there are some men i should no longer kiss
i know this in the deep and thirsty pit of my body.
in the arch my back creates when they are close.
in the choruses of anticipation my entire body
hums out as their tongues meet mine.

these men,
i should really keep from.
one in particular,
he leaves such hunger on my body.
he leaves his name where he kisses my cheeks,
his presence inbetween my fingers long after he has gone.

you will come home to me,
safely.

*sunday july 20th, 2:00 a.m.

i dream you die in a car crash
your body is mangled and bloodied and i'm screaming
this loss is quantified by this massive translucent black space that occupies my field of dream-vision
i cry unwilling to believe it

and then you call me
and i am flooded with this feeling of cosmic truth,
that if something were to happen to you i would have felt it

you break up with me over the phone for a second time
but while you're doing it i can see you while i hear you
and you're saying to me: i love you, i love you, i love you

your family keeps on having parties to celebrate your recovery
and my family goes so i go too
and i sit at your bedside and talk to you

and i am always overwhelmed seeing you
remembering you
i look at your basement
and there are catalogues of all the girls who weren't me

you are bruised and scratched and ****** and stitched
and your hair is longer and wavy and i close my eyes against you

when you're strong enough you leave
and in my dreams i move on to someone stronger and taller
knowing already he and i do not work out

i tell my dad about this over coffee
and he says there is a part of me that thinks you're divine

always
always

do not muse yourself with ideas that i no longer think of you
do not muse yourself with ideas that i do
the boys i kiss don't taste like you,
the boys i kiss don't feel you
the boys i kiss do not take me upstairs

i realize i spend time staring at one who mimics you
only sightly though,
only barely

do not dream that this is harder on me than you
nor that this is harder on you than me
i know i am an absence in your bed,
at your dinner table,
in the curve of your body when you lie on your side

do not worry, i am not dreaming of you
do not worry, i am dreaming of you

i do not want you,
i will want you.

november.12.2013
*1:42 P.M.

in my dreams i blend the two of you together.
you share the same skin tone already,
almost the same hair colour.
but one pair of eyes
gives way to the colour of the other.
i look into them and think warmth, safety, kindness.
but they still hold the other's alertness, the same beam.

one's body falls into the other's gait.
strong, broad, muscled with soft force
now carried with confidence and ego
that melts my knees.

laughs come together as something
like a grab at my chest, or waist,
or a hand behind my ear, or at the back of my neck.
the thought of it forces me to lick my lips.
hands remain in their already similar manner.
voices boil down to love potion.
lips to plushy incantation.
stretch marks, scars,
and treasure trails begin
to double up.

chest hair sprouts where
it once wasn't.

part of me is disgusted by my dreaming
of a crock *** boy that once was two.
but another part knows
neither of them wants me wholly
either.

*friday/january 17/2014/12:16 A.M.

i remember i loved you so much
that i left a bowl of dry ingredients for brownies
stranded in the kitchen when you asked me
to come over.

and when you came home from toronto
and i got off of my third or fourth shift
at my first job
i left early and i ran to your house.

and for your 17th birthday (before i acquired
my majestic cupcake gig)
i spent all my babysitting money on
a worn sweater with the gucci label screened
onto it.
i had planned this months before we even dated,
i remember thinking we were going to be so close
that it would warrant me getting you a present.
i had only kissed you once and had only spoken to you
for two months.

and i still remember what i wore the first time
we hung out (rose gold crop sweater, black jeans, brown boots)
and what i wore the first time we kissed (tights, black romper, braided belt, earrings that kept falling out)
and what i wore when we broke up (flats, black high waisted skater skirt, weird 90s crop bustier)
and what i wore when i saw you for the first time afterwards (light wash jeans, grey knit top, pink sparrys)
and what i wore when we had our end of the line fight (black jeans, purple halter top)
the times i saw you after weren't overly notable, you reached out and i recoiled. you noogied me and i didn't let my friends make fun of you.
and then you asked me to start coming over again (light blue jeans, navy turtleneck)

i'm not sure what this poem was ever supposed to be.
i wish i remembered what i wore the night you told me
that you missed me.
but since you've been back, or i've been back, or we've been back
i only remember what it is to be with you.

we'll keep growing.

