the heart: a place where it happens.

flesh to flesh.
blood to blood.
we made a pact,
you and I.

we made a pact.

cartwheels, sun skip
        skip,
              hop and
wow I need a scotch.

counting to ten, then 20,
phonics and the 50 states.
listening, listening. there
are spies everywhere.

what's mine is yours and vice versa.

sapphire sparkling under
the water and the ants
struggling on the surface.

pull me under and we're
mermaids again. pull me
under and keep me there.

keep me here. we made a pact.

we made an island, so
gather the coconuts. lead
the cannibals across the
mountainside.

I'd never let them eat you, promise.

pinky promise, glittering
promise, stick a needle
in your eye and all
that rot.

the reward isn't the gold at
the end of the rainbow.
gold means the game's over.

the reward is the rainbow.

the forever (implied), the
countryside (ransacked).
who likes an ending?

it was somewhere
after eyeliner, perfume,
words maybe,

something golden.

What can I say?
You didn't read the warning label.

Dangling from the ceiling, fluorescence like drunken accents dripping from the tongue, the fallacies we fashion into stars and let hang in our eyes, etc etc.

You know the story. You were there,

how in that light,
we almost looked human,

the city screaming around us, the dusty night engulfing everything.

I mean, even zippers have teeth,

so slam the window shut. Slam the door. Slam and slam and slam until my name doesn't matter anymore,

your eyes like the barrel of a gun, your eyes like headlights.

I'll be doing the same,

taking pictures out of their frames. It feels different that way, a naked memory.

doing the laundry, cutting up the furniture, spotlights for the spotlights. I know

you liked to think yourself a martyr for our love. I wish someone would've shut you up,

the skin in my teeth from chasing my own tail. You never forget the taste of blood.

*******, darling.
I have more important things to feel guilty about.

the taste of metal

clack clack clack

nothing is pure anymore

A life without fear is a life without friction.

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.

Only this, only these nights so dark and still are real. They are the only ones that mean anything. All the rest is just noise, useless noise, and I want to bury myself so far into the earth that I never have to listen to another rotten word of it again.

There are things inside me I don't want
to find you. There are parts of me you
can't have.

Maybe if we whisper, drum up another
name for this, if we bleed a little more,
the world will finally make sense.

I don't want to meet you in the middle.
I want us to push each other to extremes,
test the limits, feel along the boundaries
and find where it gives.

You swear you’re already dead, but I hear your pulse talking, love, a mile a minute, a cherry stem, it’s telling me how the night’s going to end up. Chest of weeds, death the real way, romance-less.

I don't want to forget this.
I want to mourn it.

You backed me into a corner, and I had to
make a new world, a world you could
love me in, because this one is too cruel,
too thoughtless and tiring.

We're weak. We bruise too easily. We’re
jagged and cowardly and sick. Somewhere
else, we are better. We know how to love
without all the blood.

We beam out in all directions, and never
once wonder if it's all a lie.

Romance with the dew, who meets my cheek and mistakes me for earth, the dust of empty pews, the almosts and maybes and sometimes cruel cause I can, feeling for a light switch in the dark, the missing and the trying, and the walk back home. It's the dusting off.

you and your comebacks and come back. I'm not finished with you yet.

not-so-soft-spoken and salacious

sharp wit and even sharper teeth.

God's foxholes,
pick your poison,
burn burn burn, and
snare, flesh out an idea
and let it take hold. grit
your teeth, strip the bark
or just strip instead.
cherry, rabid, dragonflies
and headlight eyes.
this dream running us
ragged, this glittering
copper and boil before
you burst.

There is a piece of your skin that refuses to burn.
I keep sinking my teeth into it.

Candlelight is romantic, unless
you're in a dungeon.

Context changes everything.

Context makes you look down
at the bridges you build and realize
they are plywood: thin, cheap, but
soggy enough from this rain that
they're impossible to burn.

Realism is a myth. Everyone has a lens.

