i have sunk into a slow numbness,
perhaps because something broke over me
the second i saw you again.
i realized,
it's better to be in full-blown sorrow
than in a fragile happiness,
forever staving off the blackness.

but instead, i have sunk into a slow numbness.
perhaps because you look away from me now
the exact same way that i look away from you.
your aversion gives me numbness.
don't you see it?
that's all this ever was. a fear of the numbness. a fear of the pain.
your indifference gives me numbness
because who wants to feel it
when the ripping apart begins.

i have smoked to numbness.
i have cried to numbness.
i have raged to numbness.
i have laughed to numbness.
i have embraced the numbness.
i have dug myself into numbness
but you gave me the shovel.

you gave me the numbness.
and i feel absolutely fine. i feel nothing at all.

for you, we bundle into the car,
the littlest
(half my brother and twice my nuisance)
and the middlest
(14 going on favorite)
the bitterest
(only girl and pen-in-hand)
and the biggestest
(20 years
of bombastic nonsense)

30 minutes and four cornfields later
he'll start.
"i have to ***."
"there's a bottle up there, dad."
"dad, i have to ***."
"dad."
"dad."
"dad."
and he's going to *** in that ******* bottle
which will inevitably stay in the car for the remaining 8 and a half hours,
sloshing and yellow
too dangerously close to the color of something
you would actually drink.

the two youngest
will get into some sort of argument
some sort of argument that i will intervene in.
"shut up!" he'll say.
"chill out!" i'll shout.
"you chill out!"
and my father and my stepmother
will eye from the front seat
until one of them turns around
("relax, madeline!" sharply).

and then the oldest
like clockwork
will act like he knows more than he does about something
(my father will just chuckle, but i'll begin, "bullsh-" i'll begin, but my stepmother will hiss,
"madeline!" as if i've killed somebody
even though the 8-year-old curses even worse than i do).
he'll make a face at me
and i'll make a face at him.
the littlest will
inevitably
stomp on my seatbelt about 30 times a second
which i will not be able to stand,
and we'll get into an argument which will turn into me
versus
the whole car
(afterwards, much stewing,
and resentfully cranking my ipod up as loud as it will go).

9 hours and 12 thousand cliff-faces later

we'll get there.
we'll make it.
we'll only be
a little worse for the wear.
we will be swept up by our twelve billion aunts
our nine billion uncles
and our three billion cousins,
like we always are.

someday something will be missing.

first it was your back,
and the postponement,
and eventual cancellation of our trip.
then it was your surgeries
(why weren't they working?)
and then it was a series of words i don't understand

stage

                                                               ­                                           inoperable
           ­                                 3                               ­             

                                                               ­          cancerous                                                      ma­ss
lung
                            malignant
                                                                ­                                              radiation
                                    
            therapy        ­                                                                 ­                                                 chemo

you may crumple in
on that blackness inside you,
that's eating you alive
one lung at a time,
pushing,
on your back,
until you can't even stand.
the fabric of our family
is plucked by this
disease.
this is my poem, my plea
for you
and for us,
that you not pull into the blackness,
and that you fight the tumors and the tests
and that you win.

tell it to the lighthouse boy
the sleepy-eyed resounding boy,
tell it to the lighthouse boy,
who wakes his days away.

sing it to the lighthouse boy
the bright-mouthed smiling smart-*** boy,
sing it to the lighthouse boy,
solemn, sweet, and still.

cry it to the lighthouse boy,
the hold you close and call-out boy,
cry it to the lighthouse boy,
who thinks his thoughts alone.

fling it to the lighthouse boy,
the bending low and catch it boy,
fling it to the lighthouse boy,
to carry on his own.

and oh,
did you ever see eyes so sad?
blue-green as the foaming sea they watch,
stiller than still and deeper than you can imagine,
gazing to your depths and
speaking nothing of them.
so tell it to the lighthouse boy,
the sleepy-eyed resounding boy.

