Vulnerability is crying in public on the bus ride home,
trying desperately to avoid the wandering eyes
only to end up sitting beside a fellow apartment tenant.
Vulnerability is crying hard in front of a (stranger),
only to see them again.
-- that uncontrollable nakedness
Vulnerability is getting your rose-tinted glasses forcefully ripped off your face, exposed,
for what we truly are:
-- human

                                   *-lf-

she clutches her body
a frayed rag
and she remembers his
ragweed teeth
the bobbles in his ears-
skin stretching like fabric on a loom.
there are no tears anymore
    just a quiet knowing
like the sad eyes of a cow
off to the slaughter house
and carcasses hang in strips
   a ****** mouth
torn open in a grin
and the hard glinting metal of a knife flaying open skin.
her skin,
her legs like wishbones,
cracking apart,
thrusted in obtuse angles
   a conveyor belt life of sludge
and consumption

i just wanted to  pick your bones
white daisies in a field
and weave them together
a halo to float over my head
so wherever i'd go a part of you hung in the air
a soft constant breeze.

and maybe you'll let me.
maybe you'll string your veins like lights to light my journey
when the cobbled streets are black
and your back in rink-a-**** town
and i'm off getting my wings.

you like to breath air into my dreams,
lifting my balloons, and even though  you'll be here in this gray
town you never
made me feel sorry.

sorry that i've got to leave.
and maybe you'll give me your hands too,

so when it's colder than a winter month, i can wrap my fingers in them
and i'll be warm on the inside
too

promise me,
you said,
promise you'll be happy*
and I did,
and I promised to love you
and to breathe without you
and whatever else you needed
to hear
and I kept my promises, I did,
but my god, if missing you
could be measured in tears
I could fill
and refill
every ocean.

when i was a kid, i pretended i could
breathe underwater so that if i was
ever caught in a wave for too long
i wouldn't panic- but now my hands are
shaking and i can feel my lungs getting tight
and my ear drums are starting to pound, and
these ceilings are
crushing
me.

antique grit
he screamed at her in the passenger
seat
slammed the doors
four wheel drive
four fist punches
floral bruises
blooming on skin
color like milk bottles when they're shaken
in white gloved hands,
buttons on wrists.
church pamphlets
printed with jesus love
the man in the jeep screamed
through his lungs
and religion was scheduled on his sundays;
but today wasn't holy
  and abuse looked nice on her oil painted skin

your love is too tainted
[by the memory of a boy
who will never be more
than a memory]
to give anybody else.

i don't need photos to
remember you;
you are burned
onto my
heart