All she wanted her horoscope to give her
was a sock-foot cozy kind of relationship.
One that wore SPF 30 and smelled of sugar candy.
That would have been just fine.

Instead she got a surprise pancakes kind of beast.
Bear hugs, dog kisses, *******,
sumptuous battles, book aisles, 2am feast
and little silver spoon in the middle night.  

We never made it to the papers,
so we built a patch-quilt nest.
The quirky loving is alright,
you dress me in my Sunday best.

photograph One:
i see you, and the first things i see are your dark eyes
you sit beside me with open hands and make me laugh over coffee.

photograph Two:
one night i notice your mouth. you haven't drank but i have.
still all i see are your eyes when you first lean in.
i'm aroused and utterly haunted.

photograph Three:
you're so pale i want to colour you in. i want to make you alive.
you're dancing so frenetically, my marionette man
and i can't tell who tugs the strings.

photograph Four:
It's after midnight and you've stormed from my house snarling
like a wolf waiting to die.
"i'm poison" you spit. "i'll poison you, too".
"you and me." i plead. "i won't run".

photograph Five:
it's a cloudy day. you tell me you love me without looking me in the eye.

photograph Six:
you're standing in the open doorway against winter wind
dragging a half-quit cigarette and i am hugging my knees on your couch
waiting for you to calm
our eyelashes smeared chilly with tears.

photograph Seven:
you are lying on the floor, heaving with sobs.
i am holding you as tight as i can because i don't know what to do
and i'm afraid if i let you go you will cremate in the heat of your darkness
already we are both husks.

photograph Eight:
we lie awake in your cold bed and we are strangers
you will not touch me and i feel naked.

photograph Nine:
i awoke at 4am from a dream of you that was a lie
many months after i fled from your ghost
and like an infected wound
it still throbs hotly that i could not save you
and that for so long i could not save myself from you
the dark-eyed boy with the angel tattoo

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.

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.

The trouble with writing a
relationship through technology
is that the bygones are never gone.

Why do I pour a drink in your absence
and settle to re-read our old fights, heartbreaks
like *******, lips parted, heart racing?

I shudder through those weeks where you petted me, darling
but could scarcely afford to feed me the same heart
being doggedly masticated in the maw of another
I trace over my retinas the lines where you didn't,
wouldn't, couldn't love me, they scan me
for my identity.
My mug shot, beside
hers.

After how little it meant, how can you possibly love me now?

I could edit these now, you know, you're able to do that.
Everything I wish I had been and said.
The pages left blank, I should've painted red.

In the spaces, hiatuses, I recall your ill-suited suitors
I can't tell whether I feel grief, jealousy, or ecstasy.
At the time, you know, it was like falling upon
The Secret Garden
unbefouled by poison nor passion
to inhale the heady scent of white rose
and discover the brim of someone else's hat beneath the foliage.
The place wasn't secret. Oh, it wasn't mine. Never ever was mine.

I'm ahead of myself. Oh, for want of technology.
We courted on Facebook and Gmail,
it was a convenient torture, given the circumstances.

Now my mate belongs where I do.
Loving, tenderly, wisely true.

I cannot start loading the page for the future
so much as delete our archive,
a prelude to love
written in diminished chords,
sung by the jilted and ghosts.

About tea
Skinny tea, sweet tea,
Elixir exiling youth's ungainly exit
Tea and a lover, vogue tea,
Tea post ******, closing shoppe
Last call tea, homework, tea-and-a-boy
A born again tea boy
Cause she promised it was better than coffee
Kinda boy, the second steep
Citrus and swords battling them free radicals
Tea in a kiss, a sweet kiss, an oooooolong kiss
Third steep to keep and keep
Expensive swishy flower vase tea
Delicate butterfly **** **** tea
Tea time, closing time,
A steep for the road
Sleep off the load
Tea night,
Tea girl
About tea.

rolling in the rosy dish of my tongue
it returns in my mouth to
its most basic elements
a primordial alabaster foam
of corn syrup and gelatin
and unpronounceable would-rather-not-knows
i think: marshmallows
are the juxtaposition to my quaker pallet
microwave tap water&Fr;;'s Cocoa
awash and dissolve
my saccharine oral fixation
in jealous slurps of heat
that radiate down
down down
heat, you see-
(as a sakura flush
blossoms 'cross the
pale of my throat)
-has always been the key
here's a secret:
in solitude i
i'm a homunculous girl
all lips and all hands

when my hurt became audible
you protested with your history
I know only what I've known
and you begged me to be the bigger person
and so I was.

