The evergreen is burning again
the ashes transcending up into tree heaven
or tree hell,
in other words the fireplace
painted up in festive Christmas colors,
not including the My Chemical Romance posters
singing on the walls.
The only decision left for her to make
is whether or not to let the house burn down.

i am
three days past
an expiration date
already lost
more than just
the starlighting
seven shades darker
than your ethereal silence
and two missing persons
reports, more than your four

The twelfth time he
willow than others
and old spring breeze
sat in silence
the closest tears
he didn't want
watching his face
"Did you know I cry blood?"
would have called
hazel eyes for tears
a little smile
tugged the legs
was trying to hide
this stupid lovely boy
flesh in several places
broken up
like crazy
we were together again.

There are things there
he'd never noticed before.
The crack in the wall
just behind the bed,
that dark spot on the carpet,
the chip in the balcony railing.
She's left again,
the wrinkle on the pillowcase confirms it.
There's a ***** missing, somewhere
that he doesn't care to find.
Another woman warms his bed and
he'd found a scare on her chest.
She didn't seem to realize
she was never there
even when his hands left their watermarks
on the ceiling.

Phantom footsteps
thrusting bodies into the lithely changing
lights of winter.
A melody of pastelled green,
leaping past the first Spring
into the swirling colors
of neon petals blooming.
When the acrylic shades of night
set, the Summer's nightingale sings
the lullaby of amber afternoons and the decay
of Autumn leaves resting on the ground.

I used to cook for her all the time.
I wonder if she remembers. Can she?
Ramen noodles and toast
at 3:30 in the morning, churros at 8:15.
Sometimes in the middle of the night
she’d cat call my name and I’d always
run to her wondering- Is she hurt? and then
She better not have hurt herself.
I knew better though after the first few times,
yet I always went willingly enough through her
open bedroom door because she wanted me to.
But mostly chicken noodle soup on Sundays
and rice and jambalaya on Wednesday.
mmmmmmmmm.... Carminolas with a kick.
Pop pop pop and her buttons would fly across the room
and other times she’d be under the sheets, already
ready to press my hands against her caramelized skin.
And if we add a pinch of saffron, a dash a sumac,
and a teaspoon full of ajwain she will taste like
heaven and for those cherry lovers add a bit of mahlebi.
But I remember. She tasted like homemade chocolate and
marshmallows. Go make Mama something tasty.
She’d say afterwards and send me from the warmth of
her bed, a Saturday Night Live rerun echoing after me.
I’d bring her dumplings and udon and watch her while she ate,
wondering- Can she taste the arsenic?

Some days when the sun doesn’t
come out in
the morning and the sky is dark and

grey, sometimes she just wants
to run out into
the storms with her arms out to the sky.

She wishes she’d be struck by
the lightning that
tickles the tops of the trees towering

above her and that her ashes
would fly out
over the winds to some faraway place.

There she would rise like the phoenix
in the stories her
grandmother told her about when she

was but a child and she would
be herself again.
Or maybe for once she’d be

someone else, one of those people
that have enviable lives.
The ones that were like her

mother, or the way she thought
her mother was
because she’d never really known her

in the first place.