I lick my wounds with
a sorbet sunset tongue
A slurp so icy thick and orange that it covers elephant horizons
My pain---a mirrored cloud skyscraper
it is king to
Grief
A planet where there are never enough parking spaces
If you find a place to rest
it will cost you an over- romanticized sensory memory
and then you will never be able to sleep again
I took up space
Decided I would sing among the meadows
Black filled my cracks and
my clothes started to wear me.
Everyone tries to hug me
They start their sentences with a dry, choking,  "at least."
I start to resent strangulation
Oxygen is my mother
She shows up and holds my hands tenderly,
rubbing her fingertips over my nail beds
I beg her to stay
to swaddle me and morph me into ten-year-old-me
She just murmurs, "me too."
"I want that too."

Could I be cotton?
Or the light that fills checkered New York cockroach apartments?
Could I be anything but a woman who is grieving over a black shelled conman?

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

I'm assuming
this is my punishment.
Walking around in clothing
you've touched me in
garments
you grabbed and unzipped
and twisted
and threw around your room
I wear them with weeping heartache
and disturbed remorse
I bare them like a mannequin
the clothes merely
mocking me
I can only wonder
if I stood before you again
with clothes littering your floor
if you'd find me a god
hold me as your muse

and if I would feel better because of it.
Doubtful my dear.
Doubtful.

You reach your tiny arm out,
unable to sleep
Curled up under rib
I whisper to you

"Baby,
tell me your dreams."

"Popsicles
Frozen
Minnie Mouse
Lights
The song 'The Wheels on the Bus'
Reggie
Mamma holding my feet"

.I only dream of what affects you.

The last three months I awake
my *** is pillow
to your toddler cheek
I sacrifice sleep,
watching in AM wonder
You stuff
special blankey,
ferociously
into teeth
There is a tiny corner of fleece
you wrap around thumb
and rub to the tip of your nose
back and forth
A soothing swing
Material fluff rocks you to sleep

It is holy
to be your mother

I am still hell.

say "please" and "thank you"
"share, please"
"do not put that in your nose."

Sometimes I think
I want
to be
back in my body,
feeding you
holding time
You in my core, as baby
Then again
Who are we fooling?
Wild, tender Audrey
fearless flower
I am lucky to be the seed

Clothe me in
your beautiful threaded
words
create afghans
and silly uneven
sweaters
of kindness
around my curved
core

Feed my frenzied
gaping mouth
(in awe of you)
with
fruitful adventure
and the sustenance
of surrealism

Quench my thirsting
sponge soul
with your soothing
tea of tenderness

Warm my tired
tiny hands
with your sunny
disposition
and mittens of
merriment

Aw, darling forget all of my demands
Just sit next to me and                                    be.

No (wo) man is an island
But is it possible to be the
Roaring ocean?
Swallowing rocks with animosity
And spitting out a
Glittery product
Of sandy turmoil

No (wo)man is an island
But is it possible to be the grey
Black boulders?
Among the edge
Where the green lush ends
And the midnight blue
Sadness begins.
Stagnant and indifferent
To the wild hearted seagulls
Perched and picking
Pointing out the imperfections
Of a jagged way of being

No (wo)man is an island
But is it possible to be the drifting
Lofty limitless clouds
A pertinent part of the  paradoxical ceiling
Of the globe
Floating and spreading
Fluffy wings of idealism
offering frustrating fantastical
Dreamy substance
To a crooked solidified world below

No (wo)man is an island
But is there just a small
Glimmering possibility
That if I wanted to be
I could be an island
Lone, and far away
From these
Destructive city slicker
Emotions
That stack on top of each other
Like the condos neighboring my mind
Crowding my consciousness

I keep finding myself
folding your laundry
staring blankly,
my ach clinging to our empty walls
I keep finding myself scrubbing your pots and pans
grit shoved up into my fingernails
black as the lies and the vapidness
that follow me across the state
everytime I flee your side
I keep finding myself shaking my head at your reflection
forcing myself to say something kind
why can't it come naturally
like the salty taste of yearning on my lips

I keep finding myself trying to find you
and accept is as part of me

but I can't.

