My head belongs in his hands and his lap,
and my tears can be caught only in the
thickness of his faded blue jeans.
My forehead belongs nestled in the nape of his neck.
My hands belong in his hands-
rough and raw and calloused over,
whipped relentlessly by the sun.
My knees belong against his chest,
held tightly to keep out diseases and terrorists and
the realities of life.
My fingers belong against his lip-
warm air bowing life into them.
My feet belong under his thighs,
saving my toes from a frost bitten end.

His cheeks belong under my palm,
rubbing the patches he missed and has let grow too long.
His eyebrows belong between silver fingers,
connected to mine made of flesh,
picking wild flowers-
which have become weeds-
making room for adoration to trickle in.
His back belongs beneath my wrists,
pulling out the stresses of todays and yesterdays
and mostly of tomorrrows.
His lips belong on the cool curves of my uncovered shoulders,
whispering sweetly of strawberries and daisies
and the way little blonde hairs stand up along the dip of the back of my neck,
where brain stem meets spine meets shoulder blades.
His shoulders belong under the weights of my world,
the cover of Atlas Shrugged tattooed nine years deep in his skin.

We are an equation-
an equation to save mankind,
and the equation of a line:
every part matters.
And the sum of my parts is nothing without his.

Mr. Beeson,
that East and West Egg,
that walking thesaurus, dictionary,
thermometer
peeled back the blank skin
from over my eyes and introduced
a whole new world to me.
A world full of color and black and white movies and
beautiful suicides.
A world of stanzas and strophes and meter.
A world of words that bleed out from fingertips and
create the image of one's heart.
I had been looking for something like that,
a way to create my heart on paper,
meandering around authors and song writing
and trying to be beautiful.
I felt lost, but finding poetry made me feel
like I actually had a place and a purpose.
Poetry is something that has grown close to my heart and soul and mind.
And I write because it's a part of me.
I write because I love words.
Words, words, words.
I love diction and description and exposition and narration and parallels-
oh how I love parallels!
I write because I want to sound beautiful.
I write because I feel all too much and I can't keep all
those feelings inside of me so I drain them out of my
veins and watch them ooze onto paper in ink.
I write because I have so much to say but it sounds better
in stanzas.
I write because I love the way my words sound all
strung up together in clauses and sentences
and fragments.
I write because I feel in love with the way
words look like next to each other.
I write because that's how I put my tears and smiles
and fears onto paper and out of my head.
I write because I don't know anything else.
I write because I write to live.

I don't know how to start
just like I don't know how I feel.
But that's the paradox of the woman, right?
Will anyone ever understand my brain?
My neurons and brain stem and cerebellum,
left and right brain,
and all the lobes:
frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal.
Will anyone ever make sense of it all?
No.
No.
But you try.
You skirt across my hippocampus.
Try to pitch your tent there.
Try to make a life there.
Try to dig up and excavate the things that will make me yours.
You're coming close.
Because I believe in tests.
Yes I am one of them.
Yes I do it to you.
I thrive on tests.
I pull them out of my ear drums and fingernails
and from in between the splits of my teeth.
I pull out the ACT, the SAT
the LSAT, the MCAT,
the Bacceleureat.
Everything is a test.
Every answer
every question
every "please come get me"
and jack in a Styrofoam cup.
The way you walk the way you look at me when I breath is a plus or a minus or a smudge on a scantron sheet.
Three and a half hours later
you can breathe clean air again
and your mind can clear.
Holy smokes, yes, but there is is nothing holy about it.
We wont go ring shopping
we've already been house hunting
and we all know the only thing you want.
Wide open spaces and a bed in the center
and me.
Isn't that right?
Isn't
that
right?

