I'm thinking that I'm
(until then) thinking

I'm thinking that I'm
finally thinking (again) about
something
other than
you
(again and)
again

I'm finding that
I am not (until then) you and
we are not part of
us (again)

And again,
(again again)
you will speak to me
and we
will be

(until then)friends.

days are full of tulip lipping, like easy slipping of the
fingers through theory strands, soft-soiled land
    dip      yourself in

nights are littlesilver
slivers of one another, getting smaller and then larger
and then smaller again

there are pocket s
of time  we use
to crawl inside one another, sleep like we would
have never known the difference, before       /after

& our excuse is
the skin of our hands meeting that of our thighs and
we are all at once a giant        sigh, together

we come, beautiful,
in the moment s like this,

we shift,

like this
like this

dressed in shadowed blues,
ashed hues


you sigh --little whisper of wind from your
caves and you think it is
the deepest your chest
will ever sink

don't know how you sit,     curved in
with that            !sky overhead

from the first kiss of the day
to the last kiss at night
we smirkingly wring the grey waters of
Logic & Reason
from our Passion
(so that it smells like
newly-washed old
bed sheet
deeply rooted in  
Hole-y Memories
Faded 'I love yous'
Nostalgic 'We've done this befores'
and
Hopeful 'Let's do it agains'

pale
speech

arms around you
like a sack of flour

curled up
     so delicate

last night I had a poem inside me, I lost it on the highway
in the Christmas of red and white continuous light
on either side

there were other thoughts, in other cars - their webs spun & ready

the wind beat against my window, holding the tail of it --
"there's still time"  

but I just looked back at you, driving.
hands sure, your unsmiling lips somehow
still holding,
kind.

and remembered this sizzling, poppin' n' fizzing
feeling

and could have written
pages and pages and instead
just

burned

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.

newspaper pages, leaving ink on my fingertips
a taste I can't get out of my mouth    & I can't re-bite that first bite.
rough, textured like the bottom of a swimming pool and all I want to do
is sit here. run my fingers over.  in the slowmoving distortion of sound and sight.         peaceful, not to know what exactly you're seeing, at first
what exactly you're hearing, at first
but you have to come up for air                          eventually

wish I could breathe into your everyday.
givealittle, creating potential energy and sending a chain
of buds into  b l o  o   m

cradle you in my          soft palette
                                  a gentle hum, then
swallow you whole, let you sit inside my
throat for a bit, let you glide through just like
a dream out the back
of the neck

you are caught in the net of stars that hangs in my
peripheral
vision

you are b eami ng
like a beaut, you are
emanating the  
                              only  
                           things

and the slowly things  
and the drops goldenlike
that fall from your mouth          kiss the cement
                                                     when you
                                                        speak

you make me (the happiest
because
     you
       make
             me)
so
  very



sad.

I want to lay blankets over your head,
Hold a flashlight while you read my palm, my wrist my elbowmybreasts
I want to pay homage to your chest and
It's many rhythms, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4
Whatever, I don't know anything about timing,
Or I would have met you 6 years ago,
Before she broke your heart so that by now perhaps it may have grown
The size of this room we share
Instead, for now I'll hear you out in whispers

and in quiet
     morning conversations

Erase
erase
erase and
rewind.

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

coming upon this photo of us I hadn't seen
(pre-mortem, my blind happiness)
my breathing stops, my uncle in the other room stops yelling about the VCR
appropriately. I can hear him bounding down the steps,
leaving the upstairs for me alone, a place to sit and stare at this.

I am standing behind Spencer and you are beside me
but you look more as if the slushie in your hand could bring you more excitement.
you look blank and I look blind and everyone else is background to
my realization and your arrogance in everything from your
dead-pan eyes to your arm lingering at your side, not holding
mine.

I can see the tops of your stupid shoes that I told you to throw out
and I would pay for another pair. I can see all of the things I ate that day
heaved into a toilet later that night and you
were gone by the 18th of October.

It's funny how I can tell we are not puzzle pieces and we do not fit.
Sure there are crooks and crannies where an elbow can rest
and a head may lay but

most of the time arms will fit around you only

if you want
them
to.

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.

there is all this tissue before
The Heart

poorly guided fingers     Reach
turning stones in their wake
freeing half-formed ideas

wading through
pools of inhibitions and
Fear and --
then

there is a Sunset

cheek-to-cheek with Missouri hills in the distance, tickling wildflowers with
bated breath
as you        
       Approach

the floor is covered in ash, we trudge
through to the kitchen to pour ourselves some coffee,
then to the bedroom to lay in the empty space there, left

our hands are never clean, our feet are always cold and
we don't have enough sense to cover them.

heavy faces, giving off sawdust smiles and
big red-marked cheeks from leaning too ******* other people.
we are craning over one another, reaching past one another, never holding
eye-contact

it's the emptiness left
from the previous emptiness
here, it's

awful here,
it's awful
here.

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.

maybe you can feel me,               the clunk
in my chest                                    in yours

the drop                                    
                                                       in your
                                                        diaphragm

maybe you can see it,                   seeing
my eyes open as open                  your
                                      ­                 eyes
                                                

maybe you can hear it,                is
the hum inside my                       from your
                                                       mouth


maybe you can think me            as I
                                                       think
  ­                                                     you

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.

i am comforted in my own. just like ice melts, only not so
warm, just warm     enough. lay like a leaf in the sun, holding up lace so that
when i lower it the pattern will be burned into my cheeks, intricate enough
so that people will have to lean inclose
to see

i am ever-changing, like forever-ever, like no mona lisa because
'bullets pass through me and I keep moooooooving'
only the bullets never reach me - i know i'm dreaming when i'm
dreaming.

your skin is not animated as I would have   imagined, a little
freckled, bespeckled with blemishes but I don't
mind those -- only the way your mouth is so pink after kissing me,
only how your tongue blooms from the back of your throat.

you don't     differ from
any lover in any specific way, just
the after, and how I don't feel
cold. no, just
calm.

I hear no thunder, see no storm slow approaching,
but rain hits the pavement I stand on, which in it's solidity
impresses upon me the urge to run  -   but I won't just yet

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 have trouble
believing
you)

you say things so charming,
they practically
take my shirt off

for you.

this escapes me like the sigh escapes through the
teeth, feeling lucky to have been breathed
so it can graze lips
and finally d i  s    p       e            r                     s                                      e

into
the
                                                                ­                     e
            at                        s                        ­    
                  mo                                r
      ­                                           phe