the face of today is tired, tiring
to look at like aged and crinkled
paper, just
waiting to be
burned.

the cold inside my nose,
inside my eyes, inside my
hope globes and my curled
toes.

no heavy lifting or light
shifting of winds, just
full-on stale and hard and

cold.

kisses small and hand-
crafted, broken-in, a feel like
worn leather gloves, slipping
over lips (they were in need
of some warmth) covering no-
thing but the bare necessities - thin, and
they are something when
I am used to
nothing.

the cold just wants to hold us -
mold us into the blowing wind, fold us down beneath our coats,
bite deep - beneath our skin, beneath our bones.

so we won't forget
how our legs might shake
and our lips might chap
and our hair might brittle
beneath winter caps.

so we won't forget
how our voices go hoarse
and our noses glow pink
and the colder we get
the more the warmth stings.

so we won't forget
any of these things.

the cold just wants to hold us - selfish, but unknowingly so.
cradle us in long arms, carefully, inside the crook
of winter's elbow.

used to think
I was a dandelion,
as you were,

my end
tied to where you
begin,

rubbing
yellow into
skin.

there is a constant ache behind the eyes - dim,
like the dying embers of a fire. my stomach
is always too full of everything I didn't eat, the
foreignness spread like black mold beneath the
surface of everything.

picking at hangnails, picking at chapped lips, picking
the scabs that scabbed over my spirit.

my tongue is scratched like a scratched cd,
I have only one or two things that I keep
repreprepeating.

there is a build-up in my throat of apologies,
lingering on my breath and the truth I have been
keeping in my belly, the truth I have swallowed so
greedily, the truth is I haven't
much

truth.

it seemed when the air was thick with heat the streets were
seething like the sweat on my back as I'd climb each
minuscule lump in the earth as if it were a mighty mountain -
ten thousand feet tall. hair
stuck to my neck the way
kisses stick to your lips when
you want more than a kiss -
I'd pull it up and away from my face.

it has been
it has been
a lifetime and a half between the cold that was and
the cold that is - now, here, in my bones and holding down
the pavement with frigid arms, stubborn. my hair is
longer now, growing out and it curls like a cat at my
neck to rest, spreading like hot soup spreading
down my
chest.

your voice a sweet
          ripe
          be-
          cause
every morning in my
          stomach left
          gravel-
          like
coffee-stained tongues,
          rolling from tips  
          like peach pits -
          devoured
slowstickysweet, the
          center
          of each
          earthy
          peach.

the heat between my hands as I clench
them, between me and this
seat as I writhe against it, the ache
in my spine from sitting up
straight, the purse of my
lips and the
sting of my
eyeswide
dry
eyes.

no breath and then one deep
one. two, three. fourfivesixseven - !

slowbreathing.
no heaving sighs.
no looking left,
no looking
right.

hips are farther apart when I sit, hands are toes are
spread fingers like spindles like broken into minute portions of
matter, moving about in this



                                
                            ­             big                            &                        empty




                                                       not mov
                                                              ing but
                                                              breath
                                                                   ing and
                                                                   tingl
                                                                        ing, too

legs stick-straight
my hips don't gyrate
my hair's not well-trained
and my ******* aren't the same
size

my eyes
aren't bambi-watching-his-mother-get-strapped-to-the-back-of-a-van-BIG
they're not blue like the atlantic, but grey like
cigarette ashes.

my eye-lashes aren't a foot in length,
they don't billow when I blink
and I've lost so many, a ton,
ones that I didn't even
get to
wish
on.

your yawns stretch
their fragile morning limbs to
the top of your lungs:

breathe in -- quick quick,
don't let your breath stick
to the bottom of your
throat -- breathe out.

Sometimes I feel as if
cigarette butts are
bread crumbs
for grown ups.

I will rip the first three pages
from your favorite book and I will
eat the memories I have of you
in one
bite.

I will devour any trace of you by
burning
my skin
away.

I will dissolve every look every time every
good intention on my tongue like
bad
sugar

and

like bad sugar, you
will remain
a temporary
satisfaction
for anyone
you touch.

the folds in my shirt appearing and dis-
appearing as my hips make the rounds, I
love the shape I take on when
hands caress my curves, they came
out of nowhere, it seems I was a length
of wood, a slab of material with no
definition until
the subtle crook in my arm was noticed,
the length of my neck and the fold of my thighs
as I lay on my side, too.

The fever took her - quietly, suddenly.  
One moment she was lying still,
the next her blood had been boiled and her hair was burning
so that there was a constant glow about her face.

