all day i was thinking
about that letter I wrote
you and how it was in
Wetmore now, in Silvercliffe,
in Jim's green mailbox, finally.
how I didn't seal it in perfume
but thought about it, how I rewrote
it five times because there's only so
many ways to convey myself in a good
light after breaking all the bulbs

I was choosing words like I'd choose flowers
only baby blooms and strong stems,  ending with
sincerely, cordially, then just my name.  I miss you
replaced by I saw that post on Facebook about your niece
hoping prayer sifts through the ink, that he can feel my hair on
his cheeks, a letter that pleads, please don't hate me
but I don't think anyone ever has--and I certainly don't think he will


I don't know what's wrong with me. I tell my mom over breakfast, over dinner, on the way home,  and she smiles at me--says
goodness in the way she usually does, in the way that says her heart
sometimes beats for me

but that thought has permeated every action and every day, lain over me like a sunshower with the rain flecking through in drops of gold
I've never had these thoughts before I whisper, exasperated, throwing
my hands up and stuttering. All-abouts unsure of myself and wondering if while he's been away I've built an empire around what he
could be.

What am I doing? I ask, finally making eye contact.

what i never had the chance to (let you learn)
was that I dance with the shades up wearing
nothing but the sun, telephone wires casting
cuts across my lips, small ******* that don't
swing heavy but fit in palms,

how much
have you changed since you were casually knocking,
since before you might have thought I was
untamed but a conquest you had already mapped--
realized I was a bit more to hold, (you did)

But that I so often go back to those two nights
telling myself I should have whispered your
name, to gauge a reaction, to hear your last
name tagged onto breathy mewls--I shouldn't
be this way, knowing i forge relations through
fingertips, I dunno why kissing is such a problem.

Probably because they write you into a chapter
that goes on for hundreds of pages afterwards, after the
supposed ending, even after I tell you that I'm done,
what is it like to be you? To be them?
to be able to move on so quickly,
and replace others with others with others

you will be able to say
once in a while
during the brief
jaunts in our underwear
the glimpses of green lace
under a white cotton shirt
that moved across my shoulders
on the hardwood floors, our heels
stomp and slide, and my thighs
quiver under weight and laughter
you caught me and I turned
turn to hold your neck


but I pause to bring you close
to hold you, as if you were
a vase of baby's breath and ferns
to look you over and wonder how
one moment I was sitting here writing
this on the couch on a september evening
and how you are here now,
with a strange familiarity
and the watch on your wrist
softly clicks forward
but I can hear it from
inside the glass, atop the second hand
sweeping over the ticked surface
reflecting the sweet blue daylight,
the warmth of your body and
the gentle harmony of two people
who have found eachother.

On a night like today, in a sea of shadows and whites, we ride thick on a camel toed carousel, tainted and unlocked, unkempt and hollow, we shake to the cores of your features, deep pallets of staining whites, we lay afraid and assuming, ready for something to roll deep beneath these  peppercorn brownie sheets. We dive shallow beneath assuming depths. Angled, silver octopus, arms stretched below your sea urchin ways. I wait infantile, an ever aging fetus floating through your chromosomes, very full and very hungry. This could be a stifling kind of like , but here I roam, free abd unnerving lushing down your spine

I say something like
I want to know everything about you
and that's not me lying, just my genuine
curiosity out there in the open so when
people ask about you, your favorite
flavor of ice cream will fall right off
my tongue, a thousand little facts
about your truck or your garage
or things I picked up just listening to
the sound of your voice

I like to know people the way I know myself
but maybe i've been careless, maybe i've taken
hearts and made them cranes, taken their soft
rippled surfaces and flattened the corners,
maybe i've been too negligent in the art
of loving, in making sure i've not made
a home where there ought not to be
because i'm good at finding a place
to nest, in the rafters of their chests
and most don't mind birds but


girls aren't birds
girl's aren't birds
and don't have the right
to come in and say they have
all the answers

so i'm out on a county road and I'm saying something like
i'm sorry, please don't leave


I'm sorry, please don't leave.

didn't have to try
the *** on top of
the fridge from texas
to suggest *** or
heavyweight championships
you laughed when I said
whiskey smelled like vanilla
and again when I took a swig
of apple moonshine and
cringed, yeah, not even
I can handle white lightning
consequently I started humming
that song by The Cadillac Three
the soundtrack to letting go of
waiting or worrying or wanting--

the chrysanthemums on my coffee
table have lasted about three weeks -
about the time frame of things that
need to go

we the daughters of sliced sunbeams
and those who chase gales in between
the pasture gates and barbed fences behind
the silo--

who think there's nothing softer than the way
honey sounds drizzled on toast or daisy petals at the supermarket
the women of ferocious silences, standing before
dozens with trimmed smiles and deafening inner beauty

squeezing our fingers down barley stalks and sewing
the roots into our dresses, we've tried six ways to sunday
the rules, the book on being wanted, before realizing that anything
born out of self-indulgence wilts away
all the work we did to grow and plait our hair with vanilla,
dipped in sweet almond oil we had no idea
that pretending
could only get us
so


far.