And so you grabbed one end of me
and I grabbed the other
and we pulled until taut, until
I was enormous, stretched
and distorted
like a lost giant or
A firefighter's trampoline-

my highest purpose became
to break your fall

and so I did

and so I did

and so I did

It's pouring rain and my backpack is full of strawberry kefir.
I think when we decided to take a break,
you took half my brain with you.

Kefir is a delightful crossbreed of Yop and Perrier. Creamy sublingual fireworks. A single tablespoon is sufficient to send a conga line of 5 billion probiotic bacteria boogying through your innards. But like most things I enjoy, I cannot successfully covet in small, measured portions. Which is why I went for the litre in the first place.

I imagine your face as I rinse my strawberry saturated belongings and imagine the microscopic bacterium hoopla happening between my fingers (you would laugh at my conga line comparison, because you are one of the world's only people who knows how much I truly despise conga lines).

Oh God, the water is just diluting the yogurt. It has become the great Sea of Kefir.

You would have the solution to this. When it comes to logic, you manage to beat me every time without ever making me feel intellectually inferior.

But I need to figure these things out for myself.

Luckily my other groceries were sealed in plastic:
-chia seeds
-goji berries
-cacao nibs
-wheatgrass

These were spared.

As you can see, since we have decided to embark on our own paths for a while, I have tried to be "HEALTHY!". The bathroom is a small library of moth-bitten self-help books (Thanks, Mom) and my bedtime is close enough to twilight to high-five the sun on its way down.
I've started to work out again with a little more addiction than conviction or even common sense.
And because you aren't here to regulate me, I've busted my knees (aaaa-gaaaain.)

And all notwithstanding, as I wandered down 13th avenue with my organic Hippie super-loot, feeling very smug and self-possessed in my birkenstocks, I passed by my favourite breakfast joint, and my kale-fertilized stomach was very persuasive: No, I insist.

Proceeded to savour three enormous pancakes that I could have stitched together to form a roomy buckwheat overcoat. Drowned them with a 3pm coffee. I thought nothing of it, but after all we've been through when it comes to food, you would have been so proud of me, babe. When I admit that I've got a broken heart (-darling, I know I broke my own) people are far too kind to me. 110 minutes and three sacks of flour later I float in a sweet gluten haze from my free (and freeing) lunch back to my apartment.

Which is when I discover the Sea of Kefir.

I think I'm trying too hard.

I think, really, the Art of Becoming One Whole Person isn't so much about us becoming the Perfect People we've always wanted to be. That's not why we strapped a hundred helium balloons to our otherwise incredible relationship and tearfully waved as it disappeared over the horizon. I think it's really about just learning how to regulate ourselves.

Here's one Truth: We will never, ever be perfect. And we will never find our perfection in each other. We have to let that go. We have to stop fighting against the invisible standards we create in each other.

But we can get over ourselves enough to be Pretty Great.
Just make peace with the Pretty Great folks we are. Have the 3 pancake- sore knee- kefir backpack afternoons, and still feel Pretty Great.

And when we do, I think our relationship will feel Pretty Great, too.

Because I'd rather be able to remind myself that I'm Pretty Great,
than rely on you to convince me I'm Perfect.

Yikes, there it is.

So that's my homework. It's full of errors, and there are countless agitated holes worn through by pink erasers, self-doubt, and heartache.

But I know, darling- that by the end of this, you'll give me a sticker-

(and by then I wont need it)

I'll put it right next to the one I've given myself.

If I'm the cowgirl,
courage is the bronco
and you're the stranger in the mask.

Call it geographical bias,
but I know we're both tired of tumbleweeds,
both allergic to dust.

So carry out,
carry on.
Spit and be brave, child.

This town ain't big enough
for our desert rose hearts to grow.

So give me land.

Lots of land.

You were the greatest neuronal reorganization to ever happen,
of course I don't know who I am anymore.

What was plastic seems changed to stone in a gargoyle brain and beneath a microscope the shimmering glia spell out your name over and over in little green lights, fossilizing the neurons that say:

Him.

The earth has an edge. Nobody wants to fall off.

So call me Homer, because the gods themselves could not convince me my situation's a sphere there's far too much fear in this flattened plane that understands only primitive desires and just wants you near.

