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.

If I use the right words
anything I say in these first three lines
will urge you to



Point made.

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.

I shall go to the Mountains
and play my guitar
in the rocky spine of my land
and sing to the provinces
like ex-lovers.

I shall go to the Mountains
as the trees bronze over
and stand there,
sharing their lonely.

For a while.

I shall go to the Mountains
on an errant without fear
and hold myself very tightly
shiver in the waxing October light.

You have no idea
how much I've changed!

We like to take care of skinny people
as if they were just passing through.

Like if we don't hold them tight, they'll disappear.

We put sweaters on them
bundle them up with words of concern.
We take them in.
We tuck them in.
It becomes an addiction
that runs both ways.

I fell in love with worried eyes
and pursed lips, the feeling
of ribs knocking into the yielding flesh
of a whole universe of mothers.

They do not leave.
They stay and take care of you
fortify you, nourish you,
bring the colour back.

Skinny, I can't let you go
because I don't know how
to just ask
for love.

Not from them,
and not from me.
I don't wanna grow up
I don't wanna die
keep me at age five
before the flood came
bring her back
take nothing away
ever, ever again.

Not strong enough to feed myself the inherent right for affection
and not brave enough to be strong.


And so that's why I chose you, Skinny.
My collar bones are my contingency plan.
If they disappear too, God help me-
because I got nothing.

When you leave I ebb like Coma Snow White
Not dead, just frozen in carbonite.

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.

are the tattoos I etched
to mark my recovery.

And boy, did it hurt.

The white squiggles at my hips
wink at me every time I look down.
Don't look down!
As if.
I swear, they conspire with each other.

I'll never forget the very first one.
Shiny. Indignant.
I hugged my skeleton and wept.

Now I've grown accustomed
not to the deliberate finality of dropping my gaze
mesmerized by my slow evolution,
but to looking up.

I look at eyes and mouths
instead of the impossible circumferences
above my knees,
the ever shifting law.

Stretch marks
are the tattoos I etched
to mark my recovery.

Do I regret them?
Oh, a little bit always.

But it's sure as hell a story worth remembering.

I take up more colour than I used to,
and these- these are the lines that will never be filled in.

I earned them.

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.

...you stand surely to shipwreck.
all hands on deck.

accordion three-four lilts amelie
hymn hummed
beneath frenetic waltz of fingers
Rain-bitten and dumb

pirouette recessional to the sea

and such enchanting cobbled waves

how truly quaint rosy tempest in the square

pour down the dirge to murky drain.
throw in the bottle, the maps, the ropes

pirouette recessional to the sea

lastly heave-**
i throw in me.

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.

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.

I once had laugh lines
now eroded by rivers
what grows in a flood?

Come to bed?

               -I'm not tired yet. But I'll come for a little while.

So begins the bedtime story I recite in my head.  You and me were the stars, the loveable protagonists character-foiled by the scars that always found a way to nose between us under the cover of darkness and love.  Like the family dog who is always welcome (even when sometimes it's not).

And although the story is worn so thoroughly it frays my cochlea with overuse of the thought, I still grow hot to see you beside me once again. Even though I know how it ends, that when my eyes close you'll be on your way again- when the morning comes, as sure as dawn, you'll be lying next to me.

Maybe nothing has changed,

and perhaps the mend sewn deep into the pages of memory is the hope that when my eyes slowly open

there you will be.

For always.

The End

Dear _,

It's been hard to write. You were always the muse.
I'm no longer Anonymous. Anonymous is no longer mine.

Once, he smashed my lamp. I heard the sparkle of cheap IKEA glass fanning out on my floor like a miniature Arctic Ocean. When I came back to my room, he had a broom in one hand and your mug in the other.

I told him he could break anything in my life, but not that mug.

I am bound, my dear _ . Not because I wish I could tell you how much _. Not because I , or that I miss when we __ , but by sterility, latex gloves, telegrams. I am bound by the distance and detachment that keeps us safe as we venture inside other humans, other hearts.

The only way to survive terminal love was to induce a coma. Sleep until fixed.  

At best I will dream of your laugh.

Your little eyes, they recall the words of broken hands
the secret that makes a mouth beautiful under the red air
A boy, feeling gold, reaches with garden fingers
to touch a good dark woman, her throat opening.

The Ancient Wolf cries, "November!"
and the city finds ice within these healing syllables.
The Secret Fox photographs a moment,
the inside moment of a man, waiting for blackberries
and pretty love.

They say it gets better
but they never tell you when.

Isn't a breakup, after all, the surgical excision
of another whole person from your own?
Doc, gimme something to work with here
no post-op measures of comfort, no chemicals,
how long will these symptoms last?

Which day shall be the worst?
What can I eat?
How do I get to sleep?
Why is there so much vertigo?

I've lost my captain. I've lost my compass.

But forget North-

*what way is even up?

Call me the Queen of Hypothesis
I thought it was a good idea

leaving this.

I want to take a razor to the hair I grew
(long enough to enchant you)
but I won't.
I want to spend all I've got
on nothing at all.
A painted, empty fool who is poverty stricken in riches-
filet mignon, a flight to Spain, fancy finery-
but I won't.