If I were a poet
I would know the
perfect
word
to describe
how it feels
the moment I open my eyes
and realize
it was but a fleeting dream
I don't even remember what you look like
in this physical world
only a blurred image
residing in REM

If I were a poet
I could print the whispers
and wonders
and describe with diction
The raging burning battle
with my conscience
that created such
bruising and anger and irritation

the scars those thoughts have left me
They rise
with each moment of intimacy
even after forgiveness
has been mouthed over      and over       and over again

If I were a poet I'd
have the most beautiful acceptable
apology

But alas
I am no poet
or pious princess

Nothing ceases
It's always there reminding me
a personal private world
of pain

Shame
I beg you
Die with all of
last years deciet
do not                                         follow me.

If I were to tell you
expose my darkness
unleash my destruction
I know my ocean of black
would swallow you whole
Your eyes would sink into your stomach
and no longer would I be your shining prize
I would flee
and wreck even more that I own
And I would say goodbye
before the period even followed my sentence
I know I'm not woman enough
to see your pain from my betrayal
slip into the carpet
at my feet
So yes, my dear I will flee
I'm so much better at leaving
I don't deserve your concrete feet
and your purity
Commitment drenched in your every move
I've known all along
this time would come
When my skin would shed
my mask would sail
and underneath all that I've shown you
A ***** lush ******* unveiled.

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

In my ideal world
We would all speak in movement
a beautiful dance
interpretive
much like a whimsical
musical
I'd weave
wringing out
socially acceptable action
soaring through the air
on wings of weirdness
There would be paragraphs,
novels
all written
with the bending of my back
the twirling of fingers
and twisting
and flipping of my  
crazy curly coils
of hair on my head
Poetry would seep through the muscles
of my body
and you would respond
only in embrasive motility
fluidly moving
to song and unspoken language
and we would all be a frenzied
foolish
*interpretive dance

God lurks under my bed
A devine monster
Spike backed and venomous
He mouths in my ear,
Lips like daggers to lobes
I beg for silence.
He whispers
Non-sweet nothings
about how Mary babied better
Her stain glass eyes scorch me
I burn like an infant bug under magnifying glass
Jezebel girl
You: feminine blasphemy
Why will you not let me save you?

Because
                                                        .Hallelujah.

I became a woman
My eyes peel back to black truth
You are father nightmare,  not a holy savior son
Break my bones with Psalms
I will mash them into soupy indescretions
This is not my purpose driven life, pastor
My breath is
To die unconsecrated
Cohen, keep my marrow
Turn my white into lyrical salvation
I beg my mother
my father
my brothers
Never let anyone save me
I am death and devil
But Jesus Christ, I am free.

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

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

Is it possible to be a self within a self?
When we whisper the over-used notion, "I would never do that."
Is that merely the hidden internal us responding in fear
in vulnerability
in sacredness, holding onto the hope
that no, we would never do that?

I would never flee down coast line to coast line
abandoning all
recklessly
I would never own a worthy
boyish love
holding it ransom,
giving not even a speck of pink back
selfishly
I would never cloud ridicule
over the individuals that love me and wreak grey
havoc on their hearts
so haughtily
I would never obsess over material
adornment and superficial success
vapidly
Hoping to control others with one look, one unreachable charm
I would never look like a Barbie doll queen
Platinum blonde hair
Golden olive skin
Perfect figure
what a cliché
what a ******* conformist
I would never lick up liquor like a dogged lush
tarring the black of the night
so pathetic
I would never weep in the shower
because of the way someone loved me too much
I would never have a disgusting want to be left lonely
So degrading

I would never let the world turn me

**I would never.

I'm a gypsy
Your eyes are pockets
filled with all I've robbed
from this world
I'm a wave lacking
pure
white foam,
lashing at sand selfishly
I'm malice disease,
ill derived and pale skinned
lurking on your final days
I'm your tasteless vice:
cigarette filmed cough,
pitch lined coffee mugs
repeated whiskey morning breath.
I'm an acrobatic enemy
wreaking of abandonment
and wretched demise
I'm a mummy
wrapped in ***** linen lies
all the while buried in your arms,
like a pharaoh


I have a gremlin heart
that will eat up your days
purging  a stainless course
I bare a scorpion back
whipping in reverse to sting your
heated holy heart
My python legs
squeeze your robust piety,
crushing regal goodness.

