Been thinking bout love
Thinkin' bout the way it's soft and warm

She's a calm and holy thing, my love
She's a kiss rich like indigo
and my one hand praying behind my back

I thought we knew
Thought we both know I'm a little wild,
little bit of a tidal wave inside
I think we both know she's up in a cloud somewhere,
think we both know she's Aphrodite

The unspoken is the holy sometimes
and the humanity is a bedsheets love
Real people love in real skin
its playful
its present moments

Sometimes the present is forever
Sometimes fantasies never come
Still always predicting and,
doubting the usually right
We never wanted to be right

We are all ancient
with past and future selves
Do you know who you have been inside of?
Who has been inside of you?
Who you have guarded your soul from or taken step to embrace
I feel all of them at once; I am stronger from this

Break me holy like bread
Take your step toward heart song
I am here at the gate
All linen flower and no regret
Open me holy like sunrise

The spoils of our labor
turn heavy in the heart
and light in your arms

We sat fireside
in the circle of my first hope
and I was sixteen
and it was the only light I had seen
since I came out of the womb

One by one
the poetry spilled from their mouths
as tears did from my eyes
and the cold froze them to my cheeks
the foreshadow of a winter I did not yet know

I used to be an eloquent girl
but when my time came
all I could say was
“I am here because I need to know
that there is still good left in the world”
That is all that I could get out before the tears became too much

That was a few hours
four years ago
Since then
I have seen an entire ocean
played hooky with wine and thunder storms
and lived as an entirely different woman

but tonight I need to be sixteen again
I need to see that goodness again

I’m all hopeful and fleece bits
but there’s blood in the soup
and a bitter taste in all our mouths

She's all morning sleep and maple lattes
but there’s heartbreak under her sheets
and burnt bridges in the telephone wires

We’re all hazy summer and weary nature
but there’s castles on mountains
and softness in the water.

I felt in your heavy fog

autumns of the past

long days where my youth dreamt

of many ways my life could play

not one of them was this

You’re allowed to enjoy things
even though you are having a terrible time

You are allowed to feel pain
without being afraid

You are allowed to fear pain
it is never your fault that this world hurts you

It is not perfect,
but it is something

So you lay here wondering why he doesn’t touch you like that,
or why he does

And it doesn’t seem fair your beauty be ****** in like this
you are only woman but you are holy
sacred light, hallowed bloom, and Her

I sometimes see people as ghosts
and when they speak to me
my heart jumps
"you’re not supposed to be alive”

I wish their words were mine.

You speak like I have answers
I am only lost in the light
It all seems brighter there

The universe is screaming at me
that others are not enough
that I cannot slide my heart
into other people’s pockets
and expect them not to wash their clothes

but how do you chose yourself
over others
when there was never a choice
in the first place

In the soft sounds of the rain
and loneliness
this house invites
I protect myself from the outside
And it’s winds that rattle
my windows and doors
To bring in the night,
the dark cold of winters breath,
the stolen warmth
But you and your smile
like a lit candle on my empty table
You see me
Your warmth travels
Always welcome

There are havens in our lives
They're all tiny places I couldn't live without
The spaces we run to without thinking
Without second thoughts
They're decorated like our souls
And feel like a cabin in the woods

Peach House still makes me think of you
but you never even lived there

You were the first one
who brought me flowers
Held my hand,
told me you loved me
No matter what
All this,
when I was nothing,
and I believed you
and we believed in each other

And you are as far away
as this country can reach,
but I feel you in this drink
and in every acorn I see
In this place you would hate
and these people you would not understand
Neither do I

I’ll always have tenderness for you
but I do not know how to love you
from here

I'm still daydreaming
of the slow stretch of your spine,
your collarbones along my raw lips
Find your new home in me
Alongside rubble that I tried to clear long ago
We'll make baby baskets
and carry all our eggs in them
Take our tea to the garden each morning
I'll show you which herbs taste as sweet as your dewy cheeks
Please darling,
Sink your toes into my soft earthy heart
It feels like lamb’s kiss when you do
Meant to be
here
on slow mornings with racing hearts

Do not touch me with filthy hands
I am holy skin in blooming cocoon
My skin in jasmine; yours in blackberry
How can you fill me without looking
how can you feel me without knowing

THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC.
THERE IS NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT CRIPPLING SELF-DOUBT.
THE HOLE IN MY BEING DOESN'T NEED TO BE FILLED BY ANOTHER PERSON.
YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME.
YOUR LONGER DAYS DON'T EXIST ANYMORE.
JUST BRING MY BODY BACK.

