If you take the dream out of a lover
you’re left with the empty shell of potential
the scarred remains of a once bright
and beautifully naiive young heart

She takes steps off any path
builds walls for others
and tears away
her own self, the skin so valued
by everyone but her own

Great waves of rotten somethings
fill her eyes
until the dream passes by unnoticed
lost in the wash of time
never given
never open
and she lies with her big heart
still open at her throat
the ruffled dresses
of all the children
she was forced to bear
in tatters at her waist

She thinks that love will make this a war
I've found her in one before
but this one showed her eyes
darker than black water

I know that love does not happen easily for me
Because I am a woman
a 12-hour work day to love

She doesn’t know that yet
She doesn’t know I’m bent at the waist with the weight of it

It will take all year,
We will not know until the snow has come
and gone

I've been watching fire bombers glide across this October haze
I've been living in the same flame
of some charred detachment
and
intimate slow burn

The sirens grow loud
and then faint
and
She lays on my bed
her hand on my naked hip
I'm
Falling somewhere I've never been

I think I found my own abyss
There's a chaotic calm waiting at the edge
An anxious acceptance
watching this life happen

I let it
I stand horizontal on this bed
Falling asleep, falling deep into black

When I need to be held
I cannot ask this of anyone
So I fall into my mother
the river
And she catches me
in her current
strong arms
strong waves
of reassurance
I ask her
“Is it right to love like this?”
She presses into me harder
“of course,
my child”
I cry to her,
“I love her, mother”
She floats me downstream
wrapped in her whirling hymns
past the falls
past the sharp rocks
and unkind matters
There’s no one else to be found but us
And she showed me this time
Her miracles are my answer
“Will I be okay?"

I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I’m gay I'm gay
it kind of
spills off my tongue
when I don’t want it to
an
impulse
a
burning choke in my throat
falling out of me when I wish it would stay inside
when strangers are around
when
they really don’t need to know

it’s painted on my face
it’s written on the backs of my hands
my collarbone is burning white hot with a tell
and my eyes watering every secret of it

can they tell?
can everyone see right through me?
I’m
too scared to ask
somehow
also too scared to keep it inside

It wants out more than anything
but
she wants to be safe more than anything

In the gullet of September you feel a strange constriction
A rust colored hand around your throat
digging into the memory of what you never were
Its nails scraping up dead things
of skin,
of uncertainty from a teenage year
A bellowing illness
once forgotten from walking so far
left to waste under bare feet
until the weather came round
and the conditions laid,
for an autumn gross with the pain of knowing
Wishing you didn’t know
Wishing so hard it accidentally comes true
and haltingly,
sorely,
life is no longer of the present

In California the sun is just a part of your skin
Melts your layers
Filling you captive
pushing you complacent

You’ll wake in September with a sunburn and gold glossy eyes
And when autumn's near, you realize
You got caught up in her like leaves in a gutter
Let her deal every poison you named
let her feed you, full bellied
But baby,
you’re no better than me

I lost my breath
somewhere between the peaches and the hair on my arms
blonde, and bleached by the sun
Seems I've been reaching up to God to often

In case you were wondering (which i know you weren’t)
I'm burying myself again
In a cold, in a tropical winter
To avoid watching others die
avoid watching my own irresolution
To avoid the the heat of summer I feel playing fast forward on my muscles
We’re tired
We’re all so tired