My wants are bigger than my mouth and tongue and words
And I am just a                           girl.

You sat with your hands dangling over the stuffed leather booth
I sat across from you with a **** eating grin
We had a huge sundae in front of us loaded with extra cherries on top, just the way we like it.
Now you can find us sneaking extra cherries behind the bar to add to our whiskey sodas.
Drinking all of the whiskey down so quickly the cherries end up being futile.
Long handled spoons in hand we dip into the lactose filled shell and scoop large mouthfuls like shovels. We talk at the same time as we chew.
We are older now, but we still don't care about manners or laughing too loud or how we really want to get whiskeys instead of this belly ache of sweets.
We inhale our singular bowl and aren't shy about who gets the last bite.
We leave.

We are back in your sisters house and I'm sitting in the same part of the kitchen that I sat the night that I drank too much wine and threw up in her front yard.
Not much has changed except that her children are older.

Chloe isn't bouncing her creepy Dolly head from couch cushion to couch cushion in the living room.
And your dad isn't there with Nancy commenting about how old I am now.
And I'm not secretly wanting to throw punches at Nancy, but instead throwing back glasses of wine.

We still feel so connected in a way that I have never been able to put words to. I've tried in the thousands of cards and letters and sentimental moments. That is what is so difficult about feelings towards someone you love deeply. Words are so finite.
I decide I want to try with words anyways. I want to share with you how much you've meant to me all of these years.

Before setting my alarm and falling asleep to the sound of rain
I had been having an existential moment. Well, lots of them, since I found out I would become a mother.
Not only was I growing someone in my womb but I was deconstructing and rebuilding the one I had become.
Awake I couldn't stop thinking about all of the moments we had been through and how we survived them all. We still love each other through it all.
Awake I became aware that you were as close as I could get to having another sibling.
Not in a cliche "I love you like my sister type," but in an innocent wild green way.
We still had it.
That part of us that did not let the world rob us from our wild selves, our hunt for nature, our questions that we weren't afraid to explore together even if it made everyone else uncomfortable. Our sensitivity...heightened sensitivity to everything around us.

Back to my dream...

Somehow we weren't at your sister's house anymore. Now we were on the dock of your mom's house and I told you how much I had been going through.
How much I felt myself changing and that I had to let you know how much you meant to me.
How close in my heart you remained and will always remain.
I told you that you were the most influential person during my teenage years. I met you the year I found out that my father was struggling with addiction and had to go to rehab. I met you when I was the most alone in the world and the most confused. I had never had a friend like you.
I met you and you picked me up from my house in your green Honda when I had been AOL instant messaging my ex boyfriend and he told me I had rats nest as hair. I ran out to the driveway crying, after of course brushing the curls out of my hair. I was really sobbing about the fact that my father was in rehab and I wanted to disappear behind the crook of my closed bedroom door.
I met you when I was swallowed up with insecurity around what right thing was to wear and should I shave my legs once or twice a day.
You introduced me to Goodwill shirts and letting your hair grow as long as you **** well wanted.
We became close friends instantly.
Through our twenties we floundered in a lot of ways. With ****** men and divorces and affairs and despairingly drunken nights and moments we still needed to be chaperoned. Our innocence shifted.
We became aware of the world and how it really was.
Then we decided we wanted to do something about it.
The foundation of our paths have always aligned.
I told you that you offered me freedom and relief and that when you were having a hard time sometimes I couldn't be there in the ways that you needed and when I was having a hard time you couldn't be there in the ways that I needed but none of that mattered now.
None of it ever did.
Because our foundation was still there. Like the marrow in our bones.
I hugged you and told you that you are still that person to me. That you still show up for me in so many different ways, just by who you are as a person...not even what you do.
That here I am going through one of the biggest moments of my life and that it all seems like it is going to be okay, because you are still here. With me.
Your sister. Your mom. Connor and Chloe and Sig. The smell of eucalyptus. Your light beaded dangly earrings. Your square shaped fingers and toes. Your hairy legs. Your voice belting over Aretha. Lake Chelan. The way you make tea steaming up to our noses. How impossible you are to wake up in the morning. Armpit bangs. How we have held each other with words, with arms, with history, but mostly with acceptance and understanding.
I had been told by a client a few years ago that if you hug someone for over 20 seconds that your heart aligned.
What a pathalogical sentiment am I right?
ha
Anyways, in my dream we hugged and our hearts turned a bright yellow and glowed from our chests.
They left our rib cages and
Circled around my belly
She felt the warmth and knew
as she entered the world
She too wouldn't have to be alone.

