Calloused hands that give and take
Both to your detriment
That write and hold
Empty promises
I can’t tell whether
You’re grazing my cheek
Or wringing my neck.

Every moment a growing distance
Whether it be the speed of the plane
Or your apathy.
Your silence still makes the sound
Of a belt being unfurled from your waist
and I cower with trepidation.  
Treat me the way you mean to -
Be as cruel as you intend
Clearly and with no distractions.
**** me and then never talk to me
Until you’re hungry,
Because I can decipher by now
The language of your disinterest.
Stop trying to dress it up -
In “how are you” and
Dispassionate kisses
As shallow as 2% milk.
I’m tired of finding reasons
For you to grip me a little tighter
And say my name more often
And hold me in the dark
And look my way in a crowded room.
I wish you would do anything,
like you really meant it,
whether or not it would hurt.

In Budapest I’d take a lover,
We’d meet outside a ruin bar,
And I’d notice as we stumbled
On the cobblestones
He walked beside me and not ahead.
And we’d **** on cotton sheets
On a twin-sized mattress
In a hostel full of friends
I haven’t met yet
While the city pulses outside
In an unruly procession.
He spoke into my wild hair
That until we must leave Budapest,
We would be wed.
I asked him what would become of us
The next day.
A smile plays on his lips, bemused
With the taut delicacy of stringing a harp,
He tells me, “we will part.”
And I’ve never known a kinder partner
Or a gentler fate
That feels like the dissolution of sea foam
Rather than the crashing of a wave
Threatening to drown you.
He would tell me he loved me
And it was easier to believe from
Someone I’ve known an hour
Than someone I’ve known a year.  
We didn’t leave bed the next day until
Late afternoon.  
We kissed simply and quietly
And yet it drowned out the whispers of the Danube
We clung to each other’s sides
The way a cobweb sticks to the sleeve of a sweater
Sure, soft, and smothered.
The next day I had a bus to catch
And tired eyes.
We checked out quietly and held hands
Until I had to go right
And he had to go left
And we did so with one last caress and kiss
And that was that
And it was the greatest love I had ever known
And I wonder if it were because of him
Or because the future wasn’t around
To complicate it
And that I didn’t know the difference
Between loving with abandon
Or without it.

i saw a homeless man
fidget with a twist tie
the way i fidget with my rings
crossing bourbon street
alive with the fare-thee-well
of sober times.
with weak conviction,
i admit the stars crossed one of us
and cut the other a break.
we are both drunk,
we are both merry.
we are embroiled in the microcosm
New Orleans has to offer
one day a year, guilt-free.
he jingles his cup for coins
and i show my **** for beads
and i will be bedecked in glitter
and jewels,
and he will sleep on the stoop.
but we both find our shoes drenched
in the mysterious gray waters
that plague that street tonight.
with the guise of my beads
i feel like a queen
but it would make no difference
if i were a homeless man
fidgeting with a twist tie
on bourbon street,
jingling my cup for coins
and sleeping on the stoop.

he bets 7 to 1 odds
you'll lose your roll
forfeit your money
or forfeit your soul

a crooked smile
you haven't seen in a while
you want to trust
but you know will beguile

a crossed promise and a bit lip
a shrouded truth and honest fib
he means nothing he says
- but everything he did.

my grandmother was born
a squalling baby
in the sun of the Ukraine,
her mother too young
and a father too violent.
she led her through the wheat fields
whose long tresses tangled
in her pale ankles
to a pond behind the farm
where she tried to drown her.
a passerby intervened
and raised my grandmother
with his wife up the hill
on their own.

she spent her life
not cursing the hands
that sought to destroy
when they ought to have held
but thanking the hands
that pulled her
from the freezing water
on a crisp morning
in the fields of the Ukraine
lungs still full of breath
and eyes full of trust

Every crumb, a cake
Each flower, a bouquet
I hoarded tiny treasures
And tucked them safe away
And though I knew you’d go
I’d always hoped you’d stay
I had interpreted your vice
As a tender, warm embrace.