people only know quarters of the story

a retelling, the abridged
condensed, shortened,
can you truncate the
things that have not
ended or strip it of
it's beginning--can you
choose between one or the
other?

the novels exist in our
backgrounds, in the attics
we wrote and wrote to say
we did but only to store them
away when we found we could
not erase people the way we hoped--

I have learned that there is no getting rid
or escaping a place, not unless you have
fully healed, and it's not enough just to say
you have, to be able to go and be, do and feel
without the tangled strings of your past
curling behind you--

but luckily i believe
in such a
life.

I was dust before
But then I knew
I was a brass bone
In the most ancient god
A point of light in
The machine twisting
Mandala regurgitating
Novel universes
@ whim

If life were true
I would build eleven cities
For you
And golden spires; minarets
Twisting to
Knife the pink horizon
Would be my poetry

deleted for contest submission

the tiny thing life has hands making hands into gold against light
flashing against dark and bones beneath skin the smell of roses
and taste of a girl neck drunk in short hair and black nails chipped
catching in the chambers of its heart the easily nothing blood
that makes its hands to make laughter, saltsun, thighs deeply new
and rush thrusting with quiet silk and the neatest trimming of
health.

hey there comet
sorry about throwing you away
i mistook you for a bad idea
i missed the can and you ended up in orbit
***** little snowball without a place to land
spinning in space without a ship
when i was little i did not want to be an astronaut
i wanted to be a teacher and a mom
i wanted to be responsible for shaping little souls
i thought it would be like play-doh
i thought it would be like dress up
because when i put on mommies sweater
daddys glasses
growing up was just about getting larger
so that this dwarf planet could become a sun
with a few more servings of vegetables
and some glasses of milk
stretching my bones by hanging off the monkey bars
gravity worked for me
and gravity kept me grounded
and gravity kept the planets in place
and gravity would grant me permission to grow
but i would never become a planet
because i was born a bit too fast
and a bit too cold
so just make sure
to orbit on back around this planet
my little comet
and I won’t miss it this time