tell it to the lighthouse boy,
who casts it out to sea.

i am the hookah queen

       and drifting in my hookah dream, i find
that i have no one else

  to care for.

i know nothing of their bitterness,
                           their wantonness, their greed,

i know nothing of that world,

    only me.

              and sifting through my hookah dream,

              colored with a hookah ream,


and pulled apart with all the careless shadows,

                                 i smile, (i the hookah queen) and contentedly i drift,

i am going, i am going, i am gone.

just now my heart gave two great
and heaving beats
that shuddered my whole chest.
i know this is just a symptom
of the cardiac quirk i inherited from my mother
but it felt to me like some sort of physical closure.
for a moment after it happened
my chest didn't have that emptiness anymore.
my body is healing my nonbody.
that's what it felt like.
for a second, anyway.

we were sisters, weren't we?
i remember when we were young -
everything was easy then, wasn't it?
before your beauty bloomed and
my plainness stayed,
before the curve of your hips and the sparks of your smile,
set my mother's heart on fire.

we were sisters, weren't we?
when we used to kneel by the hearth for fun,
digging up buried treasure,
sifting through the ashes with our clean-girl hearts,
laughing.

that was before the bitterness choked our home.

we were sisters, weren't we?
you used to crawl under the covers with me,
whisper ghost stories and laugh at me when i got scared.
i reflected your prettiness then,
it shone on me like
the sun on a mirror,
my glass face unmemorable and making yours
all the more dazzling
(not that we knew it:
we were both beautiful,
before we knew any better)

we were sisters, weren't we?
i held your hand when my mother cut you with her words,
i stood up for you when she worked you, i did.
i never once raised a word when you would come to my room,
crying and
raving about her.
i held you when your missing for your own mother rose up sharp in your heart, and i
defended you when my mother spread words like thorns in the villages.

i never once envied you your beauty.

we were sisters, weren't we?
and when that prince came for you,
laughing and
pebbling our window with stones,
i helped you shimmy out into his arms.
i would clean the mud off your shoes when you would stumble back in,
right before the sun came up,
i would put you to bed and make you tea to warm the early-morning chill out of your rose-pink cheeks,
and i waited for you that night you didn't come back.

we were sisters, weren't we?

and you left us.

Boy,

Those girls who are breaking your heart,
oh, my darling - you don't know about them yet.
What a cruel
and vindictive bunch,
who will eat your kind heart out
and who will snap your fragile bones.

That family that stings your pride,
oh, my dear - they don't know about you yet.
Your pain, my love, hurts me in deep-down ways:
Your pain in your imperfection,
your insufficiencies,
your too-hard caring -
You are enough for me.
You are perfect to me,
and oh, my dear, I love you.
Your pain, my love, is the same as mine:
Your all-you-have is their not-good-enough,
but you are good enough for me,
and I am good enough for you.

We are two kind people in an unkind world,
two almost-there-trying in a too-fast whirl,
and I'll hold you up if you'll hold me.
Boy, you know you've got it,
and boy, I know I'll have it,
the sparkle in your eyes that means
(you'll be okay).

We could be okay together, you and I.

Boy, I think you're perfect
and I think the world revolves around you.
I think the sun shines out of your smile
and the stars live in your eyes,
I think the moon is in the soles of your Nike's.
Boy, I think you're something,
and boy, I think it's one thing,
that I simply can't afford to ignore.