This room smells like burning wood
I hope the fire brings her home
I hope warmth will creep into my skin
I need my woman like wool in the winter

We’re beating through the snow
and the skin we have sinks colder when apart

I want to burn to ashes under her

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 have sand under both of my *******
and blood under each of my nails
Your song breaks us together
your love shakes me home

It does seem planned
Doesn’t it?
Like the acts of a play
or The rules of a game
A predetermined course
I had no say in,
But must suffer through

No matter which way I turn the tables
It’s fixed

Ignorance is bliss
until the facade falls apart
You can sing mantras and prayers
Meditate in the moonlight
Give gratitude in every act you make
but it will not quiet
the core of your pain
It is not medicine
for the poison in your own veins
Everyone dies by their own hand
No matter how it happens,
it is always your own destructible being that betrays you

So we all try to sedate
The happiest of us, naturally high
Meds,
quiet the mind
bring peace to the war
But nothing is really fixed,
Is it?
You just pressed the pause button
on your own life
And we all know you can’t play games with time
Without consequences

Time
It’s passage, a comfort
a torment
The more it passes
the thicker my skin
but after years and years
Somehow the only thing I’ve done,
is build walls
What about dreams?
What about the life you’d imagined for yourself at five years old?
But now we say,
I’m not afraid of dying,
I’m afraid of what it would say about me

I have been living in poetry for months
and she holds me in her love
and her hope keeps my eyes open

but I have no life here
everything dies here

and you said we are not meant to live like this
we are stuck in what has been decided for us
and neither of us
can find the stars
to lead us out

BRING BACK YOUR HOLLOW HEART
FILL IT WITH THE TEARS YOU LEFT ON HIS PILLOW
NO ONE WILL EVER NOTICE YOU AREN'T WHOLE
IT STILL LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE PINK AND PULSING
HE WON'T NOTICE, HE'LL NEVER GO THAT DEEP

Romanticize your nightmares
Become unstoppable
Build houses in the terror
And force it to live beside you
Suffocate it under relentless new growth

the premise of a perfect garden is a lie
you cannot break something
order something
meant to be wild
something that still
so intensely
has it’s own free will
it’s own direction toward the sun
but you can marry it in it’s perfect home
with it’s perfect companion

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

Was I really so wrong
in wanting affection
(yes)
to satiate something I couldn’t have
(home)
I am hungry for a pasture
so I fill my stomach with the only peace I can find
(pleasure)

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

I feel for her
in the August haze
the September grit
She brings moonlight
to my eyes
Stinging already
with choked-up passion
the messy downpour of my heart
now, in excess
We tangle weekends in
my hair,
her sheets
My insides, swollen
with a rage
of timid want
Our bellies, full
with a drunken softness

I can still feel her hands
lingering touches
the top of my thigh
the valley of my hip

I can still feel her ear
pressed to my chest
and the rumble of her laugh

since yesterday

since the coffee, melted around her palms
since the air froze
still
I wanted her close
swinging dreams in front of me
close enough to blur,
to mistake for the mid-day sun

it’s all a time game now
how long will she take to leave me?
how long will she take to stay?

Spring makes me soft
I just wish
there was a spring
that did not break me harder
than the year before

The honey may be gone
The light may be dim,
but the woman
in your bed
is sacred
Her name feels holy
and her touch
is the closest
I’ve ever felt to God

The creek beside us in its
lines and waves,
and your hands just the same
Sing me our willow song
one more time
before the sun goes down
Sing into my open mouth
once more
Of the tiny spiders,
and their silk
Woven through the hair on your arms

The peach fuzz on my cheeks,
soft as lambs ear against yours

Should we hang our linen in the granite caves?
swim into the shaded creek
Should we take apart each inch
of each other's skin
Just to feel what's underneath?

I say,
touch me weakly
even if
the nervous flutter
of your fingertips will not reach my heart
I still need to feel you