And then I woke up.

He is a black and white photograph
A sweet sweater peeking above collarbone
He looks right at me
As if we know joy and pain in the same way
He steps out of still-frame
out of memory
He is alive
He raises his right palm and he asks me
if I would like to dance
I am no longer me
I am a child
I am my best friend
My sister
and I am also me,
A trinity
He smiles as he twirls all of us, as one
A record player needle
across vinyl
pulling tune and tone from bottom to top
across a kiddy sticky floor
What is this?!?!
We are annoyed to have our soles(souls)
Pulled down from heel
Take your shoes off
Now we are in sand
on Loon, rather than a high-school atrium
He stands at the end of the dock
Italian.Tall. Floating.
A superhero
He sweeps his cape over
the sun room
Like the moon
He whispers to me
"Remember the depths of intimacy,
Do not let yourself get in the way. Please remind my family."
And he looks at me, I am still sister, best friend, me
I pull my knees up to chest
As he leaves
he releases a belly laugh
about how he flushed the ****** down the septum tank
And how he would pay to hear Damien curse over the course of that.

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

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

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

“How much do you love me.” She whispers as I wipe sandy uneven bangs off of sweaty forehead. “So much, mom. So much.” Her smile catches her ears. I rarely see her like this and every time it involves a surprise. No wonder, as an adult, I deeply yearn for the people I love to surprise me.
My unrealistic expectations of other people as an adult are to blame for the love my mother gave me as a child, and still to this day. No one can compete with the shock element of my mom.

“Go look on your bed!” she shrieks. I sprint to my quilted dusty rose second-hand comforter. There in the tufts I find the best item on earth as a 5th grade girl—A complete collection of lip-smackers, necklace with attachment for chaps-ticks included. Yes, there was Dr. Pepper. You bet your ***** there was bubble gum.  A complete delectable smorgasbord of balm delight. I definitely love her more after this. I forgive her for making me “set a good example for my brothers” the night before.

I rip plastic casing and pucker up for the first waxy stick pushed on pre-pubescent lip. Duh, I chose Dr. Pepper. Who doesn’t want to have their kiss taste like a fast-food refreshment? There she stands, the Farrah Fawcett, Sun-maid raisin queen look alike. My angel of a mother.

She watched as I threw myself on springy bed and layer flavor after flavor of Lipsmacker on lip and throw stick after stick up in the air like a lip connoisseur billionaire. She saw me rip the plastic wrappers with canines. She cringed and told me not to use my teeth, accepting it anyway with glory. That sparkle shows up in her eye and she knows I will be lining those lip balms up from my favorite to least favorite around the shoestring necklace included. She invites the true fact that I won’t sass her back for a month. I will do my homework tomorrow without asking and I will not hit my brother in the ***** before dinner. She knows. All hail Lipsmacker and all flavors. The ultimate collection lending me a heiress at recess. I am eternally beholden to her. I look up at her as she asks, “Do you like it?” I hug her calves and sigh, “I love it.”

Last night
I picked up a self help book
I drank some "meditation tea" whatever the hell that is
I listened to an awful song
that wouldn't remind me of you
I tried yoga
I even prayed to God
God knows it's been awhile
since I felt existential
I went to my favorite grocer
and talked to the most inviting cashier
I thought it might help
I "channeled" my energy
I lifted weights
I flirted with my trainer
I put on red lipstick
I weeped.
I blogged
I analyzed myself
and my family
and mostly my dad
I "ate my feelings"
I googled "how to get over someone"
I ripped your love letter
in a million pieces
I reminded myself of all my "blessings"
I drove an extra time around my block
I stayed up way too late
watching infomercials about beauty
and vapid mind numbing consumerism
I tried to learn the guitar
I called my brother
just to hear his voice
before the beep
and just to hear mine
after it
I smiled and stared out the window
and pretended I was in a Hitchcock film
I went outside to smoke a cigarette
and I don't even smoke
I just wanted to feel the biting cold
against my hidden skin
I went shopping and bought an overly
expensive sweater
that won't fit me
unless I grew about ten inches
I read the Catcher in the Rye eight times

And I made this ******* list
that makes me feel so utterly hopeless
and chaotic catharticism

what a messy heart
staining my perfectly
neat life.

