and let your light
Seep back to you.

Stepping on carpet
(climbing onto rock)
We stare at screen
(I cast my spell...)
I CAN conquer man's demise.
Touchdowns
convert  to gazing into the scripts of our souls.
Stagnant and somber,
you are inches away
I am in floating in space
I sit on couch
(or sitting on active volcano?)
and stare at blank walls
(or cotton candy sunsets?)
And I grab your hand
and we float out the window
(much like Peter Pan and Wendy)
and we are Icelandic campers
we are North African monkeys grooming each other
we are Alaskan sibling salmon, swimming to the exact spot our eggs once resided
always against current
teasing the brown bear
we are slipping penguins
the sea lions watch our transition
from awkward wobbling
to graceful gliding
figure eighting
between icebergs
We have so much energy that the gulls
might bet on us melting the bergs
we are gas and light and air and water and mother moon

we are so much more than this cancerous room

I know it. You know it.

Instead we groan at fumbles
and pile plates high with lays potato chips
layered grief stuck between tongue and cheek

Goodbye my dear friend.

I know you heard me.

Leonard Cohen
I sought out your words
and disguised myself in blankets of prose
I followed you like Hemingway
and Bukowski
and cried when you died
like a mentor I never had
Or a lover I never
shed skin with
But your deep tones rattle my bones
to this day

The moment I opened up
Like a true millennial I open my phone to text you immediately
And as I start to write my thoughts
you send a text
It's 7:30
You NEVER text me at this time
and I NEVER text you at this time
and here we are
Two energies seeking each other
My day ends in a hot yoga class
I had forgotten about that moment
and the instructor
Is super sentimental and likes to start his classes with an intention based off of a morning thought
He stated that the story we should focus on
is when we hold hands and can feel the hand after it leaves
when we go to call someone and they call us first
and BAM
It's there again
my eyes are open.
It's all connected
My energy and yours.
You are my relief
My dear pea
Our days mesh
You tell me about your doubts with the passion and love and depth you offer others
it's dangerous for them
you think you are a danger to them
but you aren't
you are sanctitude
You are magnitude
You are resurrection of the soul
that window you stare into
Your energy is felt even when you don't think it is
You want labels
Especially "crazy"
but you are color
Every ******* color
And this is not meant to pet your ego
and make it purr
It's meant to bring attention
to the fact that those souls
that you feed
They are hungry and you feed them for a lifetime
or momentarily
but both mean just the same
Because you
is in all of it
And just like I know what you are about to tell me
before you even utter the words
I feel every movement
to such a degree
that I truly believe the universe will never separate us
And my gorgeous dearest friend
You are an organized map of all that I am with you
and all that you are with me
and we can organize it together
without the ****** liberation
but with the freedom of the connected pod
You think you destroy and destruct
but you are merely just being you
The you I see in your hands
when they hold you up in crow position
You cannot dim your locks or your influencing spirit
Don't ever do that
Just because others don't know what to do with it
Your dreams manifest
You have to ask yourself
Where am I in all of this?
What do I need?
and don't shame that
You need and you want and you cry and look up at windows
and it's all gorgeous my dear friend
Your poems, your lyrics,
don't ever mistake your pores as seeping black
They have always been spilling yellow
Gorgeous layers of yellow
I beg to be sandwiched between those hues
I hope more that you recognize the slurpy messy textures of the radiance
in a form that is graceful
and
dear dear beautiful
soul brother
pea to my pod
You recognize that all of your glory
is good
Destruction is not your middle name
rather its complicated
It may have so much to do with the incapability of the others
and how they respond
and if they are capable of jumping off of the tip tops of trees
into the depths of the oceans
breathing and finding
I can actually breath the cobalt
and if they allow it
they could combat the world with you
instead of against you

Your words are drilled into my bones
Unwrap my skin
To find capitalized syllables molding my marrow
I try to sand down at least my ribs
In hopes to remove you from all that protects my heart
But they are imbedded at a permanent level
Your teeth swim around in my stomach
Chattering up
Climbing up up up
Into the middle of my throat
And your tongue slipped from my clenched fists
years ago
Slithering down my stairs to lick up the tears
I form every time
I close my lids
And see your high cheekbones
They are thieves in the night
Ripping apart childhood images
My raggedy anne doll
grass stains on the knees of my white tights
and tea parties with empty cups
Your voice echoes in all of them
Calling me by my full name
Telling me to brush my teeth after dinner
I still cup my hands under the faucet like you do
And I still look at the water spilling
Wishing I was with it slipping down the drain
Away from you