People believe what they want to believe,
or they believe the worst. Sometimes they
alternate, tense and relax at all the wrong
moments, a sigh of relief before the crime
has been committed.

Everyone loves a hero until they are up
against them.

The unforgivable becomes forgivable
in the right context, ****** as self-
defense, or in war. Fear and arousal
provoke identical symptoms in the body.
Sometimes the boundaries bleed together.

Sometimes ethics surrender in the face
of love.

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.

You might have seen them through the window,
a little girl pouting on the stool and her mother
behind her, deft fingers weaving the strands
together, chocolate hair in french braids and the
wrinkles in her blue gingham dress.

There is a beginning to everything.

Golden-hair boy, caramel colors glinting in the sun,
pieces that flopped over his eyes and plastered
themselves over his forehead when the wind blew
erratic. He wears t-shirts streaked with dirt and high-
water jeans half-rolled, half-bunched up to his knees.

She thought, I could love this boy.

They're in the field again, ankles itching under her
frilly socks and ants crawling over her shoes. He lets
one amble around on his finger while she studies him.
Holding it up to the light, all serious and squinting,
He whispers, "They are so small."

She remembers this field for a long time.

She points to his heart. This is where I live. He looks
at her skeptically, raises an eyebrow."Is it awfully
uncomfortable there?" She lets the silence grow while
the birds make conversation and smiles to herself when
she sees him listening too.

Sometimes it is cold, but then you remember me.

There are pieces of love scattered around this world.
I have been trying to find them, trying to arrange them
into a comprehensible hope. There's the field. There's the
beach. There's the little stream that carries us where we
need to go. There's you, in that one summer.

It's been so long, but I remember. I remember it perfectly.

She's making a daisy chain while he looks out over the
lake. Climb the tree for me. I want to see how high you
can go. Nearly breaking the branches with his weight, he
calls out, in the purest joy you've ever heard to this day.
"You should see this view!"

*I do.

if you're reading this, we must have made it after all.

You're older now, soldier.
Your wars aren't the same.

Dust and the blinds they collect,
days that feel red, almost enviable
in their passion.

Shaky hands again, dry mouth
again, sirens singing low in
the black water day after day.

Death should mean something.
Encore for the epitaph!

It isn't real, but it is. It's replaying
in your head. It isn't real, but

it happened.

baby,

do you play-girl like you
*******?

I wonder sometimes.

She's forgetting you know
her, know what this is about.

Easy feels cheap, deceptive.
Easy feels like denial, trying
to comfort against our will.

She's forgetting, but not
you, never you.

People love life or death,
all or nothing, love the way rope
burns against the wrist from
struggle because it feels like we're
doing something.

And we love to lose because
winning means making more
choices.

Some things are too important
to forget. She taught you that,

but principles were often buried
and you tried to forget anyway,
talked on the phone with her all night,

loved when she made it about her,
so you didn't have to think about
yourself.

Because you think too long and well,
suddenly it's November again, that
November, the one nobody knows about
because you threw away the evidence,

kept it hidden away with the other
sick black things inside you that will
never see the light of day.

This is not easy. It wasn't then either,

back when every wound was so
fresh skin had not yet seen scar,
feeling impossible and greedy and
too big for your body.

It wasn't easy. It could have killed
you. This isn't easy. It's just killing
you slower.

There are always choices, but no
guarantee of any good ones.

She's forgetting, but you're not. You've
seen heaven and hell. You've seen
wolves in sheep's clothing, never knowing
whose side you were supposed to take.

You've seen the truth. You've bled it:

The world is full of cruelty.
The world is full of beauty.
The world is so full and so
empty all at once.

sanity for the privileged,
survival for the ******,

these dregs of innocence
left in crumbling hands,

the waking, the re-waking,
the reckoning sure to come,

the conviction shaking,
bruised fruit whispering

in the shadow of an eclipsed
sun. Bite me here and here

and here, and hear them like
the wind sweeps through

a deserted road, silence all
but new.