I search for answers
in others eyes
in poetry
and lyrical salvation

You're in all of them
my muse, my idiotic refuge
I feel alive even thinking about your skin
your simple movement
the way you curl your fingers around my hair

I come home
away from my toxic trembling addiction
I step into my platonic robotic role
pick up arm
put around husband
smile
keep going
somehow

if my time was inscripted
love letters to you would shock
this world I've created so innocently
for myself

this world of longing
and an empty stream of foreign trash
unnatural being

I am that stream

I lost my grandfather
and my wedding band
all within the same week
I lost my appetite
and my summer skin
all within the same day
I lost my beauty
and the blonde in my hair
all within the same hour
My beauty, rusted
my hair, grey
I lost the need to write
and the poetry that used to stain my lips
my lips are pale now
and my need is a whisper
caught in the middle marrow
of my bones
I lost my mother's pride
and my sister-brother timeless connection
My mother is hours away
and my brother is drowning in addiction
I misplaced your heart
It's pulsing patiently
waiting for it's caretaker
like a dependent waits for their
distribution of doped up desire
and I lost myself along the way
in the iris and desperation and narcissism
of everyone around me.

The hunt is on.

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

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

My bed is only messed up by me,
Diagonally.
Sleep is an ambush
Soldiers gunning at my eyelids
They quiver while natural light
stuffs iris barrels with daisy
If only I could create my own field of weeds

Will man remain my enemy?

I dare a mustache to balk
at my bush
For there are no eyes
No kiss
No tooth
In my world
Declaring how a woman should be in her *****
I grip the shadows of every fold
Every eery layered mattress
held in nuptial tandem
Right side of the bed or left?

Stinging and menacing, they remind me
That I am stone
Only the most desolate sleep on me
No crack in the river? No mother?
I remain gray and bayside
Crack me open to find lavender clouds
drifting above sweaty skyline
An agate,
A gem of a woman
Treated like a skipping stone
That is me
I will become the ocean before that is my identity

A grown man pollutes this town
Bouncing around with flimsy cape
and
vampire capped teeth
"Good morning, beautiful"s that make you want to hurl
into sleeve
Oh and like really cool tattoos bro
Mommy checks each box
So, sweet man child, you can sleep your poor little head
in
                      Can
                              I
                                  cave
                                    ! it in ?

Collapse it into black bat food
Even upside down, they would spit. it. out.
I try to swallow you down
So you can transform into ****
In hopes you maniacally stop tormenting me at dusk

A pukey green
Peter Pan
You shadow different importent men everyday
Trapped in black and white,
non-identity
You groom
traumatized lost boys
a football fantasy testosterone ego stroking---ohhhh come on reffffff type of sadness
Perfect for you to money grab and purge on compliments
What a big boy you are.

Wendy and I do not succumb to anti wrinkle cream
Our blue dresses hold fold into fists
We cling to age
our weaponry
is pirate knife knowledge
Tinker bell, who?
I will not fade to dust
Even though you keep trying to file me down

Everyone around us knows who to trust.
That must be hard for a fool like you.

If I could gift a mantra
to humanity
it would be

"I am worthy"

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

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.

This modern love is about
*******
Vulnerable nakedness
And sharing words drenched in ulterior motives
After ten pm texts
Netflix and chill
drunk sloppy saliva
Dead weight silence
Ghosts and poltergeists
who look at your stories
While screening your calls
Bored married baldies
**** pics
Heavy thumbs swiping right and left
2 second clever convo starters
cliff jumping into ****** innuendos
Thousands of pictures of soft male hands holding animals as props
Dead or alive
Shirtless mirror pics
Pretending to reach for your wallet
Situationships
Friends with benefits
“Hanging out”
Daddy’s who date with their toddlers

Every part of it
A fake feeding to the soul
I walk up to the table with a Michelin  star meal to be offered crumbs
Insatiable
I choose couch over barstool
Cat over dog drool
******* over touch

And do you have
Instagram
Facebook
Tik tok
Or a brain?