I want them to say I was obsessed
Crazy mad for the earth that curled around my feet
Tortured by my addiction to touch
Sinful for the hunger that knotted up the trees near your house
That led me to your walls made from
raw words and thick veins
That they would whisper that I was  
Desperate to hold onto the moon like a
healer holds onto mortality
I want them to find comedic relief in
how fortifying  silly colloquialisms are to me
sinking with me when
strangers called me "petal"
All of them would gladly proclaim
I died from drinking too much
from an aching well
of your words
That my bones were wrapped in silky sarcasm
My blood almost translucent in a carpet of
olive moss ,
whispering back to the cumulus
"why?", "of course, my love", and "me too"
I want them to describe my time
as a staunched storyteller
with ears for eyes
and an ocean mouth
I want it to be all okay
That I entered the earth soft and weeping
but left as
a bizarre beautiful form

my soul is a basement
flooded with un-choreographed movement,
rapid waters of words I never really meant
and empty fish bellied breaths
My heart is no different
just one big blue gilled vessel
aching
wishing for stars within black veins

Yesterday I was told that I was air
inventive and cool to the touch
offering oxygen and ideas to breathless souls

All I was to you was sea sewage
forcing you to hold stale breath
gripping onto other
floating debris lovers

And I was a shark circling
waiting for the moment
your weak grip slipped
the last of dry flesh would sink under currant
and there I was reaching for your perfectly
rainbow arched feet

I pulled you deeper and deeper until
finally I let you slip back into a world
where gravity was your enemy
and I, left alone as a sea monster
for ***** divers to gape at

And here I am sifting through the sand
trying to find purpose for our salty memories
Do I bury them and hope they convert into nourishment for the
algae?
do I let them float to the surface and offer light to your pirate pals?
Do I string them like pearls and adorn the humpbacks?
I could stuff them into the fisherman's cages and
let them surface back up to you
to **** from crab claws

But alas, captain

Until I find a purpose for all of our ****** up
suffocating memories

I'll scoff at being labeld "air"
and harbor those haunting pieces of you
like the mossy skulls I lay with
at the bottom of this dark ocean

She should not be left alone.
starfish will form from her shoulders
Extremities become tentacles
each breath sprays an ink of green passion
her iris's become piranhas
her heart--a sea-like Venus flytrap
solitude will transform soul
and vertebrae is coral cuffed
her siren lips sync to fatale vocal chords
and you, poor sailor are brave enough to return
entranced, you can't help but look at what has become
of your love
Your remains
are gold skulls in sunken ships.

I will not be punished for what I feel
I will not let the anti-vagabonds knit together the
unsanctioned holes in my chest
Color will dagger
prisms will blind between ribs
And every day that I trudge through blank stares
and twin smiles
my hair will tangle and the moons of grit will sleep soundly
in nail beds
I'll keep chewing on words that free themselves around soul connections
Never swallowing them down
in fear that I'll be stuffed on my own metaphors
instead of the gorgeous others that await my digestion
of their seizured energy
I find myself, a rookie artist
thumbed down by grey roles
that fit me like a bustier made of hornets

It didn't happen all at once
But it was an immediate awareness
A feeling rather
Is it an ending of something?
Or a beginning?
Or the sudden drop of the ******
Within my story
Just trembling and ready to head uphill again
Because my novel knows me too well
And so do the stars
A pro climactic rising
Is always around the corner
No it was more like an opening and closing
Or a cutting off of rotted midnight limb
And in its place a blossoming rainforest full of the woodland emotions that look a lot like
Furry clashing forces
I'm not quite sure how to describe it but
All I know is that I rescued myself
From me
And here I am
A floating thriving body on glass water
An ebb that quenches my pores Tiger fish that offer their scales for comfort
And algae that looks a little like sparkly mold from the moon
And the air I breath as I float is crystalline
salty renewal
And that saltwater taffy smirk of mine
Is real
Chew it between perspectives
The diamonds in my eyes
Have been authenticated
Go ahead and sell them at full price

