And when I ask you,
“Can you hear me?”


I want you to say yes.

Yes, muy bueno
Yo puedo te ollo.

Yo quiero tu to say yes
But you never can
Because tu estas en el agua
Floating around
Like a little baby
Before it’s born
Except, that baby has ears
And it can hear me
It can listen
Probably
If I yell loud enough.
Pero, yo quiero
I want
I want you to hear me
To hear me
But you are in the water
Never listening
Except to the sounds
Of the waves
That don’t even exist
Except to you por que
No quieres escuchar a mi.
All you hear are
the whoosh of the air as you ride by on your bicycle
the crackling of the leaves as you jump into that dead pile, imagining that it is alive
the groaning of the door as you sneak out past three in the morning, unsure
but uncaring
and you can hear me
but I’m muffled by that ******* agua
que tu estas en,
aqui.

going to our favorite baseball field
in a car

I look out the windows
and see grass
like the stuff we used to lay in while

you played your guitar
and I hummed

I know you

more than I know myself
you are my home

I am home

you are the softness
and  spicy smells
and curly red hairs that I find on my coat

you are the song my dad used to play
before I grew up and lost him

and do you remember when we would bike down to that
gas station and buy iced teas
and cigars

how did I come to be so very far from you?

smoke fills my lungs
and fire burns my heart

but I know I’ll be back soon.

he lifts up my skirt
and says not to worry

but I do anyway

but I don’t tell him that
and he gazes into
my blossom

while I am cringing
because of the cold

but i don’t tell him that

and then it’s hurtinghurtinghurtinghurtinghurtinghurting

and then it’s over
and I feel the exact same as I did before
but I don’t tell him that

and I don’t think he proved his love to me
like he said he was going to
he didn’t make me feel good
like he said he was going to
and I still don’t love him

but I don’t tell him that

can’t get my mind off of
sexsexsex

lying eyes
fruitful decadent lips
sharp neck
shoulder
******
bellybutton
hips (round and hard like a rising cliff--
heaving and sliding)
and then
comes the places where I feel at home
where you like to burrow
make love to me

before the sun goes down again

When we were in fifth grade we used to pretend that you were the President.
We’d sit you up on your desk, located on the tallest slide and bow down to you,
And then you’d address the world.

And when I got bored, I’d go pinch the boy I liked
And when he ran away, I’d kick him

But I don’t think I ever kicked you

Because you never ran away


And when we were thirteen
You biked to my house in the rain

And I didn’t even offer you a towel

But you didn’t even kiss me.
So we both can have our regrets, I guess

But now
When we’re sitting in your car
With wind in our hair

We can feel our pasts
Meshing like
The way our lips do

When we sing together


You make my heart, skip

I am his soda; he drinks me in

caresses me with his hands

brushes lips against me

for the period of bliss, life is heaven

                                Pure Ecstasy

I am his soda
  
Until one day, unexpectedly

he drops me

on the pavement- Crunch! with his foot.

he tosses me carelessly  

into a bin. He threw me in.

He threw me away.


I am an empty, crushed soda can.

The recycling man soon arrives

melting me, molding me back into myself

He fills my soul with something
  
bubbly and sweet

So here I'll wait

for a boy who won't crush me up

But instead, pour more Love into his cup.

The way I felt when you came up to me
on the second day of school,
and I thought you were being nice,
but you only did it because the teacher told you to.

The way the sound of your laugh is deep and heartwarming
and how I hear it in my head when I take the dew covered back roads home
on my bicycle before 8 p.m.
because my mom will yell at me if I get home at 9,
and when she does yell
I just think of your laugh
and your face
and it’s better.

The way your cat tries to chase the light
reflected off of the face of your broken watch
and how you always put it on the ceiling
and drive him crazy.

The way I took a shower that night with all of my clothes on
and I couldn’t explain why

The way the water reaches out from under the wheels of your car
while the rain beats down on the hood, and I smell the dead worms from my window, wondering where you are going

The way I can’t sleep without noise in the background
because I used to live in the city
and you would always turn on a whirring whispering fan
so I could fall into dreaming with you next to me,
smelling the mildew and flour in the air
my mother calling and calling
but we would never answer the phone
because the ringing just made it easier to sleep

The way your hands knew exactly what to do
in the night
parting lips and hips and breath
when my mother went to her book club
and I snuck you through the back door
praying my neighbors wouldn’t tell

The way you looked at that building
in the middle of the dark damp city
and brick didn’t come to your mind.
But instead, you saw the single soul that designed that structure
that you could live in one day,
if the world blew up.

The way the sky is the ocean when I’m with you.
The way the ocean is the ground when I’m with you.
The way the ground is the sky when I’m with you.

The way we both knew that I wouldn’t know what to do here if you ever left,
and now I’m lost

The way I feel while I send you this letter.
The way the envelope tastes bittersweet
And the way I know you will never get it
because you live somewhere else now,
in a sad place where you can’t hear me anymore,
although I sing as loud as I can.

The way I think about you
while standing up on the roof of my house
shivering in the sleet
on a sad Thursday evening
my mother looking for me all over the house

The way you feel when you hear Bob Dylan,
and I just don’t get it.

The way I feel when I hear a baby crying,
and you just don’t get it.

The way sometimes I think maybe we’re not supposed to “get it”
but *******, I want to try like hell anyway.
And we can both understand that.