*11:18 P.M. June/22/2014

Gemini,
I am always trying to understand you.
I am always trying to capture your shadow self in action,
Hold it in my hands, understand all of him.
You are the book I am always reading,
You are always on my mind,
You are always on my mind.

Gemini,
Love and fear.
To belong, to matter,
To be misplaced, to be forgotten.
Your eyes are like two different oceans.
One smooth and love.
One choppy and rock.
Both are hungry,
Both scared,
Both not worked up about much of anything.

Gemini,
I want to light you inside.
I want to crawl into all parts of you
And make you feel more than what appears.

Gemini,
I want to love you.
I want to love you as moss loves rocks.
And trees love time.
And cherry blossoms love spring.
And clocks love seconds.
I want to love you as lilies love pads,
As suns love moons,
As nights love days.
I want to love you as houses love homes.
As blood loves veins,
As hearts love brains.

Gemini, I want to love you.

Gemini,
There is nothing more.
There is nothing more.
One day, these poems will make me cry.

Gemini,
I see you as no one else does.

Gemini,
With me, you can be whole.
You can be both.

Gemini,
I want to love you,
I do,
It is a sick thing.

Gemini,
There is nothing like you.
You are all there is.

Gemini,
I already love you.

She needs him more.
She has never needed someone.
It scares her to feel herself functioning off of someone else.
She wonders if he loves her.
Her mother tells her that they need to love her more.

More than what?
More than you love them.

His eyes write love letters inside her body,
His hands smooth all creases,
All lines.

When he kisses her she feels like she'll never stop.
When he asks her to stay,
When he holds her in his bed,
She feels like she'll never leave.

She closes her eyes against his shoulder
And she cries because she believes that
She would never find him.

He smells like home and old books.
Like warmth and dust.
Like he had been waiting so long.

maybe this is better than you always
being a part of me.
maybe this is better than that.
maybe it is better to learn to grow into you.
to allow you to grow me.
and maybe this is better than some sort of pain.
to come to you,
knowing me as mine
knowing me as existing always with myself:
always being a part of me, always being in my blood,
always being in my arms, in my eyes,
in my history, bloodied through the ages,
i come to myself.
i come from myself to you.
this is different, this i have not said before.

*tuesday, march 17, 2015.

my boyfriend smokes cigarettes
but he's stopping
and when we lie together in bed
its with bodies that mingle together
anxieties and love, fears, want, touches, love.
anxiety pulls at our covers and yanks
my ankles away from him
she hushes her voice as she crawls up my legs
so as not to wake him
and depression slips under my skin
and grabs hold of my hips
distance tells me that i am cold and he
picks me up by my arms
and these things carry me away from me
and him.

i am loving you,
i am sorry for when i am gone.
(i am distant in a nauseas way; i love you; i love you; i love you)
i will always hold you when we wake up.

i am sad and i would do this next to no one else but you.

*june 15 2015

i feel both self destructive and self saving
i want to hide myself in my room,
keep my personality buzzing between my two dimples.
only for myself, only for myself.

i want to take up the men who've asked me
for drinks, or for my time, up on their offers
i want to go and be politely disinterested
i want to cleave myself from my bones
and act like someone who does not live
inside this body, someone you won't recognize

but mostly, more than anything at all,
i want to give everything i have to you.
this is the pain i feel the very most:
i still want to give all of this to you.

and so, i give it to no one.

*october.28.2014 8:41 A.M.

i don't want this to have taught me the ways
and reasons as to why i should grow cold
if anything, i want to look at this cavernous thing
inside of me that you left behind and think:
i know how to love. i know how to love so much.

and for you, it was not enough.
or it was too much.
i'm not sure.
but i allowed myself to see myself
through loving you
and no i don't think thats unhealthy
i have learned about the love that lies in me
i know that it will pick itself up,
brush off all this disappointment,
and twice tasted hurt
and achey remembrances
and say to itself, "you are so good,
your love is so good."  

*monday 10:19 p.m. november.3.2014

i think sometimes that i may have
inherited my mothers indifference to friendship.
to deep, lasting, real friendship.
i get tired like her,
effort becoming like clay feet.
it's not for lack of love, for lack of fascination,
and appreciation, and genuine adoration.
but it holds me down sometimes like steel sky

i love you all, i do.
but fights make me nauseas and running is easier.
i will apologize and grovel and listen and take blame.
but if after all that everything is still of a half packed house,
i will take the boxes that are mine.