Instead I'll cry in the kitchen.
Cry in the bedroom.
Cry at flowers.
Cry at nothing.

But I won't cut off my hair.

I want to give up.
I want to run away.
Leave town, leave society, leave myself.
But I won't.

Instead I'll hurt.
Hurt in the day.
Hurt in the night.

But I won't give up.

This mouth, it does me wrong.
This mouth says goodbye,
when it only wants to be
on your fingertips
on your neck
on your back
anywhere

just not saying goodbye.

These eyes, they do me wrong.
These eyes have seen the truth of things,
when they only want to
watch you laugh
watch you dress in the morning
watch your body moving on mine-
Just watch you.
And blind themselves against the path we have chosen.

I want to take it back.

But...

I won't.

Instead I'll love you.
And love you.
And love you,
love you,

                           I love you

until I can love me
just as much.

So call us the King and Queen of Hypothesis, darling.
Look at our glass crowns,
how clearly you can see my heart inside,

saving for something more precious

than all the kingdom's gold.

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.

And when I molt
you make a headdress of the selves that
have fallen from me with time.
Like you, they are colourful and cautious.

And as you carefully creep skyward,
I throw myself down in the cool grasses
of your lengthening shadow.
I was tired. It made sense to rest.

And so we played with feathers and inches
as children do.
Running in circles and circles until we fell asleep holding hands.

What were we,
but our love?

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.

I would beseech you to say anything
for your mouth is a sacred place
a thin, modest gate where even
your fits of grand or ill humour
are formed into soft, tender shapes.

I know well enough to leave that gate shut
so that no beautiful tempests can billow out, curtain-like
and sweep us off our feet, blowing us so far apart that
I cannot find you again.

And so I sit cross-legged before you,
fists under my chin like a little child.
Listening to your silence
and wondering how you are.

Even in this silence

there is solace.




                                       *I miss you.

It takes a strange courage to submit to stasis
a gentle acceptance to admit to accordance
a small release to move with grace.

It takes a surprising effort to allow joy to enter
to reveal my belly with trust for all the world,
to allow my hangdog face to return to the kennel.

I watch many move in cool hues, violets and blues,
the slow step of broken people, crushed by crushes, worn with work
as the common connecting thread, the rope bright red held by toddlers at daycamp so no one gets lost.

Sadness has become a language, a lingo so powerful that crowded rooms have little else to say. Whomever heralds the heaviest woe wins. Misery begets fine company. I've watched friends form from frayed souls that fate has patched together, I have watched lovers born from mourning.

I'm so tired of weeping. I'm not sad anymore.

I want to throw open every pair of crossed arms I see like shutters on locked windows. I seek the bravery to tell the world how happy I truly am and accept it as something other than a defeat- I want to laugh even though it will set me apart.

If I can light up a single room it will be enough. A tiny sun may feel lonely, but if it burns bright the rest will orbit.

Never will I permit the easy current of melancholy to drown me.

No more will I hide from the beauty of my life.

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

I’ve filled the emptiest spaces of myself with


                          the best parts of you

not breathing, warm like an homage
but sterile
    
                                                                          remote

a gallery of looped memories
beautiful and untouchable
and convincingly bright
so that no matter where I am
my retinas are tattooed with the space you took in the world
cooking in a scratchy sweater- your electric rants about Jung  
drumming jazz on the street corner for the pay of odd conversation
planting kisses in my hands because you hoped they would grow a wife
endlessly reminding me

                                              (from wherever you are now)

that the best things in life weren’t free
and though expensive beyond measure
how graceful- I hardly noticed how much
I was willing to give
just to keep at a quiet distance

                           this neuronal gallery

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.

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.

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.

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?

I bought my sweet boy with
a years worth of eleven-elevens
and an apron-full of white petals.

I won him from an army of ghosts
by leading him by the hand
and never looking back.

I earned him for a price
that I, vagabond, must rent
his heart in which to live.

For I have nothing of my own.
Not anymore.

makes me grumpy,
no, not because I don't delight
in strings of coloured bulbs
and the flavor of lip chap and hot chocolate sticky,
and the bright eyes of young magickers
but because it seems that whatever the occasion,
any revelry that involves thousands of people
destroys the city, belches post-apocalyptic refuse,
and shoulder-shoves old men, knees small children.
The reason I don't like the Santa Claus Parade
is that once it's over
everything that happened
within the anonymity drug affect of invisible hordes
and the ambulances pulling away
is nobody's fault.
Merry Christmas.

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!"

I alight upon the ivory garden
tended with accents of wine
and elegant gates of grey
I call your name: Poetry.
Hello, poetry.
then I hear it, the warmest reply
like the scent of lilacs and ocean salt
***, my monitor is supercharged with it
A myriad cry
From the baby-bird mouths of the heated young
From the sensitized woe-lines of the veterans of love
For a bolt of lightning and carnal tangle
Rendering memories of the trembling inside you
I click through the poignant, the broken, the raw
syllables weave pixels into cotton sheets
They twist under the keys as I type:

"Hello, poetry. What simple beautiful animals we are."