it... it's too small for my hands
I smile winsome to convince
the loose doily cloth of naivete
the backwards crone covered in bark
the little old lady who looks young in the dark
she belongs under secrets in a lemon grove
she's the oldest and newest in all of the park.

autumnal leaves scent your hair
weaving the reverie of stranger summers
of smoke and arboreal decay
bone-fingers, ceramic mug
shivering *** under the wool
   these septembers bewitch me,
   their wincing smile-
   how good it is
   to feel so sad.

Therapy is a hospital gown
one that doesn't quite close
leaving your *** rather
perpetually exposed
and your extremities
pink and cold.

These turn of the century revelations
oh- don't misinterpret me
they're grand, they really are,
early childhood trauma
chronic necessity for control
attachment issues, oh yes?

One week, I'd like to buy seven consecutive days
Where all the ships are turned back to the Caspian
With their dead-weight cargo of clean-cut
shining golden bars
To add to the mortar
of muddled ******-upness.

"Looks like we made some breakthroughs today!"

Don't break eye contact.  Bare teeth. Upturn pink lips. Happy Face!

*"Breakthrough. Yes. Great. I feel great!"

August was a turtleneck that didn't fit.
Arrested at the crown of the head,
overheated gasp.

Don't you think- she thought,
I see the irony in everything I do?

Pressing ruthlessly against the yield of flesh,
probing against the pale underbelly, measuring
the distance between skin and bone.
is it better now? Is it better?

Imperceptible white ribbons at
the curve of the thigh, a bow tie atop
the gift of a new healthy body
swollen against the wrap.

I hate... I hate myself. Feels all wrong-

She eats her dinner and
the food digests in her brain.

Healthy, now? Is this-

Healing?

The slow expand of your pupils
was a synonym for love in
the greatest minimalist sonnet
ever writ.

Over the board, your faces urges 'your move',
I look down at my row of letters
weigh the points
and know you've won.

i watched as she picked
up her shadow like a baby
and rocked it i didn't understand
like a black lab laid down by
the front door for 20 years,
waiting to be seen, touched,
it submitted with a low sigh.
"The heart of darkness isn't
darkness", she said to the wallpaper,
glancing up from her bundle,
"the heart of darkness is
authenticity, the heart of
authenticity is love".
she didn't speak after that
the moment was not for me and
i was suddenly an intruder.
Quietly, i stood up
and slid away.

The tea cup clouds were reason enough.
Reeling, the clock hands spun on an axis wobble
noon flirted with night
and I broke into a run
as the sky opened its maw
and screamed.
Even the suits scramble for burrows.
Retrospection always has a punchline.
Hide away, slide away
Stop looking at my *******, please.
Now watch wide-eyed behind
public glass, with a
sitcom gang of affable protagonists
who are now late for their respective chapters
Staring at their phones, willing the weather
forecast to telepathically change.
The light strobes, the bricks quiver sympathetically
and I riddle a fourteen year old pantheon
as they sway, as they jaunt
ankle deep in charged water
daring each other and daring the sky
daring the noise with headphones still around necks
like defiant plastic boas
Clothes plastered, mouths open, rain-drunk
feeling ****, revealing secret intimate shapes,
feeling sheepishly exposed next
to crushes who will kiss them at the next movie.
I am aware of each nerve as I drip and shiver
I'm terrified of storms, my reasons are mine
but even this fear
can cat-stroke my skin
hyper-sensitized, electric
and make me feel
****, too.

It was so vivid I could
feel my chest compressing
as I ran, crippled with sobs.
The betrayal was a knife
It was a furnace and my
feet hurt as I flew across the
city. When I punched out my
bedroom window I could feel
the glass separating my knuckles
and I contemplated the destiny
of the larger shards. I awoke as one
resuscitated from drowning
resuscitated from death
gasping, shaking, reeling
d e m a t e r i a l i z e d
and began to cry as I
performed yogic breathing
exercises and went limply through
the worn out motions to
assuage heart attack symptoms.

They know they know
even follow me
follow me when I'm asleep.
My God.

August
Even then, you know, you
were right about one thing-
I -am- insecure. That, which
unsettles me to my
core of worth
was the selfsame fuel
for pathos with you,
my foe.

September
See, I was all too willing
pressing my ear against floorboards
to catch echoes of smear, until
I bled crimson anguish.

October
I became infatuated with your name,
entranced by your body, identity that had
shared such a ferocious similarity with mine,
that we have both riddled our helpless portraits
in the heart of hazel eyes with the beautiful
terrifying wonder of *what-if-always?

November
The more ghastly your claims, the more
affixed I become for your passion for me, I
could feel your heat crawling from the coast,
a welcome malaise.