*thursday/10:41 P.M./august.21/2014

more than ever i am in conversation
with the nymphs that live in my heart.
one is tapping her foot against
the fleshy underside of me.
her mirror twin is picking at her
cuticles, demanding touch,
demanding pulling at hair
demanding deep, slow kisses.

but both know neither
wants to be kissed
or touched
without meaning anymore.

i no longer want to be had,
i want to be loved.

*january/30/2014/4:38 P.M.

i have a dream about you
and wake up and think "i never want to be with you again"

the disappointment is so visceral that i feel it in my waking skin
in my heart like some heavy dream-weight
what weighs more a pound of feathers
or a pound of bricks?

you say bricks and i laugh out loud

i call you in a gift shop
running my thumbs through animal key chains searching for your name

i tell strangers that you're together again
i tell strangers that you are disappointing me again

*oct282016

our friend found a painting of a naked guy
riding a horse that looked exactly like you.
and this spitting image made me think of
the different lives that you lived before you
found me in mine.
i need to believe that we have lived before this one,
that we'll continue to live after this one.
i need to know that the olive in your skin
is built up sun from the first time you stepped outside
from every life before this one.
that your eyes got progressively more blue from
every time you watched the sea.
and your stretch marks on your back remind me of lashings
and i hope that you never suffered before this
and that you will never suffer after this.
your crooked bottom teeth remind me of
fallen empires and crumbling ruins.
i think of you in the 1800s,
your taste for caramel pulling your
perfect teeth side to side.
when i look at you i cannot believe
that you made it to me at all.

11:43 P.M.
*Wednesday/July 9/2014

"if my legs were longer,
they might carry us further"

my legs are the longest part of my body,
you described me as being high waisted
i carried us for as long as we could
for as long as i could shoulder the burden
of your not understanding my hurt parts
of the apple you held in your palm,
bruises everywhere, but not enough

you held something else, something more bruised
when you should have held me

when you held her feelings you dropped mine
you wanted your cake,
you wanted me to be something different?

you idiot
you gave me love but expended a tailored version of that love
to someone who wasn't me, at cost to my allotment
you loved me, you loved me
but it wasn't my mess to carry or burden
there are better things for me

feb292016

i crave intimacy
and love
like my bones don't have enough
like my system doesn't get enough
can i grow this within my body?
is there a way i can provide this myself?

when i hold my own hand i recognize it
and when i brush my own hair i care for myself
but there is something i want more than my own love

can i grow this myself? can i provide it in it's hungry way?

march42016

i think i forgot the sacred of my name
until you said it out loud, in full time over
and time over
you say to me life is coming
life comes
i think i forgot the bloom of my name
i think i heard it as release
i think i heard it as love
come on love
tell me my name

they should call me pleutienne
"because you love the rain"

*april 9, 2015

Hazel. Hand in my hand, falling from great heights. My skin, my salvation. Hay-zelle. More a way of breathing than a way to pronounce ones name. Hay. Zelle.
He was H, just H on weekends. Haze in his business, teenagers calling on him to supply them with a haze of their own. He was ****** to his followers, 'whom God strengthens.'. But in my hands, he was always Hazel.
Was there someone before him? No. In fact, had there been previous exposure to one of his caste there would may have been no Hazel at all. Like muddled eyes his name refers to was he. An ocean inside of the mudslide in me. You can always count on the broken-hearted for a fistful of metaphors and similes that make nothing of themselves to you.
Souls and bodies, the ones that have chosen an orbit in the universe of me, this is what I loved like Hades to Persephone. Look at this sole pomegranate seed.

i drink a lot of orange juice.
and i mean a lot.
enough to make people think i have scurvy.

and i cook in crop tops and
paint stained sweatpants.

i recite "scars" by rudy francisco in my shower
and i cry to "if you ever did believe"
by stevie nicks often enough.

what i'm trying to say is that i am
moulding a world where you don't
physically inhabit any part of it.

"there is nothing new except what has been forgotten"

*november.25.2014 8:44 p.m.