In moments like these,
where her body and her brain were two separate entities,
she could think only of the way her skin joined
in perfect harmony
behind her ears.

there's something in the middle of me, in the middle of
me there is a large amount of something
pushpushing against my skin and
aching against my vital organs, I
can feel the strain as my heart strings are
tuned up up up and pulled to the taunt
-ness of a mandolin.

the monotonous monks that haunt
my chest cavity take on a barely audible
angelic hum - the lightness of their voices
driven in
to the tips of my
limbs,
which are
quivering
     as if
                
            they
                        

                     were



          feathers.

Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
Gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating the sort of sad ambiance that you, unexpectedly,
find yourself craving.

There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious cranberry and pomegranate that **** my insides with
summer-tainted sweetness - lurked a hazy glow, too often
over-romanticized, I think.

And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize what was stolen
from my own.

watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and ****** my
breath, knowingly
or not.

Let's let the hem out of every
skirt we own so we can
be
  long
     belong in
their fraying ends.

You have a morning in you
the only reason for which I wake.

there's something to be said about
the time it takes for words to
formulate, make their way
all the way down to the tiptips of our tontongues,
I savor the ringing silence that comes
after the bitter ones leave, the after-taste of
arguments and the residue left from things I didn't mean.

if I could I'd pour nectar down my throat and
speak in whispers only in whispers and then
quiet quiet
quiet
down, I'd
whisper,
quiet down.

breathe in the smell of meat cooking in the morning and
hoping it's not for me because
my stomach is a delicate beast,
it only feasts on things worth feasting
while it searches for something to fill the cavernous black hole
left by one-too-many blows and one-too-many hearts sinking
and one other heart constantly beating above it, my poor
mother must know, she must.
know that

I don't sleep through meals for nothing and the smell
on my breath isn't alcohol or cigarettes it's my own insides
pouring themselves out because I can't muster up
anything
but *****
anymore and

I don't
want
to

it is hard to describe quite
the feeling I feel when I see
what I see what I see when
I tiptoe to the waters edge -

bare quiet witness to the highly mannered,
manifold expressions of life that
grace this place - some things so
light and bright and
weird and delicate
as to stupefy
the senses -

language often
founders in
such
seas.

better to picture it in your head if you wish to
feel it.

that anyone could make me feel naked in
suspense, a need to curl my fingers? I'll remind myself
that I need my bed rest, that I need
the thing that heals, that I need
anything at all is too much, it's too
tedious to need, I won't admit to
it, most of the time I won't.

groaning grows from the throat,  trickling down,
my voice isn't sweet like honey,
but more harsh harsh harsh in ways like
dry swallowing big pill after pill after pill.

the ends of my fingers are beams, they are brightest
when I touch the space between me and
the space between you and the soft space
left after drinking what we
bottle
up,

every time
every time.

My hands look old.
I don't know what happened to their previous beings,
their soft, pale, younger selves.
My hands are cracked from the dry humorless days of anticipation.
I have hangnails, my skin so dry it's splitting from itself.
And they shake.
They shake along with my voice and my thoughts.
Trembling with excitement and worry.
When you're in the room,
especially when you're not, though.

I have stretch marks.
On my inner thighs, and on my sides,
they remind me of roads, of maps, of going places.
Each goosebump is a hillside,
each little crack in my dry skin is a riverbed, waiting for rain.
My body is a terrain of  imperfections,
and I'm just trying to keep still enough
as to not disturb the world that I harvest.

I'm standing (just so)
the way you're sitting (just so)
just so, just so
you'll see my
hunched
back, see my
poor mouth that is
twisted (just so)
with cracked lips and

for you
I won't fake composure when
I haven't any.

make eyes, little girl, make
eyes
at me.

make them stars so I may not
lose them in the over-bearing light
of day at times and
make them burn like
third-degree burns so I'll
never forget the feeling of them
on my skin.

make them that sweet poetry you speak so that
my palpitating heart can know what it's like to
stop mid-sentence and


(quietly, now)

make eyes, little girl, make
eyes
at
me.

the air isn't pinching, it nibbles my skin as I catch the scent of
remorse and a hint of peanutbutter and honey,
tangy and sweet I wish I weren't that way sometimes,
I wish I could see the worm in an apple instead of
the seeds

a nefarious dead-pan glance and
all I can think about is how I have
your favorite book tucked away, safe,
because I want an excuse for my
trembling hands and the constant
chugging of my mind at times, the ever-
present headache that originates in
my stomach. I am hosting a
cavernous black hole there
that spreads it's lips
wider and
wider
and

w   i     d             e             r

every day that washes over,
leaving me a little paler a little thinner a
little hungrier than
before

I am s
        i
     n
   k
  i
n
g

At first it was bare and ripe for the picking -
my chest was pulsating under your weight you
stripped my heart like an exotic dancer would:
all eyes and no hands.