A man sits on the corner
with his guitar.
Music comes out of his fingers.
You walkers by are walking past and try
hard to
tune him out.
He does not ask for your money,
yet you look ashamedly away.
He does not beg you for food,
yet you throw it to him
from your car.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely.
He sits with his guitar
named Jenny
and pulls at her strings
so she will talk to him.
They talk about
love, and loss,
and the blueness of the world.
She speaks the words the man cannot,
and the man nods and listens and cries.
His heart too depressed to
work
bathe
mend the tear on the
left shoulder of his shirt.
He is not poor.
Not cold.
Not hungry.
Only lonely,
looking for someone to
sit down and listen.
But you walkers by
turn your heads fiercely,
and litter his lap with
food stamps and wrinkled dollar bills.

I don't know what I want from you.
I don't want you like I wanted Snow in Arizona,
but I don't want you to leave me alone.
The silent hum of the sleek car,
hands at ten and two,
feet in the clouds,
head in another dimension.
I breathe in the fumes of grease and coconut, so maybe I'm sick.
A tropical disease.
Blood pours from a facet and I'm reminded of Christmas and summer sandwich shops.
I am an Indian in your Chrysler,
dance around my fire.
Careful, though,
you might get burned.
The flames lick flesh and taste the weakness.
That is how they thrive.
On vulnerable, open flesh.

Love is a yellow shotgun shell sitting on a shelf.
Love is a kiss on the forehead and on each cheek.
Love is peeing with the door open
and conversations in red sweatshirts.
Love is borrowed sweatpants and back rubs,
and being too deep in conversation to watch the movie.
Love is staying out past when you said you would.
Love is 48 index cards and
one scoop of ice cream.
Love is a family affair-
a sister, two brothers,
laughing in the kitchen and
seriously watching football games.
Love is the massive American flag
standing tall in a Macey's parking lot.
Love is waiting in the car at the gas station
and asking for a key to the bathroom.
Love is Scranton, Pennsylvania
and Burbank, California.
Love is homemade CDs and driving mindlessly through the night,
holding hands in silence.
Love is a bouquet of dead roses
in a vase full of murky water.
Love is the empty feeling you get on Wednesday nights
and the pang in your heart when you drive past the local pizza place.
Love is checking the mailbox every day.
Love is missing you.
Love is an atomic bomb.

I want you to want me unrequitedly.
I want you to see me in your morning cereal and in each sidewalk crack and in the ink of every headline,
while I am blind.
I want you to hear me in the songs on the radio and in the pounding of the raindrops and the birds chirping for the summer sunrise,
while I take out my hearing aid.
I want you to remember the name of my favorite poet and the way my hair falls over my eyes when I'm tired and the rage I have inside of me that come with thunderstorms,
while I only remember the stars.
I want you to feel naked and alive and cut open and brimmed with acid tears,
while I am clothed and dead and made of granite.
I want you to feel about me the joys of the world and the heightened feeling of love and the way you've never felt about anyone else before,
while I feel nothing.
I want you to want me
Unrequitedly,
So hurt me with your tears,
I'll bathe in them.

One man
can really change the world,
even if it's just by dying.
One man
can really lead thousands
if he kneels down and prays hard enough.
One man
can influence his pale demons
to lay down their pitch forks,
and also to pick them up.
One man
is just a man
is just a father
just a husband
just a preacher
just a speaker
just a man.
And does he truly want to be that
one man
that can really change the world,
even if it's just by dying?

I woke up and craved a foreign touch.
Foreign, forbidden, unforgettable.
Blue eyes that cut through diamonds
and the ribs of a skeleton.
Blue and orange and electric shades of fluorescent lights
and accidentally sitting cross-legged and delusional in the passenger seat.
I craved a touch I didn't know and didn't want,
and felt the peculiarity fill me like tar,
and I realized sometimes it's addicting to cut hearts open just to watch them bleed for you.