A quiet recklessness,
undone seat belts and unlocked doors,
how midnight sits in your mind like
the hands of a clock are holding it there.

It's a different music now, a change
in how the dream tastes, the way
everything feels like sandpaper.
You swore you could see
from underneath the dark of your eyelids.
Go back to sleep, I said.

Someone asked me
what faith was. I said it was an act
of surrender. We have faith
in what owns us. You asked me
what faith was, but I couldn't
look you in the eye.

I remember you liked
your socks to hug your toes.
I remember I liked how you looked
when you told me that,
bathed in a beam of refrigerator light
like a helicopter search, the corner
of your mouth twitching upwards
into a lopsided smile.

It begins like this; It ends like this.
God spit us out of his mouth.
God sent a flood to wash us clean.
God made us from dust, and we still haven't
recovered.

You can't drive me out of Eden
without driving yourself out.
You drove us out of Eden, and I
hate you for it. You drove us out of Eden,
and I love you anyway.
Figure that one out.

You don't really know who you are
until you lose it.
Spilled milk, it's sad, you know?
We forget, we do, everything
except this, the way it settles
in your chest, your heart
working overtime to pump through it.

I have regrets, but
you know that already.
The tumble of words from a
desperate mouth and the
letters still stumbling
home half-drunk, naive.
If I knew you were going to leave,
I would have kept my *******
mouth shut.

I have regrets.
The night the moon wouldn't show
its face and how a confession
felt less like a confession when
mumbled into the side of your neck.

I am still waiting for you, still
counting sheep after they are sheared,
blinking at the shrinking horizon inside you.
Maybe if I could touch you again,
I'd find the braille there that would
make me understand.

I like my old house, with the big
backyard, on that lonely little
road: home, a touchstone.

Wrapped in my duvet of silence,
tracing the bumps of the popcorn
ceiling with glazed eyes while she
brushes hair behind my ear.

"You may be depressed, but you're
not crazy crazy."

Thanks Mama.

So I don't tell her about my road
trip with psychosis, or the pile of
suicide notes rotting in our county
landfill.

There are some things she doesn't
need to know.

Blue insides, I always thought I'd be
quick enough to catch the blood
before oxygen claimed it red.

Light bulbs flicker for days before
they go out, but knowing the warning
signs has never changed this relentless
ending.

This wallet is special, I remind myself.
It has my brother's preschool graduation
picture tucked inside,

his smile, all teeth, with gaps he pokes his
tongue through, and bright, clear blue eyes.
He has never seen a scar in his life.

When I start to wonder why I bother,
I make myself look at the photo.

I do it for you!* I wanted to scream,
I do it all for you, you *******!

But sometimes, when you knock on
wood, you find it hollow, an empty that
echoes, and even the loudest noise couldn't
wake that dormant emotion, those parts
of you that have retreated into sleep,
curling in on themselves.

I have been trying to let them
down gently, my floorboards. They keep
creaking at night, thinking you're still
tiptoeing around my house. How do I
tell them you're gone?

Easy's in ashes. I'll never have it again, and
I'm tired, of being tired, of feeling sorry
for myself, so hit me with your best shot.
Make it hurt. I am not above begging.

Sometimes I think I am not above
anything at all.

Unhealthy, sure, whatever, lock me up.
**** the lights. Set the house on fire.
I don't care anymore. Lies perpetuating
lies, lies inside lies, lies lining the inside
of your throat and pushing against the
roof of your mouth.

I made a place for myself there, you know.
I made a place for the both of us, but we
were too cowardly to live in it, too weak,
and besides, what you said about me was true.

I doubt my own doubts, far more than I doubt you.

In my dreams, we are giants
with palms wide enough to hold the earth in,
keeping it still, freezing the human
machinations below and watching them
run about like ants when we let go.