Hatfishing
Height fibbers
Terrible smiles hidden behind pursed lips
The ABCs of
misogyny
objectification  
And
“I don’t like condoms”


The most sacred thing in the universe—
Human connection and intimacy
Stained.
A perverted shallow watered down sea
Love liquified and left washed up
The tides never ending
Swallowing me head first
While some man baby expects me to swallow head first

I had my daughter with the type of man
I came from
Generationally marooned
forever
fetal positioned
on bathroom floor
Aching and punishing myself for not asking for more

I cup my daughter's face
Only to know you will try to erase
my fingers
my palms
my voice
You try to rob fingerprint
The blonde in her curl
Her lips are frozen on "mommy"
You ignore.
I am always more.

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.

I hid under my throw
covering every inch of self
I curled in child's pose position
and clung to my toes
I kissed my shoulder
and whispered a tiny prayer
Patches of quilt protected me,
but your gremlin words kept bouncing
from the walls to the ceiling
to the window to the fan
Under my bed, where you lay
Monologue Monsters
attacked
Those threads within that
colored quilt
disintegrated
and there I was a child
exposed

I tuck her in at moonlight
Curl onto ground next opened up crib
an end of day ceremony
I hold tiny hand.
My heart sings to mossy dreamland goddess in silence
She often has mercy on me
Tonight
She. answers.
My daughter's long lashes flutter in closure
A soft sigh
Tug of a tuft
brush of a nose with special blanket

She whispers back
"Sweet dreams, mommy."

My days of damage and dread and adulthood are nothing
It will never mean anything.
It does not mean anything.
It means nothing.
Nada.

Her slumber breath
Makes me a saint
I worship
her fingernails. the ceiling. the womb

I beg my brain to
re-write the day in permanent marker
Only to counter the days I have existed  
in a trance
stumbling through streets
seeking anyone who can dry erase
The utter demand of existence

How can I as one woman possess
So much love and sanctity
All the while reigning in resistance.

I birthed a lotus  in rare form—
Ringlet petals,
orchid like dimples on gorged cheeks

Then one day I looked in the mirror and all I saw was mud
Dark grit under finger nails
A mom that double checks automatic payment notices and
“Goes to the bathroom” just to breathe into her ribs
I ache to be the garden.
I am the manure.
The pathetic reality tv show at midnight
I am the fiction book that I used to gobble up as I did nonfiction for thirty minutes
Digest to remind myself of the masters degree kind of woman
I used to be
The woman who used to be able to dialogue and synagogue and debate and have an adjective for everything
Here I am.
soil. and clam. and contrite.
With nothing but seeds in between my teeth

WEEDS.

A worship or a song or a conversation waiting to be watered.

These days all that grow are EOB’s, needy blue bubbles going unanswered: conversation flies that don’t flinch when you swat at them.
An empty canvas.

I slam the door just to feel my pulse again
I see him kiss her forehead with so much more love than he has for me
I see my heart breaking skin
I see myself as sludge.
Baby blooms
Daddy dances
Mother wilts.