JUST GET OUT OF MY HEAD AND MY LIFE AND
WHATEVER ******* HIDDEN PLACE YOU LIVE IN INSIDE ME

But don't go
And don't stop talking
And don't leave me
Just stay with me don't stay no stay

11:54 A.M.
*October.30.2013

i can remember your hands on my body
and feel entirely on fire
and i can remember the softness
of lying in your arms
and my entire heart softens with sadness

i can miss you with such strength
i can miss you with such pain
i can acknowledge inside of me i love you

but i can remember two weeks
and when you didn't hold me
and your sidestepping my anger and me as well

i am in love with who was mine.
i did trust you not to make yourself
to me someone who i would not
think to be with.
(this is selfish i know. i expected to stay unhurt,
i expected to recognize you in all your forms;
you showed me one i did not know you occupied)

i stay with my thumb
running across the features of your face,
loving you as you were mine.

i love you goodbye and tell you
that i will try to understand,
now, when you are not mine.

*sunday, november.16.2014, 6:03 P.M.

Persephone is crying in the Underworld
In rooms of pomegranates
And dark violet blooms
In places created to give her what Hades
believed he couldn't
“He walks as if he believes himself Death,”
She thinks
“He watches his reflection like Hera watches Zeus;
disgusted.
Always looking for some former glory.”
But the 3 Fates are his alone
How did he not see her coming?
She cries because she loves him
And he doesn't know how to love himself
She hands him pomegranate
And bloom
She shows him every mirror in her room
“How can you not love what is only an extension of me?”

The Gods wanted to think she did not love him
They found this easier to believe.

i smell your sweater and tell myself i don't love you
and i rub my fingers through your hair and allot
days to wonder if i really want you or not.
and now that i wear my glasses or my contacts
i can finally see the way that you look at me.

we have done things in such a way
that if you leave, or if i do,
somedays you and i will wake up
with each others cheeks underneath our palms.
or my legs between yours,
or teeth in each other's necks.

may.4.2014
*10:10 p.m.

In my dreams you are always there.
Your fingers are in my mouth,
Your hand down my back,
Scratching slower and slower.
I can only hear you move and breathe and touch.
You are all I see.
Slow and slow and slow.
Your skin and your eyes and your mouth.
I don't even know how to write about all that you are.

You are so beautiful I don't know what to do.
You are so beautiful.

your name still grabs me in places
and lunges at me with heavy surprise
because i am always unprepared for it's
presence when i'm not the one who's said it.

it comes at me,
like a deep, heavy incantation
it brings my guts to their knees
like a smokey hex,
it tells me something untrue.

your name has meant something for so long.
it's presence weaved through two others
becoming real in your body.
no one will wield it's magic like you.

i often wonder what it means that
i had to know two others with your name
was i always looking for you?

i will regard it like something quiet,
in my heart something of sacred chant.
i will remember what it was like
to know that you held it best.

strength of spear,
somedays i forget the reality of your distance
and how close you were
somedays both things make me want to throw up
you are not here.

*sunday, november 2 2014, 8:42 a.m./8:21 p.m.

i mean his eyes they hold light in different ways
they let in light in different time,
they see light in different lights.
and i mean when he looks at me
it's as if he's seeing two different things;
he lets me in in two different ways.
and when he holds me it makes me feel calm
like the waves of his two differently dilated pupils
keep me rocking back and forth between the
tides he swells up around me
to pull me into him.

*monday, march 16th 2015.

it is of the utmost importance that i stay i.
just like that poet said,
losing you does not feel like crushing a light bulb in my hand
more like slowly, but consistently, tugging out the glass.
i pray there are no shards here,
no glassy dust left underneath my fingernails.
i could still cry about you when i allow myself to mourn you still.

when i think of you my body shudders;
remembering loving,

remembering being unloved.

*october.5.2013

vicious.
invincible oath (such *******)
victorious, we made it out different than the others
integral parts of your life lost so easily between essays and a soft mouth
even when your phone rings first
no i have to work
no go on without me
even i can't understand all this; a tide rises inside me

*march 12 2014/12:10 A.M.