In my dreams, you take the stars
out of my eyes and put them
in your mouth, constellations on
your tongue that I can't make out, and then
we make out, those stars mingling
between us, sizzling and sharp, cutting
the insides of my cheeks like razor blades.

In my dreams, you are hungry
and cruel, so when I wake up to the ruins
of a love that looks more like a suicide
attempt than a refuge, I find myself
wishing you had the decency to hate me.

In my dreams, we're nightmares.
In my dreams, you set everything on fire.
In my dreams, smoke curls down our throats,
and in the morning, you taste like ash.

you bought your ticket,
year round roller-coasters

and a faded welcome sign,
hanging on by one lonely *****,

the most unamusing park
there is.

practicing screams in line,
"I'm not even scared,"

you boast, but I see your eyes
shifting a little in the slatted light.

chewy popcorn, almost squeaks
when you bite it, coca-cola like

midwest flat land. looking
around, it feels that way too.

pretty sad when you beg the
tumbleweed for some of it's time.

blows past you, unaware,
uncaring, uninterested

in anything but the wind.
startling clarity settles.

you have a ***** loose, honey.

I was talking to the ferris
wheel, of course, but

I'll take you high too,
scrape the sky even.

"why touch a storm cloud?"
because I can.

poke the sleeping bear.
I want to see where he hides

those claws, if he has any at all.
I've heard the rumors, but

some people have to find out
for themselves.

what's honey without a few
stingers in your shoulder anyway?

still honey, but that's
besides the point.

reminds me of the gas station
lollipops we got on the way here.

bee's honey, my honey, it's all
the same: all honey, tastes sweet

no matter who it belongs to.
still nothing on victory though.

more cotton than candy, more
squeaky wheels than you're used to,

this house of mirrors a revelation.
hold my hand on the trek up, and

scream for me.

You're waving your arms. You're trying to convince me that words are more than words. You're cracking open peach pits and looking for flies.
You're wrecking the car, darling.

We're finding places in the pavement to rest our heads, and all I can hear is: I told you so.

I'll risk the dying. I'll risk the trouble. I'll risk the risk. I'll take the keyboard and smash it against the wall. I'll call it a poem, and I'll miss you anyways.

Here, from the cracking ribs rattling toward something so close, so cutthroat, to the moment where you finally get to watch the bliss bleed out.

It's all just one big blood-pumping, give-me-now balancing act, and the things that see the walls of your fist are the feeling you can't shake.

So I will hold you tight and make a lunatic's prayer of you, the world in gloss and the *** you said made you holy. It's useless, but I still try.

Our hells may have been the same, but our heavens weren't.

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.

We dream apart the past,
flicks of yellow here and           there
where the sun throws its shadows.

Across the white sand beach,
under the overpass,
in the parking lot and
behind my house, where the trees
twist into each other and become woods.

The thicket, braver than it used to be,
the spiders, more clever, weaving their wispy
threads on our path. We laugh and push on,
walk the trails to keep them worn, the rocks
growing heavy in our pockets.

And maybe the muddy bank was a
better home, but the weight is a comfort.
The stones clack together when we walk,

and it's the softest music.

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.

I said I wasn't going to do this anymore, but here I am, doing this.

maybe I wanted
something to dissect
something tangible

I pick you apart
but it's all abstract

pen in the hand
I can draw a line
foot in the sand
I can draw a line

I think of you
and everything blurs
together

Looking at you head-on,
looking at you sideways,
alleys and staircases and
awnings throwing their
shadows over you,

both obstructing and constructing.

You dream in color, so
you live in color, wish it were
that simple, wish I had a leg
to stand on, but I've just got
this oar.

Sliding all over the polished
dark, lost in the open field
when the sun eats everything.
You can go blind if you stare

too long, the fuzzy black spots
nibbling at vision, how it burns
even when you close your eyes.

Yes, I know, darling,
but try telling my dreams that.

Eclipse the meaning; it's better
to let others make the assumptions.