Everyone knows the romanced brain could be mistaken for a ******* addict's.

But perhaps if you look more closely into my eyes you will see my irises have turned stormy, that cyclones of energy are becoming patterns that scribble and scribble arcane suggestions for a new cartography. A new story. A new being.

Supplies needed:
One strong pencil.
Enough oxytocin to unlearn an addiction.

Enough optimism to overcome an affliction, my diction is code for the way you kissed me and it underlines every sentence like the way a voice rises when asking a question.

I have so many questions.

And even though the notion of who I will be when I am not you terrifies me, like Cathy and Heathcliff I will not be doomed to roam the moors, already I know there's endlessly more, and with or without you the best is yet to come. Just as they say. No, I don't know what's in store. But I think that's okay.

Turn golden, Grey Matter, light up 'til you burn.

Reboot.
Restart.
Rewire.

*Relearn.

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.

It's everywhere, the tension, the death, it's everywhere.
Can't run from food, no sir.
Anorexia is very fashionable in my city.
Bulimia, sorry to say, is never fashionable.
I shiver, but not as hard as I used to.
I cave in my stomach, but not as far as it used to.
I slowly earn my gravity.
Less dizzy, I never knew how pleasurable down could be.
My mouth has become a sacred place,
Cradling a cornucopia of life,
ten little pounds,
I'm desperate to accept
the way my footsteps sound.

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.

I love you more than me
it's what scares me most
my chameleon heart
I become what I cling to.

And so my colour-blind soul
passing through shades
when picking you flowers
what do I have of my very own to give you?

You made me out of blue
You felted my heart of this red
You turned my hands to gold.

I am already you
I have nothing of my very own.
My darling, what could I give you now?

With my heart I picture you in polaroids
tinted blue by my eyes, surrounded by crushed leaves.
In the skipping track of my inner eye
your mouth, the way it moves when you focus
the open-palmed reaching of marimba chorale
and softening of your brow from the vines
of midnight-colour hair.
From many perspectives, again and again,
in the skipping track of my inner eye,
photographs shot with love.

"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.

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

I got tired of being broken,
so I fixed myself
and added a patio.

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.

I don't move,
I orbit.

I hopscotch the squares where love can be.
Where it has already been.
So,

I don't move [forward],
I orbit [to where I may belong]

I am homesick for everyone
I've ever met.

Most major decisions are based
on the statistic probability of a kiss,
because to be loved
is to be corporeal.

My heart doesn't guide me,
theirs do.

I follow my bloodlines
and shake the tree
for fruit.

This is how it goes:
With each breath I draw,
one for me
one for you.

My killed love for you
I will inject
micro amounts into my heart
whenever I'm about to let someone in
to safeguard against ever
becoming sick like that again.

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.

Verbosity
A patchwork quilt that I roll roll up in
Stitched with syllables
Like a little phonetic sausage
So deep inside you can't hear me go
Dur dur dur.
(insert self-deprecating quip about being a wiener)
laughing track
But it's cozy and neat.
And if you do
I'll rubix cube your dearest mind
Til I'm tucked deep inside once again.  

And I'll softly pontificate about the genetic code
and how it made your irises not quite hazel
But still able to illuminate spontaneously
teal, laurel, cyan, the sea
And if you'll pardon my hyperboles
They draw me strong as an Atlantic tide
This ocean that ***** me the deepest inside
Aesthetically, the contrast is startling to your skin
An artist would capture the portrait therein
But really, all you need to know
Is they're the prettiest
prettiest ******* eyes
I've ever seen.

And I'm sorry
That when I get nervous
My heart is a little effervescent
My words become too efflorescent
(I seek not to strangle you with King's English Shrubberies!)  
As you stand before me, incandescent
My dread is that you're
Evanescent.

...

But that thing about your eyes.
All you need to know.
That thing about your eyes,
Not to mince words

But I think

I'll feel that way always.

A family man, running spandexed and puffing
reaches into the stroller at the crest of the hill
as the day sighs away the last of its dusk
hands a three year old a flashlight
and makes her a secret-wink promise.
You'll move so quickly on your path,
it's your duty to carry a light with you
to keep you and others safe.

A stern man and a hot scratchy washcloth
removing a Spice Girls bubblegum tattoo from
the nose of a seven year old, molecule by molecule.
As soon as you get caught up in superficiality,
that's when you'll make mistakes. Don't make
mistakes that will last.