-Girl

listen.
i haven't fallen out of love with you yet,
and i miss you all the time
and i want you so much i can't even make myself breathe.
but i am exhausted.
i am exhausted with not having you.
i am exhausted with the back-and-forth i've been having with my heart.
i am exhausted and i am done.
twenty four hours ago i was planning out something to say to you.
i thought i was going to sit down with you and tell you.
i was going to tell you,
"i want you to know
that wherever you are
and whoever you're with
there is someone
here
who loves you
and who thinks you are special beyond belief,
and who believes in everything that you are."
i was going to tell you,
"think about it."
i was going to tell you,
"i hope that you'll love me back, someday,"
i was going to tell you,
"i don't expect it to be
soon.
but it's important that you know."
that was how i felt twenty four hours ago.
now, though,
i feel angry and disenchanted
and i feel exhausted.
i realize, now
that if you and i were to be you and i again
i need to be stronger
and you need to be the person you're going to be,
because i love you limitlessly,
in ways that, even if i fall in love with someone else, will not go away,
but the person that you are now?
i cannot stand.
the part of your life where you can't love me,
it isn't over yet,
and i'm not willing to feel small
and insecure
and second-best
again.
when we're the people we're going to be,
that's when i'll love you.
that's when i'll try.
i'm not willing to deal with who you are right now.
right now you are a boy
who thinks he is larger than life,
who thinks that his cheap beer and his horrible friends make him alive,
who thinks he is above accountability,
above vulnerability,
above love.
right now you are in a post-high school haze,
and right now you are on top of the world.
and because i'm me and i can't help it i'll love you
and i'll think the things you do are forgivable
and i'll think the friends you keep are forgivable, too.
but because i'm me and i can help it i'll love other people, too
and i'll allow myself to be as free and as beautiful and as strong as i can be.
i'll allow myself to forget you a little bit and it will hurt, yes,
and i will fail, sometimes, yes,
but it will make me who i am going to be.
it will make me someone who is readier to love you
than the me who already has.
i will take a year.
i will leave the country,
i will live and drink and love,
i will smoke and laugh and embrace all of life that i can hold.
i will think i'm invincible,
i will write fearless stories and sing fearless songs,
i will write fierce poetry and make beautiful art.
and at the end of it all when i am where you are now,
when my life is ahead of me and i have learned more of myself,
when you have grown and lived
and when you have gotten college out of your system,
then i'll see.
i'll look at myself and i'll see if i do love you after all.
i'll look at myself and i'll know
that all the things i did didn't matter because they weren't with you,
or i'll know that i don't need you to live after all.
i will love you or i won't and i'll tell you either way.
corey, listen.
you changed my life,
and i've come to realize that i have a difficult time living without you.
but you made me small,
you made me afraid,
you made me weak.
i let you have all the power i had to give,
and you didn't mean to abuse it, i know.
you probably didn't even know
you had it.
i wasn't oblivious to loving you more,
to needing you more,
to expecting more of you.
i wasn't oblivious to your growing indifference,
but i think the ways we ended were wrong.
i think we have the potential to be more.
i think, sometimes, that our hearts are too much the same for us to be apart.
but i cannot want you anymore.
i want to learn, again,
to be confident, loud, fearless, and brave.
when i have relearned myself,
when you have changed,
when we are slightly different -
more mature,
more selfless,
more wise -
we will know.
when i have learned to love you without fear,
to open myself without expectation,
to trust things better,
we will know.
but i'm not going to try until then.
what i'm telling you is that even though you may not have known
that i was even holding on,
i'm letting you go now.
i'm releasing myself from you.
because i love you, ******* it,
i love you like you wouldn't believe.
but there are things about you that i cannot stand right now,
and i'm not willing to try.
you're an *******, corey,
and you're stubborn and self-centered and stupid,
and those are all things we have in common.
you're just a tool, i don't know how else to say it.
it's the least poetic thing i've ever put in a poem.
and your friends ****,
and frankly you ****,
and the things that have happened in the last twenty-four hours
make me disappointed and disgusted with you,
because i would like to think,
and i do think,
that you are so much more than any of that,
any of them,
and you are.
but you're not someone who acts like it, right now,
and that's okay,
but it keeps me from wanting to try.
not that you care,
not that you want me to try anyway,
not that you would probably even love me back, if you knew that i loved you.
listen.
i mean every single thing i've said here.
i've said it all,
i've let it out.
i'm taking a year for me,
for flings, for ****-ups, for whatever.
i want you to know that.
i want you to know that i still believe,
maybe naively,
that you and me could be more than what we were.
i want you to think about all of this sometimes.
i want you to keep reading my poems
and to read that letter i wrote you,
and to remember that you are missed, loved, and wanted,
but also to know that i am freeing myself.

