Gravel night, nails on a chalkboard,
two styrofoam lids rubbing against
each other in delicious dis-harmony.

I wouldn't call what I do coping.

I thought the truth was buried
somewhere. I dug up your grave,
looking for something real.  

Dead bodies are real, but that doesn't
make them any less dead.

Rope around the wrist, risk surrounding
whim, and the resounding yes.

Just wanna get you drunk off solitude,
want you to know what alone feels like.

I tried to find the more human parts
of me, tried to construct a person out
of the fabric, and spent too much time
threading the **** needle.

Here I am,

living in the space between
truth and reality, fleshing
out fact and fiction.

Honestly, honesty doesn't
always mean accuracy.

Symposium of grief and
all its little tear soldiers,
running down your face,
fleeing the battlefield before
the war's even begun.

I wish you would stop.
Bringing logic into this,
that's so like you, like
logic does any good when
I'm like this.

Why do you get like this?

I don't know. Ask God.
He has a very sick sense
of humor.

I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'm getting beyond myself.
I'm getting tired. I'm getting
so tired, darling.

Erasing myself from history,
not that hard. The only mark
I ever made was on myself,
young and stupid on the cold
bathroom floor, begging God
to throw me a crumb.

I don't remember everything
from those years. Now when
I think of blurriness, I think
red.

Jesus. It hurts to write this.

I tried explaining it to you
once. I tried to tell the truth,
but it wasn't the right one.

What is your truth?

Do you really want to know?

I could spend the rest of my
life writing about this. I hope
I don't.

feather
light
tunnel
     skate
         across
     skin
and
just
barely
    there

Breath and leather,
ragged, eyes that
smooth over into dark,
fingernails and teeth
that catch at a chest
of two parts whiskey
and three parts grief.

Another scarred fist
perched on a dusty bar
and beer against a lazy
mouth. He left before left,
his skin robbed of promise,

like beginning, dust again.

dizzy in the shrubbery

lost in the manicured park,
this maze of many

I've never
           been able to
figure out,

something about the clean lines.

weeds can't help being weeds.
I wanted to gather the clippings

into my arms
and say there had been
some mistake,

that they were needed after all.

come live in my yard, sweetheart.

the bees won't mind.

I was going to tell you. I was going to let you read a page. I swear.

I just wanted to put a
face to the feeling,
wanted a solid "you"
to write to, something
other than the blurriness.

I didn't pull you out of
your grave. I said,
scoot over.

When you walk a mile in
someone else's shoes, you
find your feet growing to
fill them out. That's the thing
about empathy:

Your own shoes are a little
too tight now. You've got
blisters on your ankles.

I had a dream that you bit
me and then ****** the
venom out. I had a dream
that you gave me mouth-to-
mouth so heavenly I forgot
who drowned me.

You had dibs over both sides
of the coin, half-dreamer, half-
dream. You made a place for
yourself inside my head. There,
you said, *now I can live forever.