I'll stare as long as I like, thanks.

Words turning stale,
rolling the sour taste around
inside your mouth.
Nausea mixing in your gut, but
how do you explain it to someone,
that what you want doesn't even matter?
Anxiety and depression already
occupy your bed in the worst kind of three-way,
and there isn't any room for someone
who could actually love you.
How do you tell someone that it's like
**** without a safe word, that the only part
they would ever get to play is aftercare,
damage control?
The poison in your mind infecting everything;
it's just better to love from a distance.
There's less blood.

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.

It's something maple,
something thick when
you breathe, like dark
chocolate, like tinnitus,
like overandoverandover
again, hard to explain.

I have never met anyone
that could fade and still
burn like you do.

Smooth violence,
bottomless in all its
eternity, moving in water
so deep the ripples never
make it to the surface.

It's not weightless. It never
is, but it waits there, half-
suspended, fixed and
unfixed, solid but slippery
in your hands.

Hold your breath. She
knows you in a way the
angels don't. There's
something she coaxes out
of your chest, something
dark she rolls her tongue
around.

The act of inaction and the
odds, particularly of getting
by unscathed, may be slim
and far between, but the stares  
last longer, everything in  
h
  o
    u
       r
         s

Love,
trust,
the color of the sky
after you give it a name,

simple because it's not,

just words
you live outside of,

somewhere a sentence can't reach.

Castle girl, rapunzel rapunzel,
let me down gently,
the crocodiles in the moat,
each word,

a yellowing tooth.

Will you pry open the door?
Crowbar to the problem and
the sweat beading at your temples?

Escape means nothing.

3 days, 3 nights, the world
swallowed me up and spit me out,
thinking I'd learned my lesson,

slitting my wrists on the road to nineveh.

I pray to god all night.
I shout at god all night.
I cry to god all night.
Why does this dark eat at me,
the days like lead in my chest?
I pray to god,

prey to god,

the silence that carried me into november

and the thought planted in the back of my mind:
*maybe I deserve this.

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.

I wonder how many people have ran the stop sign
on the "corner of happy and healthy," or who has held
that feeling of wrong at gunpoint and tried making demands.
These are bottom of the drawer days when you join the heap
in the closet, where your mismatched shoes live, the
background music bleeding from the score.

I said I wouldn't write about suicide anymore.
I wish I would have kept the old poems I wrote
because memory never serves me right, and I'm liable to
make the same mistakes, like when we met at the
atrophy of empathy, the misplaced apostrophe in
a long line of ****** letters. Mama always said, sometimes
you just gotta grit your teeth.

Another moment, another day that stretches into even
more still, and the sensation of bubbling and spilling over,
when the ground feels less like the ground and more
like a tightrope. You thought things would be different,
but they're not. You thought there would be some
order to it all, some rules for being, but here we are, scrambling.
Here we are, feeling for a light switch in a very dark room.

Journal ramblings, everything a corner, the sins that wait
for you outside the confessional booth while you repent.
Hold this for me, you said. I am still holding this for you,
so climb inside the gun cabinet and make yourself comfortable.
You’re going to be here awhile.

The psychologists and psychiatrists go for a drink and talk
about the nutcases while I throw straw wrappers
their way. Maybe they do not know this winter, but I do.
I know the depth of something flat and how it feels to snap
and be snapped. I have built us a city and watched it burn,
turned it inside out, inversion of inertia, speeding toward the
thing that lies underneath the surface, amorphous shapes
and blurs of color you claw at for hours.

I was going to tell God to take a hike but I showed him
to the bus stop instead. Small mercies, I only wanted
a little miracle. Can you blame me? But there are prices to pay,
always prices to pay, even when your credit is ****, so you
drive away instead, past the city, watch the green blobs blotting
the landscape, the creams and beige of the field making
your breath catch, the sun glinting off the wheat. You can barely
see it, but you can see it, and you want to slam on the brakes,
recollect the fleeting scene before it escapes.