I kept a picture of you
above my bed for a long time.
I don't know why I left it there
for so long after you had left-
maybe it was out of hope that you would come back,
or out of the blind faith that you had never really left.
But it stayed and gathered dust and waited.
Waited for a day it thought would come,
the day when you reentered and found joy in its presence.
This picture saw me water
my bedspread every night for months,
hoping that would bring back old flowers that had died in the winter's cold.
This picture saw me hold a fragile piece of
lined paper in my hands
as if the words would revive some dead corpse buried deep
in the hard dirt.
This picture saw me look out my window and
gaze across the dead sea,
wishing to see floating pieces that could be put back together.
But when flowers die there's no coming back.
And corpses always stay cold.
And the dead sea has that name for a reason,
its pieces shrivel up.
So this picture,
it saw it all-
the cold months, the dreadful months, the months of repair and repentance, the months of sunshine and hope-
and for a while it held onto pathetic moments that seemed optimistic.
But pictures are amoral and hold no bias.
It was not fooled by faux-kindness and false hope,
unlike I,
and begged to be taken down.
Every time I walked into my dungeon it moped and wailed, but I was deaf.
Until one day, you ripped off my ears and forced me to hear.
So I took out the picture
and dropped it in the fire,
the death it had been begging for.

In another life, I was born a painter.
Gliding colors over canvas to imitate emotion.
Stepping back and marveling at the impressionism or the modernism or the realism of what I just created.
And people could look and gawk
and give gracious complements.

In another life, I was born a dancer.
Helplessly allowing melodies to transfuse my blood and move my limbs the way ocean waves move water.
Elegance in my bones, loveliness in my tendons, beauty in my ligaments.
Boys would leap toward me
and I would jeté toward them or grand jeté away from them.

In another life, I was born a singer.
A voice of gold and diamonds
that people love to eat
and bathe in.
Like summer sunlight in the springtime,
snow on December 25th.
Things people love to experience.

But, in this life, I was born a writer
so I live with what I must.
And I'll paint with my words-
give them color and life and realism, with just a hint of impressionism.
And I'll make my words dance-
across white pages, dressed in black, the smell of sweat and blood soaked within their skin.
And I'll make my words sing-
sing the ballad of my heart and the ballad of my mind and, maybe, even the ballad of the world.

Words are not inadequacy,
even in a world of painters, dancers, and singers.

I woke up to grey today.
It's windy and bitter and stale.
And I feel light as an anorexic feather
and heavy as a binge eating stone.

The sun used to shine in September and October.
It would spread a warm feeling across my back,
a nice break from the fresh, sharp fall air.
The sun doesn't shine much in the month of November.

The sun doesn't shine and I wish you were gone.
You hold me in your warmth and I wish you were gone.
You trace the contours of my face and I feel the trembling of your heart
and I wish you were gone.
I'm writing this poem and you're asleep in your room and I wish you were gone.

Because you make me bleed by trying to heal me
and the blood drips like tears on letters returned to sender.
A stained wedding dress infects my mind and suddenly
I have the urge to rip it to shreds, only to stitch it back together again.
(The internal conflict between staring into eternity or evaluating glass).

I hold your hand and I touch your lips and I tell you I'm glad that you're here
but I wish you were gone.

Take this hurting and write.
Write a poem for every detail.
Write a poem for every emotion, every memory, every thought.
Write lines and stanzas and poems.
Write poems and poems;
write enough poems to fill books.
Then, when this is over-
because it really does always end eventually-
it will feel like it was worth it.
That it was okay that you went through this.
That there was a reason for this trial
and maybe the reason was words.

I sit on yellow sand
and look across the purple sea
and watch a mute dance across the electric boardwalk.
We don't yell out to each other.
We don't cry for help or build a raft to find one another.
She is fine with her seagulls and I am fine alone.
Alone. Am I fine alone?
I like to think I am but the tide of
sadness creeps up as five o'clock draws near
and everyone else is fine.