twirling sweeping circle-strokes of a paintbrush
on a color-soaked canvas
and humming softly in the
quiet
of the room
and the
quiet
of the creating
and thinking as a dip into the
swirl of color on a rainbow pallet,
the point of the brush into a dab of
yellow-green and blue
red at the corners and a swirl of
purple
and drifting across
already paint-curled surface giving
life to the lifeless and
color
depth
meaning
to something simple
and so, so complex.
studying, softly, with
open-swirled mind
dizzied with the colors and the
unspoken and unspeakable
meanings they have and they hold
you.
sighing and shifting, glancing
from one painting to the next
to your own and
spreading colors like a waterstain
beautiful and unstoppable, this
madness
this
abandonment
this
knowing of the world in a point-tipped paintbrush
this
holding of the world in your paint-stained hands.

******* baby-voice-fake,
carrying around that ego of yours
(where'd you even get it?)
stringing your hair into
strands and
straggles,
painting your lips attention-***** red,
parading around those
scars on your arms -
******* try-too-hard-fake,
making noise to make noise,
words that aren't words and
thoughts that aren't yours,
i'm not hearing it.
smiling and then secretly
hateful and spreading
lies
(you were *****, you were molested,
you were exploited, you were robbed)
tip-toed on poser-high heels,
chopping your hair into stunted shortness
(a rat-nest red-chemical version
of mine)
you can *******.

under the pink lemonade sky i left you.
not really, because you left me first,
but i left your memory there.
in the summer twilight i left you.
i left you for vast skies and glorious people
and pink lemonade sunsets.
under the pink lemonade skies i left you,
and under the pink lemonade skies i ran head-on into myself.

"You know, what the most annoying thing is?"
Stacking box, after box, after box
in her empty-floored home.
"What?"
"Knowing how," stack, "lost," stack, "I'll be."
She drops to a box, face in hands. "******* it."
What do you say
To the widow of an adulterer,
To the crier of sorrows
you've never known?
"I'm sorry."
"******* it, you're sorry. Everyone's sorry."
What do you say to all the bitterness
of a woman stacking, stacking, stacking
The boxes of her new life?
I sit on the divan by the window. "What do you want
me to say?" I ask.
Naive.
"****, I don't know." Sighing. "Say you know
He really loved me
And that even though I'm just your pain-in-the-***
broken-hearted
and stupid older sister,
who's made too many mistakes to count,
and who's never ever been there when you need her
because she's too busy with her
piece-of-****
******* accident
of a husband,
you really love me too."
Looking up at me
with tear-swimming
mascara-ringed green eyes
under a black fringe
of artistic bangs.
"Of course I really love you." The automaton of my voice.
"You're my only sister."
Tears falling onto
white velvet wrists.
"I really miss him.
That *******."

If only
he hadn't been
the adulterer

With me.

the electrical current
started in the top of my skull,
   and poured itself down the back of my ears and the nape of my neck
         and curled into beaded sand that tumbles through my vertebrae
             down to the small of my back and under the soles of my feet. it's a friendly current,

and it makes me think of
   a boy with freckled shoulders, whose eyes i used to love.
it makes me think of how
both our noses wrinkle when we laugh
  and we like the same songs by the same band for different reasons.
it makes me remember why we're always laughing in the first place,
       and it makes me want him in a way that i'd forgotten how to want a person.

it's making me brave, this muscle-deep current.
it's making me remember different shoulders and different eyes than usual -
which is good, healthy, you know.

it's making me brave and it's making me love again. it's making me want to stand up to you. say all the things i haven't.
blame the herb, my skinny love, it was the herb, not me.

can't you see it?
  my pretty smile, my petty laugh?
i will scorn you for scorning me  -
               your half-hearted aggression!
i will still see magic
i will still see love
you will see nothing of that
   nothing of me.
my secrets
             so beautiful
                            and not for you.