This isn't what you wanted.
This isn't what you dreamt for yourself,
but this is what you have.
Scoot closer to me. I want someone to ride this out with.

i draw you but i cant draw

i draw you, but its rough

i draw my estimations

erase. draw. erase.

you're still here. erase. you're still here.

i draw you and tear up the paper

there you are, in the distance

i draw back a bow

and see the lead smudge across your chest

the days you have yet to claim

and the praise you swallow or let rain,

depending on the level of blush and locked knee,

or if you ran, or had room to.

do you pick it apart?

keep the pieces?

the only difference between a safe house and
a prison is intent,

so don't lie to me.

i've bent bobby pins enough to pick it
apart,

the too close for comfort, the itch on your back,

how we tally it up, rally the rebel yells and the
outliers like broken lighthouses.

train tracks out of me, tack the endless question,
tackle me to the ground and start over.

I have enough scars, so forget it.

the food is on fire, but at least it's cooked.

cool metal handle, lukewarm water and smoke,
candle-like in the candlelight.

what was raw before is now ash. you've
made a difference, but

was it an improvement?

You and your last love had a falling out.

Cue the music; cue the reprise of your
affection after endless scenes of off-key
orchestra, after months of wondering if I
had imagined the intimacy of those
moments.

A milky night, fog like cream with sugary
stars, and the smell the wind carries, earthy
and rough, setting the whole feeling askew.
You don't love me. I know that. You're just
lonely.

You like the closeness, like to trace the lines
of my face, the angle of my jaw, like children
connect the dots on paper, thick lead bared
down too hard, next to their coloring books
and crosswords, an activity they abandon soon
enough. You know how children can be: fickle.

I can't keep doing this. I can't keep doing this
with you, but I will. And you know. You know
I'll take anything I can get. I'll be the doormat
out front if I have to. I'll be the rooftop, on the
off chance you feel like looking at the stars again.

Come sit next to me. I want to watch the
minutes move. I want to know what sews the days
together, what makes the seconds tick. It's noble
enough, I suppose. Not everything is shrouded in
intentions, but most things are. You would know.

I should resent you for it, but I don't.
I'm too busy loving you.

Can you see it?

The ceiling lights flickering,

painting the artificial over *****
sinks and grimy tile,
too harsh to be a halo,
more searchlight than anything.

I can see the dirt under your
fingernails, the lines of your tired
face, but I still want to push you
against that concrete wall,

kiss you stupid.

Thanks to these shaky hands,
this traitorous tongue, weak weak
spirit and give in, give in like
always, but you don't know.

You make me want to be cruel.

Everything ends in salt and sand,
the ocean swallowing the world
whole, fire and ice an afterthought.

I had you pegged for a fighter, you know?

You might have been, once.
The self is a slippery thing,
sweetheart. I spent hours trying
to dissect sunlight.

What do you do with something that can't be cut
open, can't bleed?

Flesh is the body and the body
is what holds the soul,
meat suit maybe, but it's all
connected somehow.

Cut me there and there, but the
sadness won't bleed out. Nick me
here and here and here, but the
love won't leave me,

just fills every particle of the room and fogs up the glass.

They say all you need
to make a place holy is a
sacrifice and a prayer,
so here we are in the field.

I've brought you grass.
I've brought you sun and earth.
I've laid my very soul here.

I may have stumbled through
the rosary, but I think we have
a chance.

We're in the middle of it.
We're right in the middle of it,
the field, on our backs while
the sun sends our skin tingling.

The dragonflies, the faraway birds,
the little specks of dusty dirt floating
in the light.

I don't know if any of it is real, but
just let me have this. Let me have just
one moment of reverence, of peace.

This is how a soft spot materializes.
This is how we find our way at the
end. I looked over at you and saw
the eyelashes tickling your cheek.

I saw hands smoothing over the grass
and angels pouring across the milk-
blue sky. I said,

I want to be buried here. You said,
Let's be alive first.

