**** imagery.
What have the faded stars
ever done for me?

**** metaphor.
The cave that’s black
without my torch.

**** simile,
like ****** timing
and mistresses.

**** rhyming.
I’ll say to you,
just keep climbing.

**** alliteration.
I’ll illustrate irritability
inked in inevitability.

**** me, because
I love the stars
painted on the cavern walls,
mysterious midnight rendezvous,
digging my fingers into rock and dirt
like fish love to flirt with waterfalls,
but most of all I love to set
your sails atop my sea,
who pirates named,
our poetry.

Hollowed out so you could float,
but girl, I’m an ocean, never
believe your safe in a boat,
because your tiny raft
is empty, but could be filled
with the endless sea
of my humanity.

Sink into me.

What you think you need—
what you’ve cultivated into
flowers— I have as seeds,
can I not give you these things?
Surely they are yours to grow.
And I already know which flower
you’d find your favorite.

Sink into me.

Do you have a plan to find dry land?
Surely I will never take you there,
every wave cast from wind—
blown from your own lips—
waters the seeds you
spread yourself.

Sink into me.

Think your lover can paddle
you through my swells,
whirlpools and storms?
I will send my triangle,
her name Bermuda,
and girl, Three
is a Magic
Number

Silly girl, to think you’d float
across an ocean who dreams
of breaking dams, flooding
plains, drowning cities
and civilizations.  You will sink into me,
and be the ancient unforgettable beauty
of the sunken ship, lost at sea,
filled with gold, aging wine
and still currents,
never running cold.

Today you saved an earthworm
stranded by the rain.
You picked banana strings
from my soggy cereal,
and told the ducks by a frozen lake
not to worry, Spring’s sun
was dawning soon.

Today you were a hero.
You smiled upon waking,
worried I let my limbs go
numb and tingly, knowing
I wanted you to sleep,
and I just smiled—
I wouldn’t wake you
for the world.

Today, you are a hero,
because you buried love.
Today I’ll be a hero too
digging right beside you.
So today we are heroes,
fighting for our hearts
bracing for the hurt
barely breathing
passed the dirt.
Heroes.

I never even thought how hard
it’d be, to watch you with him.  
Silently observe him sip coffee
you might have made,
while he sits close enough to whisper
the lines I love through your hair
that’d catch on his lips,
if they weren’t silent.

It hadn’t occurred to me
that seeing your left hand,
dangle there next to his, empty,
could hurt more than if your
head was buried in his chest
which a week ago
stung like watching a bee
eviscerate itself in my palm.

I hadn’t realized I had no idea
how this would end.  Could I even
see myself sitting next to you in class,
holding your hand, whispering the words
just to taste your hair? I can dream
these things, like I’m dreaming now
but it’s just as hard to know this
as it was to know we
existed.

Time stirring in a sermon
stiffens slowly.  The Sun
slips through the window’s edges,
softly shaping foreign faces, peacefully
broken away from the world by birds playing
tag in greening trees, draped with skirts
sewn from the Sun’s golden glow.

Images black
without the back of eyelids
dreaming beyond our benches.

Time set and solid, I get up
and leave 100 closed eyes behind
and walk into a church to see
the same Sun’s beams trapped
inside stain-glass.  Frozen shards,
holding dust, warm each red pew.

I lay down in the emptiness
of the seats, the silence of the hymns,
absence of a pulpit,
and sleep.

Wake up ten times too early
thinking about you
like that’s what I
was born to do.
River island picnic,
sun on your face,
water in my toes.
Walking to class
with fiery eyes,
waiting an hour
to see them again.
Downing midday drinks,
walking home again—
with you— waiting
in a lobby to see
your smile rise
over the banister,
reading passed microphones,
just to you. Hands
not breaking contact
through snow or traffic,
head on my chest, safe
and simply warm.  I invite you
stay forever.

Then a tapping on the window.
Steel blue eyes turn to mercury  
and freeze with reality.

Surrealism knocks on the door
and walks in, drunk
and clueless.

Never have I held back
so much anger with a smile
and a handshake.

Drive home.
Lose reality.
Burn my own flesh

from the inside out with the torch
I swallowed, instead of trying
to melt mercury,
destroy a demon,
or reveal the truth.

It tends to be an awful mess.
I play with the glue, tape, staples
sutures, stitches, rivets, screws.
Bolts, nails, Band-Aids, string and
chewing gum
for as long as I can.

That’s why when you broke my fingers,
I didn’t say a word, I didn’t want you
to notice I hadn’t any fingers left—
when I was done
with my makeshift med kit.

That’s why when you bruised my ribs,
I only winced once, when you hammered
my toes, there were only two tears, when
you cracked my skull I stayed conscious to say
I’d be okay, but when you were done reshaping
everything, replacing every part of me and finally
turned on my heart, I let you take it, stitching only
what was left
of my lips together so I couldn’t scream.

Which was a mistake.  Of all the holes left
I wouldn’t repair, leaving my core hollow
was sure to collapse every single
*****-trapped, ghetto-rigged,
and half-*** bandaged
contraption I used
to replace
myself.