That's how it is here.
Everyone else is fine.
You walk and you breath and you keep your head down
and no one asks if you're okay
because no one knows what it looks like when you're happy.
You eat alone and the empty chairs bring comfort.
You think about the colors changing on the mountains-
burnt orange, crimson red, baked yellow-
but you keep your romanticizing inside your head
because no one cares enough to listen.

You see someone one night, and they seem to care
but amnesia befalls them in the morning.
Glowing faces lit by electric tea lights
run by batteries and false hope.
A nose in a book never felt so wrong
and its hard to remember that
not even the clouds like to rain when the sun is looking.

One always misses neighbors and old people and babies in pews.
Or houses made into restaurants made into sanctuaries,
where jacked drinks are good and the service is bad.
One always misses going to the kitchen for a snack at midnight and running into your best friend that knows you because she gave you life.
Or spending Saturdays in the cool basement with the man that taught you all you know.
One always misses walking the streets without the fear of getting lost
or naming each house by the memory that comes with it.
One always misses when home meant family or when school meant people you knew by personality:
The hobbit that bled out equations, The girl next door and her nurture, The other half that is an art form in herself, the girl with hair like fire and humor like a drum beat, The Englishwoman from France that understood the ebbs and flows of life and always saw you better than you were, and mostly The boy up the street that makes you laugh and forget what you should probably remember.
One always misses having people that care.

So I sit here and write
and my name is one,
but I am not one at this moment; I am a million;
and nostalgia is a disease.

You.
You did this to yourself.
You cut yourself open and planted the infection inside of yourself.
This sickness is self inflicted so do not blame me for your muteness and deafness and vivid eyesight.
Maybe I'm just all too much like daisy
And you're all too much like Gatsby, and that's the problem.
Only with us there's no past to repeat and there never will be.
Tom cheated and myrtle died and Gatsby was a consideration because he flattered daisy and made her feel in control,
But Tom was always the past and present and future.
Tom was always.
You were never an option so don't get mad that I didn't choose you.
You created the ultimatum inside your head
When really, mermaids never even existed.
And neither did we.

People tell me that two years
is equivalent to the speed of a bullet train.
But I think they just say that
because they don't bleed when you're gone.
And 'cause they don't hear your name
when the wind whispers through the quakies.
To them, September is when
the leaves change
and the sun dims,
but when you hold me,
September is still too hot and should never be lonely.
People tell me I'll blink and twenty-four months will have
danced before my eyelids,
But they're just saying that
so I don't have to cry oceans at their doorstep
at one o'clock in the morning
because you were busy watching metal come alive.
And letters are good,
even though handwriting is bad,
but pen isn't the same as
hearing your voice breathe
'I love you'
or
feeling it in your arms.
Two years is a lot longer than twelve days,
and because of this
I know they are wrong,
And I have every right to feel like
I am drowning.

I love these ink stains.
These black splotches on the tips of my fingers and
the edge of my hand.
they are tattoos that tell strangers who I am.
And they tell me things too.
They tell me that I live.

Stay home after dark.
His heart touching her warm chest.
Looks of liquid sun.

His nocturnal eyes-
Dark sheets; Human Ache; All wrong;
I being his friend.

Your breathless chest soars.
Takes my hair quietly to
hold that flame in you.

Forgive her soft lips.
My affair that went so wrong.
I dreamed a dark gaze.

Hurt eyes. My soul ran,
Left flowers with skin yearning
for a human girl.

Longing caresses;
Breakfast between us lovers-
a radiant-esque picture

You left the picture
That the naked taste of love
stays sweet after all.

