there is blood in the streets
and dripping from the slick soles of shoes
of the smiling old men
who sell souls and buy lunch,
who never see and who
never stop smiling.

there is blood in the streets
and flaking like rust from the walls
of the banks and the prisons,
staining the palms
of the rich and the ruthless.

there is blood in the streets,
a graveyard full of my friends
and a holy battlefield
where kids with bandanas and baseball bats
fight for their lives and for those
whose guts stain the whole city red.

there is blood in the streets,
and the rich white men build themselves bridges
so far above the red running river
that they can call this peace.

there is blood in the streets,
but all you can see is a trash can on fire
and the scattered shards of shattered glass.

i was afraid i would do something crazy,
like shoot myself in the head
or call you
(which is sort of the same thing
only slower)

so i drove to the mountains
and climbed barefoot to the top
and watched the sunset
with my feet in the dirt.

you left flowers on my counter
in a cup.
wildflowers. like daisies,
but with thicker roots
and heartier stems.
beautiful and built to thrive.

you left flowers on my counter,
told me you loved me,
and left me sleepy and hopeful
and standing in the doorway.
you did not stop to check the lock.
i think you are the bravest person
i have ever met.

you are a thunderstorm.  an earthquake.  a volcano.  you could rip a ******’s throat out with your teeth.

you are the hot and heaving forest
sliced with sticky shimmery things,
(like bat-heads and beetlewings),
the slushing gushing river with its
tripping tumbling foam,
teeming with salmon headed
upstream to spawn.

your hand in mine is sometimes
the only thing keeping
my head above water,
but if my grief is ever heavier
than you can hold,
i forgive you in advance
for letting go.

georgia summers are so heavy and hot
that breathing is a chore,
which is something i never remember until fall.
four months of bleached bones and choking on gravel
spit me gasping and exhausted into every mid-september,
when the sudden lightness in the air is so hard to trust
that i flood my own lungs
and set fires in my throat because
i don't know how to live
when things are easy.

it has been one hundred and ninety six weeks
since the last time i used ****** and
one hundred and thirty days since my last cigarette and
twelve hours since my last drink.
it has been fifty seven months since i last kissed you,
but when i think about relapse,
all i can taste is your tongue.
i told you i never loved you
half as much as i loved drugs, but
you've been dead almost five years
and i'm still writing eulogies.
i don't even know if i miss you.
maybe mourning is just easier to swallow
than the truth,
that i have felt this way ever since i can remember,
that maybe i have never been able to breathe
because maybe i was not built to last.

so far i've killed every plant i've ever grown,
but the basil and green onions i planted this summer are still thriving
somehow.
i meant to abandon them when i moved,
but my roommate brought them in amongst my things and
in my last run to pick up odds and ends,
i put them in my car.
i still don't know why.
i haven't watered those plants in weeks but
i did bring them outside and it has rained enough this month
that somehow they're still growing,
some sort of proof that something living
can survive being mine.
maybe so can i.
maybe if i **** up all the sunlight i can find
and fight for every scrap of survival,
drink up all the water i can grab to sustain me through the dry days,
maybe i can also be okay.
maybe i can thrive.

i have not yet learned how to want to live,
but i am still alive,
and i guess that means
there's time.

there is some great glowing thing buried
somewhere in my skin and
nothing in the world scares me half as much.
when you ask about fear, i'll mention
heights and strange men and
shadow-things,
but never the wildness in my bones
or the poison in my veins or
the slow oozing dark that's running
down the rivets in my brain.
some things are too sharp and slippery
to name.

i never meant to hurt you, but my love was
beastly and burning and
maybe you were scorched beyond repair.
i tangled my fingers in the
fibrous network of your nerves
and carved secrets into your spine.
i did not know how to love gently.
i ****** your breath into my lungs,
briny and saline and
wild like the ocean,
and now i can't breathe but
i can still taste you there.

the inky, fractured spirit in my skull
is stronger than my best intentions and
stronger than the love with which
you tried so desperately to drown it.
all the broken things in me
were more than we could fix.

i'm sorry i stopped calling.
you deserved better.