I remember you, in the night last September.
It was cold, and you tasted
of the alochol we had illegally sipped
Smiling at each other over gem-rimmed bottles

I remember when we kissed, for the first time
That night in September
And it warmed me to my bones, and I could have stayed there
with you
forever

I remember your hands, last September
Touching the burning skin of my cheek, hooked in the belt loops
of my faded blue jeans.
I remember your eyes,
How they found the brightest star in that starry, starry sky,
And how your voice, whispered,
"That one's ours."
Your fingers fluttered at the hollows of my hips,
cold,
because you'd given me your jacket, and you
were freezing.

I remember you last September.
I knew you last September,
And I wish I had known myself.

I remember how it ended, when it ended,
That morning last September, so soon
after it began, "I've been thinking..."
And I remember, last September


hating you.

sorry you ****, babe -
probably because you're a lying,
thieving,
attention-seeking *****.
probably because you're an inconsiderate,
inconsistent,
ingenuine little *******.
sorry you had it all coming to you -
sorry everyone's forgotten about you -
sorry you're a miserable excuse for a human being.
sorry you slice up your arms and parade them around
and still no one cares.
sorry you'll stop at nothing for an inch of spotlight,
and still no one gives it to you.
sorry we all know about you now,
sorry you can't handle it,
sorry you had to run away like the
***** you are
because you burned all your friends along with your bridges.
sorry we caught on,
sorry we're not taking it,
sorry you're alone (so all alone).
sorry you can't handle all the
minor inconveniences in your life
with the grace everyone else does,
and sorry you lack the integrity to try.
sorry you have to pretend to be ****** up
(honestly, what in your life
is causing you pain?
is it the parents that love you,
or the friends you could still have?)
sorry you ****, babe -
and i'm sorry i don't give a ****.

i'm becoming cynical, jaded, and edgy
my words
rap-tap out of my mouth
sharper
and harsher than i mean them.
i worry that i'm becoming
the people i despise.
i worry that i'm a poser
and a fraud
and i worry that i've forgotten my own kindness.

hearts are strange things,
and they do tell lies
but this is the truth of mine:
it pulses, it breaks, and it heals;
crookedly,
but it does heal.
it is susceptible to almost anything
and hardened against nothing.

isn't there hope, after all?
my quick angry words betray
a deep tenderness that i fight for,
that i protect,
and i believe.
i believe in the instrinsic power of human beings.
i believe in magic,
that music is the most powerful thing in the world,
and that words can change
minds
can color
hearts.

i believe in the power of dreams,
and i believe that things are temporary,
that they are fragile,
that we must become oblivious to nothing.
i believe that people are becoming ignorant
and i believe that we are coming back from ignorance.
i believe that i am a remarkable
and i believe that i am painfully
insignificant.
i believe that at least 50% of poems
(maybe even this one)
say nothing at all,
and i believe that the other 50%
say the things we need most
to say.

*and i hope that i don't believe
for nothing.

something me-shaped with you-shaped and crab-legged and two-faced and kindly and fast-paced and sweetness and slow tastes perfection for you and for me and for worlds that could be in your smile.

