You taught me how to kiss like a grown up but I
Was too young to be made to feel that old
That was the first night I dreamt of loving a girl
But when I opened my eyes it was you
Beckoning cuz you were hungry and I
Followed cuz I was curious
But I didn’t want your hands on me that way
I didn’t want to choke on the taste of you
Before walking back as the sun came up
Telling myself that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Funny how landslides happen
How they start with a loose pebble
And end up crushing trees.
Funny how I had to lie to myself once
To believe it every time.

So call me when you want me and I
Will be yours for an hour and after when you
Lie drunk on a passing feeling I’ll pick up my bag
And I’ll fade softly into the night.
And then when the sun comes up I’ll whisper the
Same quiet words outloud to myself
But that’s how it’s supposed to be, right?

i never knew an empty house
until i realized i didn't have to step twice
with my right foot
on the last stair before i
closed the door.

& i never knew silence,
though i think i thought i did,
until the night the kitchen light burnt out
& i sat alone til morning
in the glow of the old refrigerator.

& i never knew shock i guess
until the day they handed you to me
in a box that fit too well in my hand
& their I'm sorrys were silenced
as i shut the door mid-sentence.

knowing you were in that box hurt almost as much
as feeling your body go still in my hands.

i'll miss your eyes very much, &

i will always step twice with my right foot
on the last stair before i close the door.

Things in this house get
forgotten.
Leaves on the stairs,
a cat grows old in the
basement.
The wind sings itself to
sleep and the trees
dance with shadows
across the window.

Things in this house are
hoarded, cloistered,
shut up in
locked drawers with
missing keys and
locked chests with
heavy lids.

He hides things in here,
letters and toys and pictures,
and he leaves his walls bare.

He lovingly locks his memories away,
half pencils, one mitten, lost teeth,
and he can sleep at night because
eighteen years' time has
manifested itself in
tops of baby bottles, plastic bracelets, winter hats,
and now they lie dusty but safe in
his quiet, lonely house.

The light in the kitchen burns out
one day.

He readjusts the crayons
in their drawer.

Part I
The wind carries his ashes over the sea.

Part II
I get in my car and drive home.

Part III
Nothing is ever the same.

Doll, honey, sweetie, old lady,
Life's been tough, especially lately.
You told me I'd be breaking hearts one day,
But so far mine's been the only the break,
And the boys here are cruel,
And the world here is fake.

found a garter snake when I was
seven. begged her to let me take it
home because it was dead anyway and I'd
never seen a snake not at a
zoo.

carried it on a stick,
limp, dangling, body reduced to a
morbid noodle that
bounced comically with every
step.

left it on the driveway in a circle of
leaves to get "When we
went home."
went inside,
forgot it.

looked for it on the last day,
car packed, rain starting to
fall and the snake was
gone.

Maybe, my dad said, His friends came and
took him for a proper snake
funeral.

ate up his words like
sugar, got in my car seat, didn't ask about it
again.

found out years later his
girlfriend was always scared of
snakes.

The hyacinths
they were heads peeking above a
fence, prisoners in a camp
behind a wall under a sky belonging to
the same world that made their
petals ashy, paper-fine to the
touch and it's a wonder one
rainstorm didn't destroy them.
But resilience, as you know, is
everything in a place like this so
rather than crumble to dust
they folded with the wind and
held onto each other's brittle stalks
and when the morning came they hung
limp but alive and drying again under the
merciless sun.