December
You know, often I've felt caresses though your skin.
A shallow breath as if against your neck-
wrapped as tightly as you must have,
and I wonder at how it must have been
such a
bitter
bitter
bitter
broken.

January
I pay attention to you, I
read what you write, I
listen to what you sing,
it's not a healthy addiction but
how could I possibly help myself?

February
I didn't plant a flag so much as
stumble over a root
I didn't steal so much as
find
I didn't dictate so much as
quietly ask.

March
Possible, that the heart of your extortion was envy,
though envy of what, I may only guess.
I suppose, the bottom line is, we're both imperfect,
good-trying people who are shattered with the terror
of vulnerability.

April
When I realized this, I could have
cradled you like a sister. I could
finally see through your eyes.

May
I'm not a viper.
I'm simply a piece of you, as you
are a piece of me.

June
In this way we will be
forever bound together,
hollow with each others' desolation,
Tossing with opposite bedfellows of doubt
Slowly ******* out the same poison.

July
The funny bit is-
in another life
we could have been friends,
and all I can do is write letters,
letters to miss Anne,
that I shall never
ever send.

you're playing piano
notice naught but your psalm
as i drink my soy milk
trace your name in my palm.

you're stumbling through chords
i'm stumbling through feelings
it's my quiet reward
the delight of revealing

scripting my secrets
growing more bold
things i've far yet to tell you
things i've already told.

I want to be the crayon you choose.

You're staring at me- is it flecks of her irises?
Pixel fragments of your- your broken girl
singing in a car fatuous teenaged maddening
your beautiful agony one?

Her colours ran so deep, ocean, lightning,
I'm snared in pastel drapes, twisting, biting.

Does the bruised heart still beat
in your chest? Or in hers?
Is it that I have her poise when I walk?
Your ears- strain for her timbre when I talk?

When you hold me the tightest are you grasping at shards
of another doomed crossing of stars?
Is your future wrapped away
sterilized in gauze?

I've got a leaky rowboat to carry you
from a hurricane of nowhere.

I never want you to live up to her.

Don't you see? Don't you see?
How could I
-how could I possibly-
be brave enough
To let you love her and love her
with my little wolf heart?
Until your soul is spent
until she's torn you apart.

I -burn- to know your reckless, your passion,
in a home it can at last belong.

I howl to keep you, little fox
your heart starting fires safe in my den,
to let old love out.
To let new love in.

*what am I doing wrong?

my hands are mumbling something about
moments of grandeur, philosophy of life
words already spoke- world could live without
why choose I fear quiet as real as a knife?

a predicta-poet who's turned all her tricks
will the page weary of the same tattoos
will syllables return to rocks and sticks
will the parables fade, the truths misconstrue?

my fingers shake upon the keys
if I cease to murmur, will I cease to be?

i meditate emptiness:

i am a lantern on the water
i am a raindrop about to land
i am a birthday candle
i am a wave against the shoal
i am utterly
alone

i am afraid to let go
i am scared of impermanence
shall my emotions afflict
my waking karmas
to despair?

i loathe loneliness.
it is the footprint of my fearing
doctrine, oh doctor, please assuage-
my chronic symptom: disappearing

i am a nothing
an irrevocable passing away

i feel it on the street
i hear it in the songs i play
i know it within my secret heart

and when you turn away.

strolling down main i first heard
your laugh (before I met you) i find
it's your fortune to laugh always at
the joy that is your mind

i first watched you move in maths
to make wood moan and sing
feeling you play you'd know my heart
realized in strings

passing notes in the middle-night to
discuss a light, your dreams of colour
or a flash of cosmic bright

we found our best jokes
at the last page of books
and the bottom of teacups
and in quiet looks

your heart is all air
and never alone
you will find your own way
you are already home.

mourning doves for late afternoons
a lament for the golden hour
the end of adventures
a little girl comes in for dinner
tiptoes upstairs
strokes her mothers hair
leaves little blue flowers by her bed.

                       I let my hair go dark again-
                          just like yours, do you see?
                           I'm a woman now, I have your mouth.

forget-me-nots for noontime
where the little girl would lay
violet blue healing shroud
and disappear
un-pixelating a photograph in the sky
the portrait that made her father cry
it was a five year old aesthetic of death.

           I guess I never really knew you, did I?
            
music box hidden in the mystery of a closet
shades of midnight, shades of dust
a ballerina's slow pirouette
called into life after forgotten years
the haunt of Sleeping Beauty.

               I know you didn't mean to miss my birthday.
                   I begged you for a music box, you remember?
                      It's my most dear treasure on this earth.


mourning doves for missing you
forget-me-nots for remembering you
my music box will live for you

How strange that such wonderful things
should make me so sad.