I was built from my fathers tiny bones
my umbilical cord circled with second hand rage.
I entered oxygen
with Raggedy Anne eyes
black circles of fear under stitched innocence
Paired with
my inside out jumpers on picture day
And the quivering hands of my mother
smoothing my tangled curls
I ended up being jumpy just like her
And I got your thick hairline and your breathless passion for music and your ****** up need to explore the darkest cracks of humanity and your avoidance of mortality and your charming sexuality to get exactly whom you wanted--an elite lover who deserves better just to have them in sticky gripped destruction and I got your restlessness and your love for the forbidden and your salvation in rain
and your destructive awful enchanting chaos

A young girl sat across from me and asked me what she should do about her father
and there I was with my dynamic response
she weeped
she needed someone to be without poetic movement and body language
Without vigor
She said it reminded her of her violent father
My mother giggles at how distorted I entered the
world
Dislocated nose
A cone head
and misshaped eyes
Didn't she realize my world was distorted before I even got there?
I have always been pretty good with empathy.

Although you attempt to jab me
In passive backless form through
Exclusion and cruel bliss
I must remember...
this is all yours
Your ****, your insecurity, and your madness
It's your toxicity to wade through
Your shins laddened with black tar
Your words laced in spite
Your pulse can have a rhythm of vengeance
But I, I will stand firm and know
This is not mine to absorb
I zip myself up in thick skin
And know
I am confident and lovely and hilarious
I am beautiful and adventurous and stimulating
I am intelligent and courageous and healing
and I don't have to succumb to your demented seventeen year old white girl bully *******.

I want to eat up fir trees
and your eyelids
and cupcakes full of doubt
I want to sip up sweaty windowsills
and your vowels
and goblets full of desire

Is it too late to shrink into violets at full bloom
Too early to squeeze into the round sleeves of the moon
Too inconvenient to consider the hobbling leg of a ****** love ?
Has my moment passed
to lick up the freckles that fall
From face to floor
Am I too young to slip my words into a box of dogma?
Too old to melt into serpents
And I'm sure you'll tell me
I'm too pretty to dry up in a wasteland of apathy
and too confident to dive into gaped alligator comfort
Too lost to soak in road map paper cut blood
And my brain is far too twisted to
wrap around your body
buckling and cinching
as armor
Of course my flesh is too toady
For your winter coat
I've been told
It's much too prosaic to embarrass the rising rays
with my black aggressive grip
I will reach out anyways and harbor away yellow
Every second I can.
That, that you cannot take away from the pockets of my soul

She dabs the ducts of each eye
with twirled tissue in hand
Sky blue eyes lost to oceans of tears
Angry waves never allowed to crash into cheeks
She swallows lump after lump
So that the black of lashes don't mix with blue
So that when she leaves my room it is as if there was not a drop of water
on this planet
in her body
You can see the longing within her gaze
when she feels the crisp cobalt threaten to release
Am I the gatekeeper?
To this tsunami of a girl
Tissue after tissue crumpled
smashed between cushions
Her soft small palms left to
catch raining tirade
Dabbing gently as to not expose a non-cover-girl-face
As to not expose the dark circling sharks under iris

100mph blinking
Tepees of tissues
blackened sleeves
Lashes sweeping lakes
of aches

You avoid eye contact
don't let me see the emerald
that creeps up with the hazel of your shattered sight

The divorcee sizes up my ringed left hand
The tormented parent sizes up my pristine smile
The assaulted lesbian sizes up my gender con-formative garb
The privileged heterosexual white male sizes up my rack
The elder sizes up my certificate

And that plush khaki couch of mine...
it's all that's left of me by the end of week
Stuffed with tears

Some of them shed

He steps outside
wading through snow, he exhales more
only to capture the white billowing cloud that forms
outside of open gape
His eyes are five year old wonders,
his hands fifty years old

The second the sole of his workman's shoe
crunches down on white carpet
The neighbors open heated entrances
To greet him

Embracing him warmly with conversation
Buzzing with words and news from the weekend missed
We arrive home to a repaired snow blower, steady and rumbling

The week before
The power lines got into a war with the wind
The neighbor I had rushed past weekly
offered
piles of stored wood, without a thought
keeping the both of us warm for days
in heart and in palms

His dimples are sacred accepting kindness
The words he shares so open and patient,
Curious and compassionate
Leaving our fences shared, not separated

Week to week I only
greet chamomile tea and scripted memoirs
Grateful to flee from humanity behind sacred front door.

Me: "How do you have time to talk to the neighbors?"
Him: "No one is ever truly busy."