*I still call you *darling in my head. It took me a long time to learn that covenants and siren songs aren't much different at all.

When archaeologists pull
something out of the dirt,
they call it a discovery.

I imagine them years from
now, "discovering"
skyscrapers and microwaves
and styrofoam cups. I can see
them with my broken body.

There's something different
about these bones, they say,
something heavy.

There is a message in here
somewhere. There is a riddle
that still twists my hands up.

They said there was a place
inside me where the music
had gone wrong.

I said, There is no such thing
as wrong music.

I've been at myself with a pick
axe for a long time, trying to
discover something new and
groundbreaking underneath.

*just sediment

A broken promise, a kind of mutiny.

I traced the grout between the tile,
thinking,

Only a God could make people out of dust
and expect them to recover.

Tempting,
to test your luck, to push
the boundaries until they
break and let loose like
floodgates.

It may destroy a lot, but it sure as hell changes the landscape.

Besides,
there is a sort of sick beauty
in watching something
come apart, something
terrible and mesmerizing
about destruction.  

See, there are some parts of god I understand.

And you,
always you with the other
answers, about love and
mercy and all that rot.

Together we sing the pieces, you said.

It's all we can do.
It's all we know.

I wish I could say it all smooth,
blue skies and butterflies,
peaches and cream,
sea glass gliding the edge
of the tide and the moon's soft glow
steadying our fragile night.

But the world is too sharp,

darling, and the lullabyes we
whisper before morning dew are
dashed to pieces by noon, the promises
we make suspended somewhere
unreachable. Slashed and stitched but
the scar is elusive. Tenuous.

Till then we conspire.

I was going to write until it felt like the truth.

skim page, skim milk, skip
rocks and roll
into the water.

It's not sinking. It's a race.

This dance, this ricochet
roundabout remember.

Oh yes, the blinds flutter
like the wings of
a perched bird,

unable to decide where
it's off to.

Open them and we're in
the trees again,
closed November,

awake and asleep, too
black and white, too
beginning and end,

take a bite, right?

Nothing's cut and dry.
Dreams are proof of that.

Imagination doesn't follow
your rules.

The great empty plane
of this world. I'm
kicking up dust

just because I can, screaming
at the blank black sky
to show me a star

through all this smog,

meet the edge of the
world like I
always promised.

Do you still love me?

Does it matter?

The bright light from the stone ceiling making a
spotlight for it.

Speaking in tongues, sea foam replacing teeth and
dribbling down your chin. What a picture you make,
all false-fire-alarm and unsaid *gonna make you beg.  

Writhing like dancing, tastes like strawberry jam,
smeared over the hot white column of your throat,
dipping into your belly, a bit resting on the shin,

Then a hasty escape, millions of shingles making
roads of roof for you to speed down.

Calm down. It's just a dream, darling.
You're more apple jelly than anything.

It's not a knife's edge. That's too clean. It's more like
poison, all: ***** your heart out, love. You'll feel better.

The core of this: I hate you for what you did.

I'm tired of pulling your teeth. You can lead a horse
to water, but you can't make it drink. You can lead a
horse to water and force it down the throat, hoping
too much won't spill from the mouth.

Tell me something. Did you expect this?
Tell me something, anything.

I counted the ceiling tiles in school.
I counted the seconds you'd hold my eye.
1

The core of this: *I miss you.

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.

Making letters out of the noises
of night paranoid minds hear, changing
their order, their
          direction, ******* on context,

Demanding a second look,
a third look,
looks
upon
looks,
and the ones I gave you
before I knew what they meant.

Three words, three shovels.
Three words, three graves.
Three words, watch them move and
still under your stare.

I counted the words on my fingers.
I counted them
         over
               and over,
mumbling into mantra,
words and numbers,
                    numbers and
words,

A combination for this safe,
a name for this needle.
I sit back and watch

the years stitch together.