You are a burning in my belly
You are a lilting in my thoughts
You are laughing joking singing
You are when my walls all drop
You are a flutter in my heart
You are dancing in my soul
You are a weakness in my limbs
You are all I care to know.
You are a sparkle in my eyes
You are a fire on my tongue
You are a dazzle to my smile
You are old, you are young.
You are the best to all my worst
You are a heat inside my head
You are an accidental smile
You are everything I am.
You are what I want to know
You are who I want to be
You are something nothing everything
You are you, we are we.
You are an almost-have-it wanting
You are a hesitation on my part
You are a can-I should-I would-I
You are a seizing at my heart.
You are a shy-eyed-glancing-laugh
You are a whispered three-word phrase
You are a wanting and a weakening
I am I, you are you.

this poem will be bitter,
the way i hate my tea to be.
it will be about all the ways i've let my father down and
    all the things they wish i was.
  it will be about every grade point i am away from perfect.
it will be about ******* my boyfriend in the backseat
it will be about drinking until i can barely walk
it will be about crying all my makeup off in a stranger's bathroom.
this poem will be bitter,
the way i hate my tea to be.
it will be about laughing over stupid ****
it will be about late-night confessions to my mother
it will be about my best friend and my favorite socks and my thousands of little things.
it will be about a boy who tastes like green tea and cigarettes.
it will be about all the things i don't ever say out loud and all the things i can't write down anymore because people find the things you write down and then you don't have anything for yourself.
  it will be about the time i made my stepmom cry
  it will be about the person i didn't think i'd be
  it will be about all the paintings i don't finish.
it will be the things i found out about my family at a too-young sort of age
it will be my three without-permission-piercings
it will be the poems (this one) that i'm afraid are too cliche
and it will be bitter,
the way i hate my tea to be.

it's not what it usually is.
     you're no more and no less tragic than anyone else.
     you do not need to be fixed.
     maybe you're a little ****** up, but that's the norm now anyways.
        
        (and I suspect there are things you don't tell me
               in terms of your home and your history
               just like there are things i don't tell you,
                 but everything comes out eventually.)

i guess it's just how you look at me
and how it seems like our souls are the same.
sometimes it really is that simple.
and it's weird to say
and it's a cliche, and it's stupid,
but i genuinely love the way you think
( plus
     you have this type of kindness
      that i really think most people have forgotten.
it's the kind where you look in people's eyes even if they're unpopular or weird
                 or a stranger
                   or an *******
                      or your girlfriend's ex boyfriend
                         and remember that you're both people)
and so I guess that's why,
or at least that's part of why.

by the way, this poem is about why i like you
                    and maybe love you,
               but we don't say that yet.

just in case you didn't get it.

nothing bothers me more than people who say they have found god.
no one has found god.
life is not about finding god.
"GOD" is intangible and not something we can grasp,
but we pretend to.
people put quotes around his words
and then put those words in his mouth
they string ideas of her into beads and crosses -
what exactly are  you clinging to?
people don't know.
we are too small
and we are not wise enough.
god is the whole universe.
god is nothing.
god is a tree, a bird, a thought.
god is a little boy with a piece of candy stuck in his hair,
an artist in a garret,
a dog on a cushion,
a girl in an alley.
i don't believe that god has abandoned the church.
i believe that the church has abandoned god.
i don't believe in my catholic roots.
i don't believe in christianity.
i don't believe in buddhism.
i don't believe in islam.
i don't believe the bible.
i don't believe the priests, the shamans, the medicine men.
i don't believe the trappings we place around god
(our weak ideas of her,
our sorry attempts to define him).
i believe that god is people
god is rain, god is the sun
god is the night air
god is the words on paper
god is the paint on canvas
god is creating, god is being, god is gone.
god is here, now, and everywhere
and i only call her god because i lack another name for him.
it has no name.
i understand this
or i think i do.
god knows me intrinsically
or not at all.
god loves infinitely and sees to the depths of humanity
or else god is old, decrepit, and alone
curled in a corner of the world
trying to shut out the mayhem of his earth
(what have i done?).
god cringes at our killings
rejoices in our births,
or is vengeful, red, and full of war and death.
god is spring, summer, and fall.
he is the snow in winter, she is the birdsong
at my window.
she is multitudes and she is one
wildly insignificant
and all-knowing being.
she is the creator, the destroyer, the lover.
she is nature, she is earth,
she is people,
she is the industry, the tapestry, the travesty.
she is love, she is me.
she is loss, she is you.
she is life, she is them.
and i love her,
as anyone loves her -
if you can love an energy,
an idea,
the ungraspable concept that a grain of sand
is the same as the greatest mountain in the world.


but i don't presume
to know her.

