the people here are
static on the television
food with preservatives
plastic flowers.

did you know that it only takes one
deformed cell to give you cancer and
i sometimes want to scream in the middle of a lecture
because i smoked that one cigarette in october
and what if i have cancer
and i wasted all the autumns, winters, and springs
of my life as a robot of the american dream
taking classes and making grades
and earning letters on a page
and if i die too soon from cancer
everything i’ve accomplished
will fit on an 8x11 sheet of paper.

Would you mind terribly if I painted our bedroom
the color of the sky the day we first met?

I still see it clearly in my head –
Crayola calls it “cesious” or “wild blue yonder”
but there is something missing from that, something more sad
given grey of an infirmary above for angels.

I want to savor  that emotion, remember
that we can be one together and imperfect at the same time:
let us paint the bedroom like a hurricane sky –

I will have insomnia, yet love you in the morning.

I was told not to love another woman
I was told not to **** any man
so I thought about books when I laid in my hammock with lemonade
how I wanted one with a spine as long as mine
to finger in the dark of a moonless night, rather than myself
or any mermaid-girl who dripped with water like loose gemstones.

Her stories were what I would read and her body
I would imagine swimming to the harpsichord of a fantasy film song
effervescent, but never touched by anyone
even a fellow without blowfish thorns for fingernails
as smooth as hardback covers, as permanent as paperback pages.

And I grew up, and I did love another woman
and I did **** a man
but I still remember the mermaid-girl who had paper fins
and an all-consuming love for splashing ink like an ocean’s brine.

i can't make our relationship sound
beautiful anymore.

Once, all I saw were train-tracks the way falling dust
looks like tiny sprites pirouetting in midair.

That is what I recreated every time
he could not walk from the loading port into me,
sparkles in a cardboard box for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries
crowding like fairies and lightning bugs during summer.

Just like it.
Three years ago, my hair was shorter and it could not
get knotted in razorblade patterns:

your hair was longer then, we added all of our strands together
and decided it is all very equal now.
You can rope me to train-tracks and wait to pick me up,
until then, I am an insect fossilized in amber
my body is the shape of a soapbar, my consistency hot wax.  

Sometimes the train comes by
without me even realizing the time is 12:53am.

Sometimes it is 4:08am, so I ask why you have not arrived.

You have had two hundred cups of tea since I
last tasted you, and every single one was a gift from me in
one of those containers packed with glittering beads.
The bottom of your mug holds herbs floating like sprites in midair.

Just like them.
Sometimes at 1:44am I think I am the same
flying by wing to you.

Our date in the bathroom was the best
you, in the tub, and me bending over to staple my hair in a bun.
We were both naked but neither of us looked good
just beautiful and imperfect, soggy like flowers after rain
until I used the dryer that works in a crescendo
belly up, then down, cool sprays
hot as chocolate under a pair of wintertime mittens.
Now I can laugh, remembering the best part: as soon as I finished
and seemed as unspoiled as a girl with fresh afterglow can,
my locks slicked back by your sweat and sink-water,
you asked me to take a shower with you. Wet again and
feeling so romantic as I step on the fur you shed
then the stomach of where your bare bottom had rested.
Remembering our best date
how your ***** looked like a cat’s tail wagging against my skin
how you picked out what ******* I should wear next
how I dropped your belongings in my underwear drawer
(for me to find a month later, Valentine’s Day)
and still pure, I mopped the puddles with our towel afterward.