A medic man returns from a surgery
from a rural village with more kindness than money.
Lays a basket of apples and a banana loaf on the table
in lieu of a cheque and says:
There will be opportunities in your life for
your actions to define the kind of person you are-
always take them-

and never forget your common humanity.

An animal man bursts into the room
with a puppy as new as a sparrow
gamboling, loving, seeking faces and laps.
When choosing your first dog, look for
one that has more loyalty than shrewdness.
Choose your friends that way, too.

A tired man breathes deeply instead of shouting
at the quivering teen and the confession of the bumper
and the scratch that shouldn't have happened.
Hurt softly with the truth.... but never with lies.

A romantic man recounts his history
raising his eyebrows at the score of his frolics
and makes me swear to fall madly in like
with every soul who my heart should kiss-
but Love, reserve Love as the most sacred
of words, deeds, beings. When you Love,
you and he shall become one another,
and be one life.

A sentimental man wears a silver crown
at the head of his dinner table meditating in
silence after the laughs and mayhem of his
family clan have subsided to the fireplace.

He looks at his daughter.
She looks at her father.

The fullness of her adult face
and Polish eyes reflect in his irises
blue inside blue inside blue inside blue-
making any separation between them
redundant, intangible, like-
mirrors facing mirrors-
as the roots of the
Tree run as deep as soul itself
and he murmurs:

*The day you hear the cry of your firstborn child
is the day you discover the meaning of your life-

and nothing will ever, ever be the same.

Friday, 1211h
A man collapses at lunch
and his vitals spin away like
marbles: pulse, breath, pallor
rolling about on the floor
out of reach of the heroes who
shout his name, flash their pagers
like the batman symbol.
Someone get a doctor in here, now.
The old Vets shuffle out of the room
comment blearily on the poor guy
I guess after the War things do not phase you the same
but perhaps they didn't notice the hue of his lips.
And then he stabilizes, and I fall apart
aghast, aback, there is still tuna sandwich in my mouth
ground by my teeth into a diamond to monument the recovery.
The gurney rolls by, I know him.
My stomach falls to Ground Floor
in relief and despair.

That's the thing about long term care
these men are clever, they teach you so well how to live
that you forget they're supposed to die.

Oh my captain,
you are a secret compass
in my breast pocket.

A tiny urgency within my doublet
that insists me to your side
so that all the maps of my life
are your destination.

Afternoon-light in our periphery
our cerebellums glowing happy like...
maybe a plate of cheesecake, and two bent forks
the atoms that separate 'you' from 'me'
laughing within a jitterbug
but now there's no cake for us.

Why aren't you here?

afternoon-light in our periphery
and our cognitions like a strawberry swirl
Sweet, home-made, toujours innocente
and I scratch your brilliant head for
the secret to unconditional love
and your smile becomes lyrics,
the first line of a perfect song.

Shoulda come.

At the bottom of a teacup, we reveal
our secret selves, in a boy scout pact of friendship
spit-locking our hearts into a ferocious loyalty
to take care of each other in our parallel lives
and to cherish what we cannot see.  

Because I cannot see you,
and you cannot see me.

I forgive you, next time- it'sraininganyways
i'mnotmad, i just don'twant to revealhow
muchyou mean tome.

You shoulda come, friend.

Your memories visit me seldom
these days
        but they're just as dear
(when they do)
warm and removed
             like these still May mornings on the coast that are gorgeous, innocent
                           and new
  ... do you remember the absolutely absurd things we used to laugh at?

How do the vines of our secrets creep their way into the ears
of those we want most to protect?

It will never matter how I know, only that I know you are happy.

So for the love of truth if she makes you laugh I beg you to sing aloud- your joy is too contagious to ever tiptoe around. Not on my (closed) account. All I've ever wanted is to hear your spirit ring across this country.

Of course I love you, Bebe- Q.
(And I can say without doubt, I shall never have another Bebe-Q. What does that even mean?)

Of course I miss you.
I miss you like I would miss most of my major organs.
Painfully.

But if her light makes your heart photosynthesize so that your entire being blooms with life

-Please-

Be free. Let it grow.

The hardest gift I will ever give you is my blessing.

My love, I am letting you go.

Breakups are perhaps the space travel of relationships-
in leaving you I deserted my home planet.
What, what is this?
Everything is dark, unfamiliar, and cold.