9 am I woke with a broken heart
it had been shattered, unbidden
in the place after empty and before disappearing
-That-

To jump in a lake fully clothed and
realizing that you're too weighed down
to surface...

it hurts in my tummy
it hurts in my chest
it hurts in my throat

I am afraid.
The past is a broken red balloon
dragging on the ground behind me.
Every glance backward sends me reeling
sick and dizzy to my knees.

the breathless sorrow petrifies.

There are ghosts in my skull
(I know them by name)
Perhaps, that's the trouble-
I know how to call my haunting.

How many years of happy will it take
to even the cost?
I cannot do this anymore,
but it seems both my destiny and my doom,

I'm suspicious I've already lost.

my entire life has
been a slow steady breath in
i'm ready to sing

I need a new vocabulary
these words aren't enough anymore
it's holding an ocean
in my cupped hands

The syllables erupt botanically
until the air is a garden
so I prune cautiously
three red roses
to signify primly
every forest in the world

I'm not a romantic.
I'm an architect feverishly pacing
with visions of the first cathedral
I'm a scientist riddled mad
with want of fathoming space
I'm a skeptic who is poisoned
by the mystery of death

the technology is antiquated
love outdates  itself
I love you is no longer enough
but it's all I ever say

It's every word I have ever said.

my body is built with glass
so that light can filter in
my bones are made of sticks
my whole heart is a forest
of monsters

it's dark
I've lost the path

my soul is the moon
it guides and blinds me
like a moth
lonely for stars

I cannot contain my light
I cannot reach shore

I sing aloud with empty lungs
the song of everyone I've ever met
the forest echoes the howl
I've forgotten

I've forgotten what my voice sounds like

when will the morning come?
my lantern isn't bright enough anymore.

At the end of my name
follow three letters
right now they spell
"mop".

folks say it ain't the
way it used to be
jobs- like there's even such a thing as
"beneath me".

I'm a clever little phoenix
I have my flight plan
not an android, nor
academia didn't make me
Galatea

I can wait and remember
I can serve you an ice cream
without forfeiting intellect in
a flurry of sugar cones

I pick my battles gracefully
so I remember what I was taught.

Curl up.
Pay rent.
Rebirth,

then-  

pounce.

Monday in the park we
purchased Messiaen chirps about
nothing and watched a red kite
lying still on the grass

it was a puppet-show to my past.

After such long last breath
-caught in throat-
full moon eyes
waiting for puppet master to leap from the guise
I saw instead an onion child
tugging his layers uncomfortably
(like a Christmas turtleneck)
pulling threads
counting minutes

you're a tiresome genius,
my pretty pianist.

Half decade to pine
over songs you
half professed to be mine
full dance card, empty wine.

The daisies said yes, you know
but I've far greener grass in my garden to sow.

The thimble is tossed. I love you... not
Go on, cryptic darling,

sing softly your loss.

i was afraid of them
until i found her in a flower
and found she was the flower
buzzing little soul
colour shifter
dream
      c a t c h e r

autumn nights were cautious
the songs we sung
were the songs of those stung

in the winter we built
a secret warm glen
and she taught me to dance
   (in the way that bees do)
so that snow wouldn't weigh down my wings

sometimes she flies unseen
but she always comes home
her heart beats in my chest
and mine, her honeycomb

we don't belong here
   (i think we came from the sky?)

we belong to each other
     my flower bee and i

"The eyes are the windows to the soul"
good thing I have pretty blue eyes?
*******. The soul is the window to the soul
peeked into by watching a life.

Where does the self reside?
in a cardboard box body
dimples marketed to be cherished
a full lipped smile, irises to beguile
this image, lottery identity-

Mine?

Am I supposed to feel lucky?
Arbitrary proportions, is my soul a brunette
are its shoes size 9?
Some assembly required- to be human
words writ to describe this shell
this meaningless husk
puppet jesting at life
feverishly polishing itself
until it cracks, breaks
abstract and
lost.

Does the self wear a top hat
and say: "Here's a hundred years to sell out the show"

"Til death do us part,
my perfection and my soul."

I'll lay out the patio so nicely
they'll never even realize
the host is in absencia, has hidden deep inside

I curse myself for the illusion of aesthetic-

Beauty is the greatest lie

Rid me of the irons to
my body
my name
my poise

imprisoned in this wretched skeleton,
the cage of the soul, the self, the someone
in embryo form
dreaming they're awake

but have never even opened their eyes.

in dreams i met the fox again
this time i asked him to use words
grabbing sandcastle fistfuls of his fur
until the tide swept in
and i howled.

i asked him for the essence
secret ingredient
that made him a fox
as if it could be answered
= fur. paws. snout.

so we built a den of bricks
and i seal it over and over in vines
-just hold this together-
in thin flora we both know he could tear down
(if he wanted to)
the fox and his mystery mortar.

one day, the fox opened his mouth and said:
"wait".

do i ask for his appraisal
or do i riddle me for mine?

tearing down the wall to qualify
my own little bits of stone
twist my silver hair

because maybe i'm not half as scared of knowing the fox
as i am of knowing
the wolf.