My best friend is perfect.
She cuts avocados and Mother Nature applauds
Meals are her healing message
She is a stork
who confits and door drops
Rebirth
To the grief stricken
Even when you think you will never eat again
You will.
She is there.
Ladle her famous soup and homemade crust into mouth
Watch as your weep is resurrected into brothy strength
And loafy self compassion
Her hair is a layer cake of curls
A ringlet goddess
the moment she lifts cheek off of pillow
She will not bend like her follicle
An ancient rooted tree
The fortunate are invited to intertwine in soil
A Resilient nutrient shared
Watch us grow
Her hugs are
Insulin
Acceptance
Ink pen
Lemon
An introduction is all it will take—
You are special
Remembered,
every detail studied and scribed to memory
Even the undeserving
Her biggest fear is being unliked
She will breathe her last breath without that ever happening
She notices when I pick my fingers and the second my stomach sinks to my feet
With one brown eyed gaze
I am back in the room
I like to believe I comfort her with all the ways I am not her perfect
All the ways I storm through life
She and I sit on thunder and guzzle rain
She is my warm towel and umbrella and favorite childhood memory
Her family is mine
My family is hers
and when the light never feels like it is going to enter
I remind myself of that
How we are a coming of age film
That never ends
Cinematography of black and white Polaroids
Of us
Parachuting off of the risky cliffs of our twenties,
Holding hands the whole time
And giggling
While everyone else around us is holding their breath
On the nights I turn into Ernest Hemingway
I remind myself that I have my Hadley,
My miss
Who I should never miss
Because she is always within me

My daughter dances to the dryer
Worn sleeves are
warmed up.
Swaying,
She closes her eyes
like I do
Every time I lose myself to dance.
We quiet a world
That asks us to be more body than clothes
I join her
We move to the knocking
of cotton
dirtied by yesterday
cheerios.
salt.
saliva laughter.
I fold into her
We do not need
to be cleaned
The purist of love
moves on hardwood floor.

You thumbed mute on my mouth
Pushing buttons on all that I shared, so vulnerable
Stapled words on the inside of my molars
You with your silver gun
Metal bent ends punched through enamel stating:

CRAZY
OVERREACTIVE
BAD MOM
WORTHLESS
FAILURE OF A WIFE
DESERVING OF BEING CHEATED ON

I take tongue and unclip your frantic grasps at control
I push my lips like a dagger through your thumb
You will not hold me down any longer
The women I come from and the woman I am
Is stronger than any man of your men
Pathetic, you cling to your photographed ****
While I wake up clinging to my core, lovesick
The mask is unveiled
My daughter, so pure
As much as you try you won't turn me frail
I will always endure.

The sun as my witness, my heart rising up in my throat
Reminds me that my truth can never be evoked.

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."

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.

I wish it were enough
But it never will be, my darling

You could kiss me with
The yellow of the bursting sun
Idolizing every inch of my skin
You could twirl the ends of my hair
As if it were your world's glowing fringe
You could create the deepest ******
Curling my toes every rainy moment
You could stain your garments
With magenta messy love for me
You could thrill every wave of
My ocean eyes
Or grip at the seams
Of the fifty thousand cotton dresses
I shed this summer
You could binge on my sadness
Until you've gorged your life blue
You could compose every sonnet
Every melodical romance
Every crushing poetic stanza
You could write my name
All over the walls of your heart

It would never be enough
My love
It will never be enough

I had a nightmare that you left me
no need for my love
any longer
In my loss
I painfully pulled
our ring off my finger
consciously unaware
and as I went to wrap my arms
around you in the morn
I sobbed and heaved
and weeped
seeing that finger bare
thinking I had lost it forever
I searched in panic,
shallow breathed and queezy
only to find it in the middle of our bed
folded neatly
where our sides had been touching
through the night

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

This may be the first time
I've let myself
Just be
listening to the blue calm
flow smoothly
through my veins
I hear my breath
shaped to the soft movement
of my lungs
This pearl energy
shifting
and comforting
the entity of me
Here I sit alone
independent from others
accepting
the

me.

I seem to only want to write in
the middle of the month
It's safer hugged between
the beginning and the
end.
Would January
please help release me
from December's arms?

Oh to flee
to spider jump from one skyscraper to
the next
Holding the reflections
of the city panes
in my pocket
Electric energy a blanket
to my bones
Oh to flee
to dart through redwood
forests
until feet become fir
legs become outstretched
oak limbs
and arms become ascending jays
drifting higher and higher into a "v"
of vulnerability
Oh to flee
to swim through the heavy Atlantic
diving deeper into the open
and rest softly among the algae floor
to feel the schools of fish swift
weaving from my mane
braiding the space between my fingers
Oh to feel alive
Sweet sweet escape
I can taste your salt on my lips
I can feel your softness in the swing of my gate
I can almost hold your beauty in my hands
If I could only own you
and make you mine

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.