You know it's getting bad when you don't bother to turn the lights on.

Fight or flight instinct in the form of rivers running dry. Feeling blurry, a forgery. The end is always the same, penalties lying in ditches and the sirens running red and blue like the fourth of July.

Shimmering sawdust that forgets how to become human again. Try to remember the moments you stilled into statue. They become important. Trust me.

This is not Jerusalem. There is no holy left. It's a too-human fight, and I hope what they say about time healing things is true because this scraping, this constant rearranging of the keys, it's too much.

When nothing makes it better, not the kisses, or the pills, or the planets. Nothing. The past and present chewing me up and spitting me out, until the future can get its hands on me too.

I am still trying to figure out right and wrong. I am still trying to find out where the bandages are, but it's hard, you know?

She had soft smiles and a degree in empathy framed in her office, but I couldn't stand her for more than a month. I could see her pen twitching in her hand. After all, there are boxes to tick if I get too honest.

I shouldn't have called my mom, or let her fish me out of the river. While I was coughing liquid from my lungs, I heard her tell the paramedic,

*She could have learned to breathe underwater, if only she'd tried harder.

Giving a name to a space is easy.
Giving a reason for it is much more
complicated, but she had a talent.

You thought there would be more to it,
fiery words, shouting in smoke, maybe
even an explosion or two, but it didn't
happen that way. You thought there
would be a bang, but you got a whimper
instead. It's the feeling when you're about
to sneeze and don't, underwhelming-ness
overwhelming you. Do you feel that?

I will crawl out of my grave and come
looking for her. I did it every day in high
school anyway. She said she wanted to see
the inside of my tomb, but I didn't know
what it looked like until I closed the door
behind us. I'm sorry.

We wanted everything, the whole wide world,
with all its decrepitness, all its Jerusalems,
all its glittering scars. We really did. Maybe the
effort matters. Maybe desperation counts for
something in this world. I can feel it; she belongs
everywhere. A place isn't a place unless she's
touched it, as if her breath alone has changed the
very chemistry of the air.

I just wanted her next to me. Is that so terrible?
There are worse things to want. Honestly,
I want the worse things too, but I'm willing to
give them up for her.

Because I know her. I know her in ways words
can't touch. I know her in breath and blink
and almost, those words the words themselves
can't grasp, as if their own meanings are lost
to them. Because I know her.

She was solid and soft. She held my hands
inside hers until they were warm again, and
when I looked at her, the world slowed down.
I could think clearly again.

But the beach, always the beach, water colliding
with rock violently and the air crackling with
something unnameable. I drew circles in the sand
while she stared at the back of my head, rolling
pebbles around in her hand. After she left, I knew.

A blessing looks a lot like a curse when you're in the middle of it.

I can not shake the almost-memory
of your warring skin, or the depth
of that moment in meaning,
never the slow silence bleeding
out of you in waves, your pulse,
your years falling out like baby
teeth, and the inside of you in grey,
clipped and dim lit dreams dashed
into shards.

Your all-too-silent night.
I think of you and I think of you,
in different lights, bathed in other colors,
all your faces, your expressions melting
into one another. I've found every you.
I've kept them here, together, like a roll
of film, and sometimes, when I'm sad,
I pull them out and look for my face too.

The moon says, It will save you
so much pain if you let me take your
wisdom teeth now. Lovely moon,
silky-voice moon, moon like chalk,
so soft and crumbly on your hands,
hands that rake through my hair like
a yard of fallen leaves.

Remember, darling?
I do. A night like the sweetest peaches,
and in the morning, only left with the
pits, counting the mistakes, measuring
the loss like scientists study black holes.
I won big. I scratched your name out of
a lottery ticket and told everyone but you
how lucky I was.

Heart of hearts, dark of darks, heart of darks,
how it all flows, the music changing the words,
making them understand each other, connecting
them like we connect them in language. The
music has its own language. We call it poetry.
We call it song. Sometimes I recognize it when
she speaks. Sometimes words leave us, but
the music is still there.

fingers tapping against your thigh, music note mumblings. subtract everyone else and watch the feeling
m
  u
     l
       t
         i
           p
              l
                y
disassemble and reassemble the ensemble and allocate your earnings as earnestly as you can without appearing overeager. overhearing a conspiracy between my lips and your neck. a secret isn't a secret unless you whisper it, so do it, make sure the russians don't hear us as they rush off to give reports on that look I just gave you, the one that is oh so telling. reveling in it. living in the revelation of your skin, pouring down your presence like honey, like sweet molasses dripping thick and sweet, simmering under the sun, glimmering in the water like a jewel, jealous and ****, painful and dark and dazzling. beating only in anatomical hearts, out of tune, cacophony and cruel crimson, missing someone not something, left wanting and waning in the light of a lopsided moon, farsighted and fingers that prune in purple light rippling across the walls, willing to travel the planes of your body, embodied travesty traversing the sahara, dunes doomed to be swept away by the wind, breaking and kept away, each grain unable to touch one another more than once, gorgeous enough to be pain, staking your claim on misery before the misers bury it in their own backyards, backwards discovery, a convenient amnesia, believing ruses and runes to decipher in delicate dictum like tricking a language into translating itself.

almost too much of not enough.

It’s pathetic really, I know,
that I’d live off the scraps of you,
the hand-me-down, half cares and
“hullo’s” you’d throw while I scramble
for your neck in the dark, and ****
you for “just out of reach” and
mumbles under mountains of
day and dream, fervor-filled anthologies
built on your hands and the
consequent shadows cast.

I never got to taste you,
but I imagine it’s something
like 16 and gasoline. The question isn’t
what we really want. We want a
blood bath, the world in flames, but we
cry when the red doesn't come out
of the towels. It's just who we are.

Good riddance!*

Scream something in the privacy
of your mind and the body
might reject it. Gagging on the
thought, false and fumbling
but raw nonetheless.

I could only think of ugly words
for it, haggard, maybe, wasting, rot,
so I changed my tune to angry.
Sad makes us pale and sick,
but furious is fetching.

Bitter taste on the tongue, don't flatter
yourself. You weren't the one who
taught me, "they'll never say it back."
I had a lifetime of prayer for that.
You didn't make me this way; you
just stepped on the landmine.

Mangled and mine.
Tell death how you like it and
maybe you can get down on all fours,
pretend it was me that did you *****,
pretend it was me with a noose in my hand.

The way it itches inside, the
cacophony of it all, the utter music
of the moment in screeches.
It is anything but romantic.
It is something I broke my arms
to reach.

Just underneath the surface,
something dark and impatient.
It's always been there, sharp and
rubbed the wrong way, cursing and
simmering. Sometimes I think
you know exactly what you're doing.

Falling all over,
drenched in a rain
that has made you shiver
so long you wouldn't recognize
sun if it fell across the pavement
in front of you. But the sun
always leaves shadows anyway,
so you pick your battles.

Stranded in this sea
my mother says is a just a stream.
You never believed in mutiny, only
making decisions that were
"best for everyone."

And how can I argue with that?

The side character, the bent-in
bottle cap, reducing me to a
bad habit. I know. I said I wasn't
going to do this anymore.
I said a lot of things. I'm sorry.

The crux of it,
I think. I'd rather a noose
hold me up than use you
as a crutch. Shaking our heads
at the kicked-up dust, I never
wanted it to be this way.

I don't have any explanations for you.
I'm just crazy.