She dreamed with one soul.
So the moon, it tried to stay.
But her sun is here

You used to be a daydream.
Now, you're the one that wakes me up at midnight-
foggy and unremembered.
I wish I could ignite it.
Watch your blue sweatshirt turn to ash and
watch that smirk from a moment in the rain that you waited all your life for shrivel up into nothing.
I wish this Hi-Polymer eraser could erase memories.
The white rubber, mister magic,
never met you.
Never. Never. Never.
Never hating you.
Never letting you learn my name.
Never figuring out that you weren't as bad as I always thought.
Never yes or sure or maybe or a nod of my thick head.
Never take your hand or lean into you or feel your embrace for the first time-
Pulled away in the pool and ran away down the street.
Never cared enough to break someone's heart.
Never let your saliva twist around inside my raw and bleeding mouth.
Never let you give me presents or given you my own.
Never given you myself.
Never said yes to Prom or let myself kiss you four times or stay until three in the suicidal morning.
Never let you come back under the blazing sun or bore your way into my core.
Never given you my every piece of me to set in place of your missing, sad pieces.
Because you thought you were whole enough without me.
But I can't take those pieces back.
Maybe I can try and erase them...

There never was anything beautiful about
caribous or
lesbians.
That's what art is for,
and good thing he hates painting.
But he likes foul mouths and petite girls
and Chevy trucks.
So I cower in your presence and let your anger shoot inside of me.
Anger like lava or acid or the liquid of hell.
It seers through me.
It seeps into my veins and
sponges into my cartilage and
threads through every tendon in my muscles and flows over my heart and stomach
and boils me from the inside out.
You may be his sound board,
but you're nothing more than a ***** he uses to make me jealous.
You may have been in his mind for the night
but only because I was busy.
You may think you're wedging yourself in between him and me
like a tick
but you're only giving yourself
Lime's disease.
I hope you rot from the inside out,
starting with your black heart and ending with your
poisonous lips.
Let the buzzards eat your liver
and I'll devour your soul.

Why?
Why did I think of you under
red and blue and yellow last night?
I never dream of things that **** me.
Why?
Why did you leap into this world I've created?
I banished you by mistake and you threw away the key on purpose.
Why?
Why did I imagine your beautiful icy
eyes and tousled golden hair?
Your body was cold and your lips were stale
so
why
Why did I have to believe for two nano seconds that you had
released my own guilt?
Those rapid moments pressed searing pain across my heart,
over the wound I already burned into me.
Why?
Why do I need secrets weaved in between the binary code of "how are you?"?
You want to know
why?
Never come back again.

Once, you told me to write a poem about your love.
The crashing and demolishing and devouring
blue lips.
I tried, I promise.
But how do I bury what I did underneath water?
It floats to the top. Always.

Once, you told me to let my soul speak,
but it kept its ignorant mouth shut.
Now it's wailing and pining and crying
out for you,
but it stayed quiet much too long.

Once, you told me if I drifted away,
you would stay with me, laying on the grass,
the moon glowing and gleaming and smiling.
But you left me on the cold
September grass,
although the bitter air feels more like
November or
February.

Once, I was scared of falling asleep-
of Darth Maul and Aardvarks and little boys.
So you ran past trip wires and over laser beams to be with me-
my dream catcher-
but the back door.
You forgot the back door.
A few months later it happened again,
but this time your parents didn't call.
They think you're on a life preserver
this time.
Little do they know how blind they are.
That life saver is headed straight
to jagged rocks.
I a watching.
Still. Always.
A tiny drop in the dashing blue and
foaming white.
A tear drop.

Once, I told you my heart is an ocean of secrets,
and a few months later you found out exactly how.
And you cried thus filling our ocean with more salty drops.
Later, I filled it with my own.
And somewhere, somewhere in that vast ocean, spread out over miles and miles, both our teardrops are running around.

Once, you told me to write about salt water.
The waves and the tide and
capsizing boats.
So, now, when I think of the ocean,
deep blue, caverns, untold mysteries,
I think of you.

