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.

cant not love you cant not love you cant not
love you
castles mountains little candles cars
my mother always told me to close my
mouth you love it like this though because you can
find my lips in the dark and
everything everything everything about you i
become a softly raging fire at your fingertips and i
cant not love you cant not love you cant not love
you always will count on it one two three close
your eyes cross your fingers better yet wrap them around
mine even in the dark all i ever see is color because i
cant i cant i cant not
love you.

What did I dream about last night?
Well
First there were some bright lights
some sand on top of my feet
rooted
pillows
mountains
folds of blankets
valleys between playing cliffs
why are you
reaching for me I'm just
smoke and I'll
slip through your chewed on fingers like
water leave you cold and shivering
when the world wakes up.
And did you look in the mirror back
then because you were always blue and I was
yellow and seven was my favorite color
still is. you laugh but I know
you know what I mean
sleeping in the nature of our bedroom.
we laughed and the walls
laughed with us
cried tears and became a
waterfall.
What are we?
I long for you to rest your
arm over mine
again.
She said show don't tell but I
just hope you know I still
miss the quiet forest we built for our
selves at night.

It's a
weird time to be
alive I didn't think I'd
get this far
picturing myself
older when I was younger I
didn't expect to find my
self leaning on a car with a
broken handle next to a boy
you couldn't see the
hickey on his neck because it was
dark Adam's apple illuminated
smoke it rises behind
the back of a building
ready to run if we hear a
car coming but we don't so
we smoke and mom here's what I
made of myself we
don't talk because this
awkward tension is too
familiar to want to
break it with our voices.
Later in the
car
driving fast we laugh
because we just thought of
how we became the
people we were afraid
of becoming all
along but now it
feels right and we
don't want to slow down because
those red lights they
are lights to show us the
way when we drive
through and I want to
reach over and take his
hand but that's childish so I
lean over and kiss him
instead because we
are not little kids
anymore in fact we are
too young to be old but we
feel too old now to
do anything but laugh at how we
were ten years before.

The universe is too loud
to hear you when you cry,
and even when you shout
no one stops while passing by.

And you wish you had someone's
arms around you,
a comforting hand to hold.
But don't you see that everyone else is alone
and the people in this world are cold?

And after a while you sit in silence
and learn to keep the thoughts in your head.
It's hard sometimes not to cry amidst the violence,
but you know it's best to keep quiet instead.
-mm

A tea cup
cold and no longer fresh on
the granite countertop because
I made it this morning when I
woke up with a feeling in my stomach that I would
need the comfort I
didn't find at home whenever I
opened that door and walked into a
place that made my heart cold even when I
turned up my collar against the
chill.  It's like when you hear the song that
answers all the questions in your head and
you feel the acoustics embrace you and
everything is soft and warm and you feel sad but
safe in phantom arms but then the
song ends and you are
alone again and afraid because
the pain of being alone did not prepare you for
the emptiness of being left and
there's this
whistling in your head,
a tea kettle warning, begging as you
take the pill bottle from the medicine cabinet and
the whistling grows more urgent as you
take off the cap and pour the
pills into your steady hand and then it
shrieks as you raise the pills to your lips and everything it
so ******* loud and frantic and your mind is chaos in
this one second before everything goes black and quiet and in
the second before the kettle is silenced all you
can think of is the tea cup you left,
cold and no longer fresh on the
granite countertop because you
woke up with a feeling that
you would need it.
-mm

You know,
One of those times I was
Looking out the window at the
Night I asked out loud who
You were. It
Wasn’t the first time.
Sometimes I
Cried your name but my
Voice was too heavy with
Tears. And another time I
Screamed your name and my
Hands were in fists. But
Lately it seems all I do is
Whisper your name into the
Dark and hope you’ll hear me
Because I couldn’t speak much louder
If I tried. I won’t
Give up on you though because I
Know someone was there and
Was there all along
Sitting beside me when my
Wrists ran red with blood on the
Cold bathroom floor. And
Someone was there in the
Corner of my eye when
He lay on top of me and held my
Shaking hands down. You were
Watching in silence and I
Kept screaming your name because I
Wanted you to sweep me into your
Arms and I started to lose hope when
You didn’t come like they
Told me you would. But
Now I see you were always there,
Always standing a
Little distance off and believing in me
When I was putting all my faith
In you. And now I see
As I look through the window at the
Night that you were swimming
Behind the reflection of my eyes and
You were there all along,
My unbreakable soul.

She was beautiful but
she was sad.
And I know you think this is just another
poem about a girl and it is but
I just need to tell someone about how
loved she was now that she
can’t hear me.

And I don’t think she ever could,
not when I told her I
liked her hair not when I
held her hand not even when I
kissed away the tears on her
freckled cheeks as she looked at me with
those eyes so haunting they keep me awake at night,
all her brilliance beaten and caged and it showed
whenever she smiled but I knew she was somewhere else.

And at some point she
retreated into herself,
a golden castle dark inside, a
much-touched body that had felt the caresses of
many a passing hand
now a prison of skin that
repulsed her.

And the boys still looked at her in the halls
and the men still looked in the street.
They still reached for her,
touched her but
she never felt it never even
knew how they dreamt of the feel of her phantom body
on theirs.

And it wasn’t long before
she slipped through my fingers too.
And it’s funny how I thought I knew her best,
thought I wasn’t like the rest of them
and yet I never expected the call, the message from her
crying and saying
forgive me, I
hope you can and the drop
of the receiver from her shaking hand and
where was I?
In my
car with
roses on the seat next to me and a
sad song on the radio and the
stupid thought that I alone could
make her better.

You think you can hurt me but
don’t you see?
I’m not even there,
I’m not even there. I
don’t know where I am but
one of those times you were breaking my heart it
shattered
not into glass but into
feathers that are blown from place to
place born on a soft breeze or maybe a
gust of winter wind but
either way they are not
trapped in my chest that rises and falls too fast when
you walk into the room and step on
my love like it’s a
burnt out cigarette,
well-enjoyed but past it’s time.
And now I wish you could see I
lit it just for you and
nothing made me feel better than when
you smoked me and
treasured every exhale but then
nothing hurt so much as feeling you
lowering me from your lips and
dropping me to the ground and even that
wasn’t enough you had to
step on me too so I could
never be relit but yet
my friend, don’t you see?
My heart is not a cigarette,
it’s a hundred feathers
floating on the breeze.
-mm