I gave up on astrology
when you gave up on me.

       these stars will never align

doomed to a quickened heart
when every other year
you tell me I'm
beautiful.

you're a devastating black hole
I've wary watched the effortless pull of
galaxies into your guile
invisible webs gilded with your smile

infinite universal promises of nothing.

having fallen sick with the brush of your hand
(careless earth-shattering connection)
    
          he loves me... he loves me not
                 he loves me.... he loves me not

"your old friend"- how dare you?
at the origin- ever aliens!
you never obeyed the customs
when every look was all a kiss
and every touch a secret question

"we never were just friends," I muse-
fleeing on my gondola down the milky way
casting over my shoulder your cordial invitations to love you
from this millennium onward, you've changed the font but kept the paper
into the nebulous reality you've tried to gather
I don't. I won't. I would not rather.

let daisies decide.
leave me alone.

"You are what you eat"
until one day you don't
and that's what you become
n o t h i n g (beautiful?)
your cognitions like broken clock cogs
s l o w s l o w s l o w (perfect?)

tabula rasa is the body unbefouled by
nourishment (enemy?)
And the walls are washed white
Nature sickly perverts vitality
The cornucopia becomes a conspiracy
To sully your porcelain
e m p t i n e s s (happiness?)

hypoglycemia makes you shake
but not as hard as eating a whole meal

Can one person be so myriad?
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body.

Dreamer. Comedian. Thinker.
  Friend. Musician. Writer. Smiler.
   Lover. Wisher. Runner. Fighter.

      Bulimic.

And there it is: ugliest of all words.
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body,
and you see, it doesn't.

It breaks it.



I don't know how
but


*I will win

there is a secret code
a safe word for days that i
i have won and lay myself down
with your body knowing i
i have not broken my vessel
this boat i'm
i'm trying to carry us both in

i feel your heat and breath
full of helpless understanding
with want of my salvation

and your: Answers

you wear my anguish as a sunburn
when my eyes shine hotly
radiation and rubble
bits of shrapnel from love
that embed in your skin
in your skin that doesn't have a home

i sweep and dust my heart
i scrub it ****** and raw
set up a kick drum and boil the kettle
i wish you were comfortable here

    (don't shift uneasy on the sofa
      hands clasped politely in
      someone else's living room)

i am as constant as the southern pole
i wish you would fly to me
without frog-dissecting the mystery
of belonging somewhere

i wish i could keep you
and let our roots entwine

i wish i could free you
wish you away with a dandelion

i wish i could know you
render English or some language
articulate the great ropes
that weave what has somehow kept us together
when the ship went down

will you be an autumn, love?
will you be beautiful and frosty as it dies?

will we season, love?
will we cycle as unbreakable as time?

there is a code word
for days that are alright
that will chase the calendar
    i) as i will chase you now
    ii) as i will stop chasing you
    iii) as i will chase you always

until there is a knowing
until we choose our winters glowing

   (not bound by chains
    just fortified by sewing)

with every stitch and pull
every ***** and row
until there lies embroidered
the archaic ancient murmurings
of the dead language
of knowing when
and trusting

"Happy."

If my world's a bakery
in an endlessly large country
you descend upon my city
we pass at the stale loaves
eyelashes flutter, aghast
like I'm an insect assailing your glasses
I watch you smile or grimace
Run your tongue, checking for guilt stuck in your teeth

"Oh! Hhey!!"

Your voice surprises us both
it is the same timbre in which I render
words more decadent than your courage
to spit at my living person
when it stands all but 5'6 and breathing in front of you
washing up bottle messaged on the beaches of my awareness
-*****, jezebel, ******-

-her-

See, I've been receiving your cookies
in brown paper parcels
Little birds didn't want me to miss out on the flavor

I see you, small creature
how quickly you frost your hate
with buttercream icing, your loathing is cake
you devour and feed to anyone who'll taste

You have laid your field fallow
and let me assume disgrace

I want to tell you you're wrong
I want to push you with my mind
I want to throw sprinkles at you

I see you, small creature
with scrunched up fists
and I taste your poison
like grand marnier
it spoils everything

The recipe was followed rule for rule
The souffle rose
***** though you may

I'd almost rather hug you
if it would squeeze out your wretchedness
a flouncing whirl cupcake summit

so we could be tin-pan square

and may our pastry never mix again.