He thought a long while
about the weeks.
Recent weeks, weeks long past,
weeks to come.
Time was always a forgotten necessity.
Cool blue water hardly
protects anyone.
Who knew? Who knew?
Not him.
He dreamed while bathing in the dimming August sun-
about silk strewn across the floor and
betrayal and
the blinking emerald
eye of a cyclops.
Forever was a thing he idealized.
So were flowers and people and her.
and the way he looked at her-
as if the world could stop turning
yet he would be content to just
bathe in her presence forever.
His life was idealized,
the green paper, the sneaking lies,
the stiff men that pressed buttons
buttons
buttons.
But if he could grasp this one thing,
this dainty flower, he could have real satisfaction.
he was dreaming and grasping
and then the phone rang.
But he didn't answer it.

"I used to write."
She said in a melancholy voice.
"I used to draw and read and think.-
I used to be a writer."

She puts her head down and slightly to the left
trying to smile, but not all the way there yet-
like a black and white photograph.
It seems like the world has left her.
The little girl across the black stream drowned in the melting snow.
Pity. Because they sure loved to play in the springtime.
The older boy has given up his soul.
Sold it-not to the devil- but to defeat him.
Funeral attire.
She wore a black dress too.
Abhorrence turned into trust which turned into fondness
but too many rules and restrictions and ridiculous favors.
and now? Now what's left of that?
Everything is so solid and so broken at the same time.
If only Einstein was right and this moment was every moment.
So she was lonely and content and wishful and weeping and laughing and kissing all at the same nano second.
So she didn't have to ever drive away.
So she never had to leave the warm, lovely smelling basement.
So, even though the blonde craving a change had become mute,
they still talked till midnight and later.
So she didn't have to choose a worst moment or a happiest moment because it was all one.

because that is what truly killed her.
Time.
but time is a black and white photograph.

The way I miss thee seems to be unique;
'Tis not the way a teenage girl pines;
'Tis not the way computer lovers meet;
And neither is it how my mother lies.
My hand, alone, knows not to want another,
though loneliness will tend to grow it cold;
My lips, so soft, to taste those of thy brother
would rather rot until ten million old.
I can't forget the scent of thee, it's gone,
though stored away behind turned lock and key
and mixed with words that breath have I grown fond;
And use to fall in love with memory
the way I miss thee comes from love, so deep,
Not vain, nor false, but strong enough to weep.

The thick black sky lights up
Like a bug zapper.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Like touching static cling
or an overzealous strobe light.
The sky splits and bright yellow light streaks through
and threatens to touch the dry ground and
send an electric shock through the earth and the hard rocks.
Deadly and beautiful and quick.
as humans, we long to be near it.
To be so close our hair stands on end and a burned smell drifts through the air.
Strike the ground right before me.
Pierce the humid air.
Cut though the darkness.
We desire a close association to the thin lines of electricity we don't understand.
We'll never understand.
Not fully.
We think we do. We think we can cut it down to its atoms and find out what makes it rush out of the clouds.
And then it changes on us faster than we can blink.
And we realize we can never understand it.
The way it functions.
Shows up in our life one minute and disappears the next.
Beautiful and deadly and quick.
And you want it most as it streaks across the California stars.

I need to get over you,
But life is cruel and pushes us together like boats
borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I need to get over you,
But guilt hits me like bullets.
I need to get over you,
But I already know you love New York and turf cuts and
caramel coated cherry stems.
I need to get over you,
But I look so cool
with American flags over
my eyes and, hey, we're finally seventeen.
I need to get over you,
But you changed two of those
presets just to not miss me.
And no one knows why anyone likes baseball
or falling in love
or stealing musky sweatshirts and
falling asleep.
I need to get over you,
but cops find us and we're out
past curfew
and "All we did was sit
close to each other, officer, I promise."
Just drinkn' & dreamin' the
longer I run.
I need to get over you,
But you're so warm and I'm so
cold and it just fits
together like it should.
And I can't help but laugh and make
a mess of myself.
But you change your mind so fast.
When will be the next time?
I need to get over you.