I remember your tousle-haired bright-eyed breathlessness
in the night over the summer.
We were playing some stupid game with our little brothers
to make them happy, and because one of them didn't know how to shut up
You knew just how crazy I was about you.
That night over the summer,
you smiled at me, more shyly
and more accidentally
than a friend.

The last time I saw you
in the dying summer light,
of my house.
Our families watched us,
watched me,
and it ended up (probably,
not on accident), just us two alone
in my basement.
I don't even remember what we talked about
and I bet you don't either.
I remember when you were leaving, and that look in your eyes
("That boy," my dad told me after you had gone, "wanted to hug you.")
and that I was too afraid to even get up to say goodbye,
Because I knew if I got too close to you
I would probably explode
(you, my dear, will have
your work cut out for you).

The truth is, my pretty boy, I am pining.
I am going over all the blond, flirty girls you could be seeing
who aren't me.
I am thinking over that look in your eyes, and listening to our mothers
talk on the phone
about how shy you are, (but not with me)
and the truth is, my pretty-eyed golden-curled boy, I adore you
and I am thinking that the next time I see you
I'm probably just going
To kiss that half-scared look out of your eyes,
because, my pretty boy,
I am sixteen beautiful years old,
And in December you will be too,
And we sure aren't getting
any younger.

i built an ice castle around my heart -
it's hard to break, and even harder to melt
so i thought it would be perfect.
i put a sentinel outside the door
i gave him your face
and how your hands feel.
there's no way
you're getting in.

i built an ice castle around my heart -
it's cold, but it's still pretty
it appeases my vanity
and inside my blood gives eskimo kisses to strangers.

i built an ice castle around my heart -
and you laid the first brick,
so don't be surprised when i'm cold to you
when my eyes are frosty
and my words are short and sharp as shards of ice,
because you put my heart in an ice castle,
and it's sure as hell not melting

for you.

no one told them it was the place
that we watched the water go by -
sat, for hours,
and watched the water go by.

nobody said it was the spot where i started to move on from the boy i loved
and where you stopped caring what your father thinks.

it's the spot where we sat in the roots of trees
and smoothed sand off of purple river stones.
it's the spot where the old lumber mill had been decaying,
and where the kids would go when they were too old for the playground.
it was where the stray dogs poked around in the rubble and the lumber scraps
and where the stray cats fought and made love.

no one told them it was where we sat
and planned out our lives together -
a pair of girls with too-long legs and our hair askew
whose clothes were covered in paint
and whose hands where used to climbing the tree behind the bakery.
no one told them it was our spot,
our best-friend soul-speaking spot.
nobody said that it was spots like these
that hold the heart of our little town,
our artistic-afterthought town
with its peeling-paint coffee shops and friendly passersby.

they built concrete trees over our spot on the river,
an ugly corporate jungle.
they put grey bricks in the sand and shoveled away the purple river stones
and dug up the roots of our trees,
and now we'll have nowhere to watch the water tumble by.

no one told them it was the spot, our spot,
and no one will remember it but us.

what poetry is:
a cacophony of tangled-up images
and slashed-to-the-bone words.
a waterfall of bitterness and
passion and
(words, just words).
a jumble of unorthodox punctuation,
and spacing,
and spelling,
a painting with verses of rainbow-colored years.
foggy-eyed venting,
bitter-mouthed shouting,
soft-hearted pleas
to the people
(hearts and love).
not-quite sentences,
half-finished ideas,
cliches and brutal originalities,
shocking in their genuine
and raw
and profoundly inspired power
(things we didn't know we were capable of).
cravings and achings and wantings and knowings and
(words, just words).
so won't you read between the lines?
it's all so much simpler



than it seems.

