Did you capture spring yet?
Take it into your greedy hands
and dress yourself in lilacs
(in jasmine, in ripe fruit?)
it stains your strange mouth
drunk with plum wine

Do you still smell of honey?
Hide your palms
your sticky fingers
beneath your contrived sweetness

I keep picturing you
drenched with dew
carelessly imagining
that you, too
are a daughter of the earth
even though the sun
scalds your thin shoulders
(and she thinks
you quite deserve it, I believe)

you cannot stand wet soil
and you are only truly at home
beneath the shade
of your very own
(very sad
poor girl)
weeping willow

I'm finding you in the snow again
and I can't seem
to stop
chewing on
my bottom lip

in worry
out of habit

I don't know anymore

Some slightly chapped "I love you"s
"I'm sorry"s, and "I need you"s
curl around my ugly Midwest winter;
drift in and out of the sleeves of my coat
and the skeletons of these poor trees
dust-colored oak leaves
shivering boxelder branches
("Acer negundo...")

I want to sleep, just like them
Breathe backwards
Keep still
Rooted firmly
Nice, calm, steady

But I can't

I'm still waiting
(somewhat impatiently)
To pluck your, "I'm here now, love."
Your, "It's okay."
Your, "Kiss me?"
Right from your mouth

Before you can even say it.

These days
I am too cold
My palms are at rest
Down for the long winter
My coordination and
dexterity will hibernate
And I'll cloak this poor body
With anything I can

An almost married woman
Clings to the hems of my sleeves
With thin fingers
With scissors
There to cut away the warm wool
With wild eyes
and a bitter mouth

She gathers my coat in a basket
Unravels all the careworn fibers
To cast upon her empty loom
As though she'd spun them

Casts off newly sewn kisses
Threadbare affection
Muttering crossly about the weather
And how the sun
does not melt the snow

She is only my friend when
She can touch my bare wrists
Give me white hot iron to hold
And ask me if I'm warmer

Only my friend when
She can graze my skin in surprise
Wrap my hands up with stiff yarn
And ask me what burned them

I am lonely, not lonely

the choice up to now
has been mine

I will slip away
(at will)
into the recesses
of small shops
of empty rooms
or quiet spaces

to avoid her touch
or his gaze
or their judgement
our subconscious desires.

But all swallowed up

deep in the belly
of fog, of smoke
a vast, impenetrable

night sky

suddenly the
all-encompassing fear
grips me

washes over
so suddenly

I realize
I have not lived at all

that I am
suddenly
(forcibly)
the only one left.

Down a long, winding road
that trudges on endlessly
into the fading silhouette of trees
and broken sidelines

dim headlights

I am lonely, not lonely.

After all this compression, perhaps I am becoming something after all. Crawling away from my potential worth I feel myself writhing my way from between the rocks, taking quick, shallow breaths —learning to breathe again after all this time. Each inhale still feels heavy and constricted, and every exhale still brings a sense of dread for the rise and fall of my chest but I am moving forward. Even relieved, my ribcage is adjusting painfully to the freedom, coping with more lung space; a gift I received from you.

The house I have built within myself for you
is not an empty nest
It's cupped palms that hold water just fine
a cool, stone cage for a hummingbird
the door is open
I am waiting for the right moment to fly

She cannot sort the grain. After all these trials, I have been lost yet again. —But fairy tales have been this ruthless before; myth has given me wings, has painted my shoulders with fur, with scales, with scars. Legends have broken me down into all the smallest invisible facets of myself until I could do no more than vanish entirely. Who will love me behind the walls? Within my keep, another girl's impatient hands will light the candle to gaze upon sleepless eyes, and wake within me all the anxious demons hiding inside Pandora's Box.