Hair golden as wheat that sparkles in the sun.
It falls down her back and curls
perfectly in all the right places.
It flows an spreads out
as she dances with bare feet
then falls neatly back in its spot when she stops and stares.
Her piercing green eyes
(can we pretend they're green?)
cut through the soul and make you think you've met her before.
In a dream
or a fantasy
or a memory.
Her lips, red as a rose, lightly pursed
right before she smiles.
Then they come together once more as she gets serious.
Like two rose petals.
Her gentle touch and light movements.
The way her eyes flutter when she sleeps.
Vulnerable.

The only time you'll see me vulnerable.

She becomes I and I become she and,
as my dress turns from ink to blue and back again,
walk again through the castle then fall asleep with me.
Perfection.

It started hot and passionate and blinding.
Then it ran,
ran from me
faster than the alpine highway or
an Afro over your cute lisp.

And a bus leaves for 13 colonies and 14 days and
pictures are all I have.
Colorful but in
50 shades of grey.
Then never a breath from you
on the home front.
And disappointment marks my eyes.

Running all over town with eyes
like video cameras and
minds like a metal detector.
We wish we could be a fly on the wall or a plant in the earth or a new hair on your chin.
All moments,
every moment,
we know.
My fiend.
Detect this on your police detector.
Little blue Honda that looks tan in the sun.

White Camry.
Up the street then back down.
Serpentine through the neighborhoods
hoping to see a familiar body,
but not be seen ourselves.
Every day
till July 15.
Then waving goodbye to an empty house I once knew.
Where I stayed too long and talked too much about nothing.
Too many memories to remember and flash before my heart.
Then I blink and they're gone and we've passed it.

And finally I've mimicked Taylor Swift
and wrote a song about Paris.
And boys in Montreal.
Late hours. Early hours.
All hours.
Spent engulfed in our own music from our minds.

Military men. Marines that cheat and break hearts.
not enough sleep.
Lots of tire on asphalt.
Up and down and up and down and back again.
Not enough French
and a brand new white iPhone.

And the sun sets on another day
and still the one thing I want
doesn't go my way.

The wind whistles past my ear drums and
I am surrounded by green wind chimes,
it seems.
Crack, crack, rustle.
and a pile of fake animal bones.
Climb on them,
to the very top until the world is yours and you can see all the way back to the beginning.
Elephant Graveyard.
Four babies that bathe in the dirt and breathe in
white life.
Blue for you and you and you.
But not you.
Brown. Odd one out.
Come lie on the chests of
almost mothers and
fall into darkness.
The epitome of beauty is to relive the dust bowl?
I suppose to
the plaid men it is.
But not the depression or the
black and white photographs.
Lightning flashes inside green
canvas and
five girls scream with glee
and two girls' recognition
brings deathless happiness.
And with glee, fight back the urge to run a marathon.
To run home.
To run through dust and sage brush
and dung and
dry dry dry.
Eyes watering for lush green
in this,
the epitome of beauty.

Let's get one thing straight--
I am not obsessed with you.

I was in love with you.

And there is a
difference.

This brick.
This bulging pocket of blue jean.
This song player, noise maker, memory saver.
Eternal space.
Secret keeper.
It's my life, this brick.
You think you can touch it? have it? hold it?
Let my secrets run along your nerves and scurry in between your brain cells?
No.
I would rather die an ignominious death and
rot a thousand years in the sea than
watch your eyes scan my life.
Search the deep caverns of my soul.
Watch your heart scream and hear the echoes of blood curdling madness.
Your fingers would burn as
you caress the suggestive sentences.
back and forth and
it comes naturally.
Sad truths.
Depressing facts.
You'd rather pour acid on your
eyes
and have them turn to
dust
than read the conversations,
I swear.
The ability to chirp
and make it appear as if it came from my own mouth?
Ridiculous.
I do not believe in ventriloquism.
Weak images
your eyes cannot behold.
I would feel exposed.
Like "The Woman" bathed
in wool and cloth and silk.
And under memos?
The secret to how my brain works.
Why would I desire you to know the short cut
to my vulnerability?
The grey box to my wiring and the scalpel to my heart.
It's the way my soul thinks.
And you can't know that.
This brick, bulge, memory saver,
it's my secret keeper.
The fidelius charm cast over my own self.
The secret is kept within
the very soul of my secret keeper.
Giving the password up is worthy of death.
You will never hold its life on your hands.
You will never see my
soul.
You will never know my
heart.