After the initial grasp, the puff puff pass and the
smiles exchanged between our legsarmslimbs and the
time it took to be rid of the excess skin crowding us in,
we breathed in sweet, sweet fumes of spring and said
things kept in our mouths, light like ecstasy but
heavier than the average promise.

But the hours it took to argue the hunger away made our
heads ache and eventually our jaws could clench no longer,
our eyes could see no more of each other - just smoke and
******* clouding our way - it was lost,
whatever it was, it

was lost.

I saw a leaf falling
from it's tree so I ran
to catch it.

But in my haste,
I ran
past it.

I can hear my voice:
it crackles like
burning
paper.

They could smell our smoke, I'm sure,
when we would pass by passively
                    - existing and wishing wanting.

Forgetting each word stumbling from our lips, tumbling
to their deaths on the hard, warm concrete.

The golden whispers we kept to ourselves,
which made them all the more profound
and we were proud to call ourselves
what we were then  
               - what we are still.

Can you be anything but reckless and cowardly in your own way?
We were children out every night that we were sleeping together,
sitting together around fires, making stars and
laughing drunkenly on a cloud above everything.

They could see our glazed eyes for what they were, too,
for what they were
            - dreams.

My jaw hurts because it might as well be wired shut. I have nothing
to say for myself, no, nothing to say.

And my thoughts tend to come in tiny red boxes,
when they open all I can see is a wisp of smoke
like a lightning bolt it's gone and in the air again.

I busy myself by keeping my teeth clean, menial things like
licking stamps and sending 'thank yous' and resting too much but
not sleeping enough.

I don't think about things too often, I try to get lost, more often than not,
I try to get lost.

like  
      want                   
                       feel  
        just things  

the time
      make              eyes  
little              girl  
      ­                              way  
         talk  

love
  
                               she

             he

having your heart
in my fist - I wasn't expecting
the hum coming from that little
drum

This sleep does not suit me,
this sleep without youth.

Heavy lids and heavy lies the body but
my mind takes shape reminiscent of
waves and the mermaid fins, dreams of
glittering beaches to wake up sweating
mid-winter.

Why is it that I putter and sink into crevices deep, still?
Why is it that I cannot share the moon? Her piercing
brilliance has endured eons alone, and
I feel a comrade in her shivering ripples.

This sleep, my darling,
I will not allow it.

Constant
inople.

Raspberry pie
in bed.

These are the dreams
of you I have
in my heavy
little head.

I hear an awful lot about
fingertips these days and
I wonder how many I'll have to touch today,
tomorrow and
the rest of my life.

The fingertips and palms of my own hands are
worried and weathered, both due to
lack of sleep and the
guitar that waits for me, always.
Gentle, the very sight calms my belly-
aching and these calluses left where I
refuse to bruise or to bleed.

When I work myself into time's duck and weave,
and I don't have to wonder how long it will take or
when I'll be able to croak out a few lines, I can only
hope, complete with the yellow wings of a canary,
that I can last longer
than this dance does.

Erase
erase
erase and
rewind.

As long as I'm a child,
I won't mind,
I don't
mind.

I'll never know
if those are
giant troll heads

or people

behind me,
will I?

everytime our eyes meet it is
Anthony and Cleopatra,
it is ee cummings and his
dark-haired mistress, it is
every love affair that has ever been
lived again and
again and
again

in those brief seconds
when our eyes meet, in those
I can feel you
looking for a reason
to kiss me
forever
searching
me

tell me when you find it,
and let me hold it in my lips
for the next time
our eyes
meet

my food has begun to taste as
I'm sure I've begun to
look:

grey
quiet
tired and
mean

where are you, asleep?
with all my childhood dreams
some foolish fantasies? and
the clouds I've already tread on.

where are you, in a classroom with a
notebook full of everything but what
the teacher is saying? poetry
things you've known all your life, like
the back of everyone's head.

where are you, underneath the
foundation of my house? I hear
it creak and I can see the cracks
grow and
grow.

where are you, driving your words somewhere safe?
they'll melt in the rain, over-thought
and un-
cared
for.

fiddling with the hue of your skin and as it darkens so does your
outlook, how you love winter and all the things I don't and how you
somehow find a way to make me feel like
the worst person on earth just by
telling me
I am.

creeping along my hairline in
beads of sweat and in
my eyes, in the corners he
urges along tears, rides them,

painting

down


my




cheeks,



then onto my neck,
kissing my collar bone
and, in passing,
tickles the freckles
between my
*******.

the little that's left of him fingers into
streams on my belly that has
been hungry for him -



- he knows.