The fire wreaks of crayons
Waxy surfaced juvenile spirit
And here I am bundled up like a burrito
In a tie blanket made for me in the 7th grade
And I keep on hearing the cracking and popping
The red and yellow licking up my yearning
The comfort of not having to respond to everything that was planned out for me
By only myself
I'm the only one to blame
I'm so grateful to have an environmental mediator
Get in the way of myself.

The main reason I've tried around five new recipes a week
and all of a sudden enjoy cooking
and the reason I've bitten my nails down to bone
and texted my good friends way too many times
fragmented and weeping with questions
and the reason I've listened to podcasts minute after minute
and audiobooks
and ******* Damien Rice's creepy voice saying the words *******
over and over again
and have a wishlist on every overpriced bohemian rag site
and entered multiple contests guessing Bon Jovi's lyrics
to win 50 dollars to Applebees
and the reason I drink red white and blue ****** can after can
after hours that end with "AM"
and the reason I don't feel like hearing my client's problems
and catch myself in fantasies about running away or climbing up into trees and staying there for months
and the reason I go to angry slam poetry events by myself
and watch Sarah Silverman crying on the television
and snorting coke
or scrub my gums until they bleed
to taste the iron with those perfectly prepared meals
I even thought about joining a meetup group
instead I just met up with my therapist and noticed she's wearing the same sweater I am
What the hell is she going to be able to do for me?
Take my seventy dollars and run
and I keep edibles harbored in the corner of my cheek
saving the ounces for the most destitute of moments
when I hear I have to eat lunch with my in-laws at Red Robin
and be blinded by their white supremacy
That's when I get ****** as ****
and find it all funny
and the reason I sprint into the woods at night and look up at the stars
sweaty and haunted
and the reason I keep "getting lost" on my way home from work
and stalk my ex-boyfriend's babies on Facebook
and wet the pages of Charles Bukowski
and then watch his documentary and scream at the TV in horror
and the reason I buy bags and bags of peanut butter stuffed pretzels
and my laugh sounds unnervingly different every day, as if my role keeps changing from **** to lesbian to raging feminist to kitschy wife lover to Eskimo to poet

is due to the fact that I am in a long distance relationship with my own life
my own soul
my screaming energy and robustness
my color
and craving.

Eurasian roller birds
exist in the ecosystem
just as
I do.

When approached by perceived danger
Fight or Flight is feigned
Only remaining--wreaking self-destruction
Our wild flighty friends
Literally ***** all over their beautiful shells
in order to save themselves from suffering

Half digested disgust exposed on wings
arrests their blue beaming light

Eight years ago you climbed up to my nest
and held out your incredible love
Regurgitation immediately followed
Along with green abusive fear
I clung to my cloak of worms and saliva
You just laid down beside me
in digested stench

Multiple times you cleaned me up
licked up the pain
Accepting the disgust,
Realizing quickly
You could not clean a lover who aches
to be bent over, pale skinned, and protected

I fled from nest
and you did too my dear
we couldn't sit with the offensive smell any longer
My wounds were too porous
my pain, invasive

The foul smell that the roller exerts
is also meant to alert the parents to flee back to nest
and protect their blue babe

When I cracked from shell and entered the world
with slit eyes
There were thousands and thousands of threats
and the excretion was not enough
I did not get eaten up by the masses
but I did allow myself to become what I had eaten
infantile self-protection morphed into
Pervasive self-destruction.

Our nest kept singing back to us,
Our love entwined and weaved in with twig
Like haunted batty lovers
Pulled back in to vile

Finally finally finally finally     fin a lly
I allowed the digestion
of your love
There were my bursting blue feathers
Sterile and glowing
Our nest safe from
my internal predator
And you, finally safe in my love.

You slap my own name across my face
underneath my chin is a definition
to provide clarity for the ones YOU love
that are forced around me
I become a walking advertisement
for a cliché of
comfort in chaos
a dysfunctional reckoning
a ****** up difficult high sequence of emotive *****
You try so hard to shield the world from my exacerbation

Is every strange individual a stranger?
The ones I come into contact with seem to be immediate family

I refuse to surround myself by anyone
who is not exotic,
painted black and blue
Their own clarification by society
Painted on forehead
Their metaphors dripping off tongue
and pain licking up their eyelids
I remain solo these days

But within my own mind...