I heard your voice today,

And then I missed your arms.

Isn't it exhausting,
living with so much hatred?
Not being able to let go
and forgive someone who once meant everything to you?
Doesn't it burn your skin and seer through your bones?
Eat you away?
Or have you changed too much
from the man I once new?
Now your heart has become numb.

I knew.
I knew from the moment you told me how beautiful
you thought I was,
that it would last only as long
as the twinkling of a far away star.
Not even long enough for me to to remember to say hello.
Five A.M. became a habit
and we danced to the songs of chirping birds.
I let you hold me even though I knew
your arms craved a different cold body.
Those long nights outside the church that weren't
long enough.
That cute lisp and curly hair.
Those shivering arms and basketball shorts.
The adorable shyness and humility.
Walk me to my gate one more time.
I should have let you come over that one night.
Hot and sweaty, 2 a.m.,
to sneak in and use my shower.
Fill the room with sticky heat
and let the steam rise out as you exit the shower.
(You can still take me up on that offer.)
Cause I miss the way you tell me I don't smell like smoke
and how you listened to me explain
the theory behind the elder wand,
like you actually cared.
Fern Gully.
You spelled it wrong.
No spaces.
I. I. I.
Your jacket smelled like heaven draped over my legs and
I wanted to live inside the threads.
Walking so far just to listen to me ramble on.
Was it worth it? Ever.
Even after running back to her?
One. One. Only one week
that I was temporarily in love.
Tiger's Blood snow cones with cream on top
and you've never been to a concert so run to Salt Lake with me.
You do like to run, don't you?
Run from your mom. Run from your friends.
Run from feelings.
Run from her.
and Run to her at the same time.
But don't you miss laying in the street at three in the morning?
Or shaking the hand of the copper man?
and watching the summary of my obsession
on  my short green couch?
and holding me?
Even though it lasted a week,
a perfect week,
it's time to disappear.
Tick Tock. Tick Tock.

You.
You are 10,000 miles away
and yet, I still want to run  my hands through your
wet, dark brown hair.
I want to press myself against your warm body
and live in the steam and smell of a hot shower.
I want to breathe in your kiss and taste the shampoo
that slowly dripped  from your wet mop and fell on your lips.
Find a cheap motel room and dream there.
Dream the things you live and live the things you dream.
In that dimly lit, musky, hotel room that I'm dreaming of right now,
where we can forget the world.
I want to forget Clint Eastwood and September and the snow.
I can't remember the color of your eyes
because you kiss with eyes closed
and it's been an awful while since I've opened them.
I wish.
I want to watch you drive down California highways--
sunglasses on and my bare feet hanging out the window, my nailpolish sparkling in
the California sun.  
I want to make you laugh, and watch  your perfect eyebrows crinkle with
your nose when you admirably look at me.
I want to take pieces of paper and write my heart on them
then put them in a memory box
and throw them all out the window.
I want to go to the airport and find you standing
all alone,
looking lost .
Then pull over in a car and make the night alive.
Listen to the stars laughing and lose myself inside of you.
I want the games.
Challenging and, well, you know.
I want the way you make me feel.
Like I'm about to burst out of my skin
at any moment
because of passion.
I want. I want. I want.
You.
Find a dark place deep into the night and settle down
for a couple hours and let our minds shut
down for once.
No devil truck or eyeless lips or hand guns to decide our fate.
and just slip away into each other's bodies,
and become submerged in each other's kiss.