there's a pimple on my left cheekbone
and one of my brows is plucked
a little thinner than the other.
the only makeup on my face
is the black on my eyelashes
my eyes
burst
green.
my mouth (my rosebud mouth, my mother
smiles) like a slightly opened
slightly troubled
bow.
my brow is furrowed
my eyes are searching
one of my ring-and-bracelet hands
holds back my hair  (short)
and my elbow
rests.
i look at myself,
head-tilting, quick-sketching
the curves of my features
in a single line of ultra-fine Sharpie.

what you see is what you get.

my eyes frown into themselves
through the mirror.
i am long
i am lanky
i am lovely.
i am a little lost
and very found
i am angsty
i am achey
i am laughing
i am me -
if you only look at yourself for a second
you tend to miss
how beautiful you are.
it isn't my vanity.
it's the universal, and most unbelieved
truth.

i brush back my hair
and i puff my cheeks out.
i sigh, and i look at myself
in the cheap mirrors set out
on the art-room tables.
"not bad," i say to the single line of ultra-fine Sharpie-version of my face.
and it isn't.
even though
i left out the pimple.

fingers like stardust and lips like moonlight,
she smiles.
shapes traced across the hollows of hips and his whispered words,
and the rocking of the ship will surely make me sick.
the light spilling from your smiles and the stars that spark from your eyes
catch stories
like sunlight
on the walls.

we can't speak now without arguing
because we are both too stubborn,
too self-righteous,
and too smart to back down from each other.
together we are a trainwreck.
we don't work,
we are polar and dangerous.
we **** each other off
and it isn't even malicious.
it's just our wiring, our too-similar similarities
and our too-wide differences.
it hurts
and it's certainly worse than the alternative.

not very long ago i thought i was going to say to you,
"i love you."
i thought i would say,
"i want you,
and i hope you want me too,"
and i thought that maybe it was what i wanted.
but where has the innocence gone,
and where is the love?
and when did i stop needing you,
and more importantly when did i start again?
and then not very long ago
i was filled with the kind of anger and disgust
i'd forgotten i could feel for you.
it took the words and the breath right out of me.
i'd forgotten that part of loving you,
and all at once i remembered again.
it took the want and the respect right out of me
and it filled me with the deepest sadness.
a moment of short-sighted drunkenness,
it's not what i should remember about you.
it shouldn't consume the thousands of goodnesses i see in you
but it does.
a few hours ago i was in a place we shared once
and i ached for you so badly
and now, again, i am hollow.
you fill me up and you hollow me out
and i forgot that wanting you is exhausting,
but i remember now
and now, again, i am lost.
and i hope you ******* read this and i hope it ****** you off
and i hope it makes you think i'm immature or reactionary or naive
and i hope it makes you indignant or dismissive
and i hope you don't give a ****.
jesus, i hope it makes you think all sorts of terrible things about me,
i really do.
i hope it makes you think i'm pathetic,
i hope you think it's unfair
because you're **** right, i hold you accountable,
because you're better than all of them put together
and you act like it one and a half times out of ten.
you disappoint me as often as not, now.
isn't that terrible?
i used to think the sun rose on you,
i used to think it set on you,
i used to think you were everything in between.
not very long ago i was going to tell you.
i was going to sit you down and say it all to you
i was going to speak until i'd done everything i could do,
but now
i'd really rather not even look at you.
maybe i'll love you again
and i will again allow myself to be filled by you,
to feel all the things in the world for you,
to burst with love and with pain,
but tonight you hollowed me.
you left me shocked and sick and numb tonight,
angry and disgusted.
tonight you exhausted all the light i put to you,
you burned all the love,
burned it and scattered the ashes,
and you saved me from putting it back together again.
it's over now.