My mother coloured your hair wet sand. My Nonno questioned me on your being, what colour your eyes are, your hair; he wants to meet you. One of the most important men in my life wants to sit with you and confound you with his Italian accent. He will likely offer you wine, ask you to come see the garden, take part in tasks my Oma has assigned, tell you about all the times we've broken his hammock, look at all the agates he and her have collected, he will tell you of me as a child, what I become in his embraces and through his songs. My Oma will talk to you sweetly, she will probably ask you about religion, I will not try to shield you of this, you could laugh, it would be alright. She will ask you about me, what are your favourite parts, what are your favourite parts. She will ask about what wonder you found in me; she will offer you blueberry pancakes, fried ham, maple syrup. You wonder so often why I told my parents, why my whole family knows of your existence. It is solely because you matter to me; because the more time I spend with you the more you become a part of me. And if I am to grow into another person, it is pertinent they see and know who it is I am growing to. Just as sitting with you and your brother in your basement is something to you as is my family seeing and knowing you. I want them to know that you are an ocean, wet sand and eyes like sea. There is nothing like you. The scent of you like sun and warmth and something drunken in. I wish I could swallow stacks of your picture just to keep you close to me only for a little while longer. There is so much of you that I want only for me.

i think about how my fist is the size of my heart
and i let you hold my hand a lot
i fold you around me so you can hold me
and a whales heart is the size of a car
and i can fit inside one
and we could fit inside one.

i mean you are capable of holding my fist in your one hand.
i mean you can nearly hold my whole rib cage in your two hands.
i can fit in you.
you pick me up underneath my underarms sometimes
and i think i'm comfortable when you do,
when i let you do that.

*friday, april 3, 2015

i am sorry for having villainized you.
let me say this first:
i am so sorry for the pain i caused you.

i am also sorry for the grit
and rough
and mess you saw in
my skin. i am sorry
that i let it matter to me
that you saw these things.
i am sorry that i let you
make me feel like the
skin that i was writhing in,
that i was trying on
and tailoring (am still
tailoring) to fit me correctly
was somehow *****, somehow
not so clean. somehow covered in
the hands of too many boys
who made me unpure.
who you believed
somehow stole my
virtue with their kiss.
(like they would be so powerful
as to **** it from my lips)
i am sorry that you believed
that this caused such a gaping
space between us that we could
no longer lie next to each other.

the truth is,
i miss you somedays.

it makes me ache to know
that you missed my first
love. you missed his smile
and his stupid decisions,
and the effect he had on me.
you missed the way he brought
my mind to a lull.
my whole body to a
present moment.
you missed the disappointment,
the pain, the deep and crushing
heartbreak.
you missed the day he said goodbye.
you missed me picking up
the parts of myself i didn't
know existed in such a way
that they could fall apart.

i had seen you through that all
and you will only know of mine
through what i will tell you.

i am sorry to have hurt you.
to have lost you.
i was shedding skin and so were you.

*january/27/2014/12:23 A.M.

i should feel worse
i know this
i should feel sadness like heartbreak
like heavy pain
like deeply sewn aches
and hurt
and withdrawal

maybe i do (i know that i do)
i know i am sad, disappointed, hurt, upset, annoyed,
angry
i can't believe the love i gave you (you gave me too)
but you forgot it was important
and lucky
you forgot that my feelings of love might not mean much
to me
that they might not matter at all in the face of such helpless talking
it's not enough to love someone and do them wrong
it's not enough to keep me this way, like this
trapped in what you feel for something else and what you don't feel for me

i don't want to see you
i don't want to talk to you
i don't want to hear from you
about you
care about you
i don't want to think about you
i am love and magic i am love and magic

march62016

i say out loud, for the first time, that we will not be getting back together
and it's such an exciting feeling
it tastes so sour and scary and sweet

you will not be coming back
i don't even know if it matters to you
but you will not be coming back to me
and its okay it is completely okay

sometimes i will think so fondly of the love i had for you
and what you gave me too
and my unrelenting pouring endless infinite soft blubbering
like champagne or something as decadent it just kept on expanding and expanding and expanding
until it stopped
i think i stopped it

you will always have a soft and safe space inside me
i think something of you was born in me
and i think something of me was born in you
and thats why i was able to recognize you so easily
because something of you is me and so i saw myself

i will love you my whole life long
but i'll put it in my palms now

tender touch
i can't have you in this heart anymore

i am not 17 anymore
and this is no longer about you
you were never scared to hurt me for yourself
and now i am unafraid too