I seem too close to you, strange dearest sad one
I feed off of the cursed white
of your marrow
Filling my mouth with ***** residue
I pain to **** the salt from your fingertips
My beach is your body
A fiend for the folds of your sheets
I remain insatiable

Within me is a house
There is a path with tangled lines of dahlias
they reach out, celebrating the company of my steps
The flesh and pits of plums litter my yard
The purple ripe sadness chips at the soft butter paint
only on the shadowed right side of the house (logic)
It is a consequence to bear fruit in domesticated quarters
The path leads to earth born steps
first step from tangential cursing
onto cerebral acceptance
They take me further and further up
Arriving at a silver steel opening
Only I have the ability to enter
My feet monogamous to creaking wood floors
Grains of chaos and contempt
pounded down by order
Pages of words unspoken litter the desperate corners
Where tainted wall kisses golden wood gloss
No furniture
only prints and fabrics and feather
to lay upon
Ceiling-less, crowned by
Colored glass
warmed by sunny soul
and I am alone at last
A home to combust and contort
and howl into

I light a flame in protest
Waxy comfort, my rebottle to this
credentialed crisis
--Wildfires slither up to my terrain
And me,
The fire caught me years ago
I look out to choked sky
My disposable golden rod environment
finally surrenders and declares--"yes, me too."
I whisper back under smoky breath--"it's about time."
Blinking away ember tears...
I'm still blinking them down blue cheeks.
My face has been striped wet for so long
I'm pigmented in bubbled weariness
Underneath my epidermis
I block each volcanic bolo punch,
loving masochistic movement
My lush goodness taps out to
Core's tectonic intensity
My earthy green
Covered with licking ***** lava
My maroon sadness seeps through
Every ******* time
My tears blamed on the Tetons

I am not your accessory
a statement piece
to your spineless connections
The thousandth image-oriented festivity
That you thoughtlessly threw
Due to the boredom of your own reflection
I am not a string of pearly witty conversation that you casually bring up when you aren't capable of employing stimulation
I am not a magenta lipstick you reach to cover up your mindnumbing gossip about the neighbors indecencies
You try to duplicate me and slip your right, then your left foot into vintage leather Jimmy Choos
Oh but your archless perception of life
Doesn't quite fit your soul next to mine
Empathy was never your strong suit
Oh but a tailored cold charcoaled judgement suit--that fits just.right.
Still you try to wear me, despite discrepancies
And oh how you hate the way I mock your silhouette
I clash with your champagne clings
You try to bash me against silverware but I remain mute
"Oh but if I can't make her an accessory, I shall make her an appendage!"
Oh how Christian and courteous of you
In the same way you asked your bridesmaid to step off the alter when she came out to you on that heavenly day
You ask me to be your brothers appendage
Oppressive and aloof
Asking was always a waste of time for you
You expect.

There is a
Chuck Taylor black energy connecting  
Every one of my couch’s teens
But please don’t generalize a single spirit
And especially stay away from adjectives like
“angsty” and “misunderstood”
Never accuse them of such a cliché travesty
At such an age spotlighted syndrome  stage
The Sufjan Stevens song she brings in has the same yearning
That another’s canon snaps with trapped black and whites
That same shadow tangos with the forced-into-therapy-tween’s
faint scalloped smile lines
of times before, when she had not been hunting for her own identity
When she could spin around the willow
And not worry about her eyelet ******* peeking through
Then the cloud covered eighteen year old daisy
Drags amber strands across forehead while she murmers
Blame that oozes from her juvenile jawline, mirroring
The prior sweetheart that stormed out of my office at 3:00pm
Tawny strands across her wrist
And how could I ever forget the last string of fiber
Fierce and cross armed  
The last knot to the cat’s cradle of adolescent midnight string
“I know I will conquer my genetic hand”
She declares
Bubblegum harbored in fleshy cheek
Whiskers and all.

I hold sacred in my bones
The appendage I am in all of this
wide eyed need
And I let the walls absorb their sighs
Until, in awe I witness
the beauty in vulnerability  
Again

Use me like you used to
I hold onto that same perfect feeling in my dreams
I'll wake up mid consciousness
REM sleep whispering
Reminding me 
Yes, I remember this rawness
Body taken as a target 
Like an old friend leading you 
Back to the womb
To the security and darkness. 
I rationed how much 
You
Could
Use.
Black ink blue ink 
What ink will you push down and out of me
Swiping my darkness on pure white pulp
Reading the words that were present in every pore
rubbing my pink eraser ******* between index and thumb
Oh but nothing can erase a night
And nothing will white out 
My moon or my tongue or my stain