These gasps of light
are the gaps in tonight
these downward globes
of ivory snow.

The world didn't end.
The world
didn't.

My bones lie aching here
writing for love
in this borrowed new year.

I know not whom
I hold most dear
How do I face
The world didn't end...
*another new year?

I roll the possibilities over my tongue
before I even allow them to breathe.

I carry my lids heavy, as if lost in thought
and pronounce:

"Salt, lust, and barrelled in frustration."

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.

You're an hour ahead of me,
so when I think good morning now,
did you feel it a while ago?

Did it settle in your pulse?
A warm sudden second?
Anything?

My heart is dead with missing you.
This is not a poem-
but calling it so
is the polish that makes pain
speakable.

The bite and the breath*
These you do not forget.
Like a grade school crush,
the rush of the Atlantic in December
Embedded within the most physical parts of memory
like a rock in your knee.

I'm silenced by the quiet here,
the space between buildings
and the white gossip of the salt stains
Upon the sidewalk.
Spreading tales that only this dolly township could know,
Burning curious holes in the black ice
and talking to the snow.

In a year, a few new babies,
A shop or cafe proudly erected looking
Suspiciously new, admitting big dreams
To the peeling peeling paint corner stores
That will never ever ever go out of business.
These are the blocks that could never be
recreated in a movie set.

This is the willow where I told two boys I loved them,
once as a girl, once as a woman.
This weathered with the seasons.

This is the candy shop,
Whose floor once knew
my toddlish ire and snot.

This is the bay
that I explored for decades
throwing rocks into the clay
First to seek
Second to escape
Third to return
And fourth to stay.

This is the town where I was knit,
In the quiet of the valley
and the roll of the sea,
This is my body's kindred fit-

Trapped inside this sleeping town,
this is where I am free.
I'll stick around.

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.

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

i am homesick from the outside in
weeping for the way love used to feel.

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.

the hardest surgery is the one you perform on yourself.
Steady?
Ready?
No anesthesia but a chuckle of nervous humor
the first incision across your heart.


When you finish (many months later)
you put the scalpel down, wave weakly
to the clapping colleagues hugging each other in disbelief
from the observatory, sterile and eager
you give them a wan grin
and hope they've watched closely
so that now they know how...
how to do this.

At twenty-something, I was taught by Fear
who said nothing matters
and then at twenty-something-else I was taught by Faith
who said anything matters
And she wasn't the Sunday kind of Faith that you find
clasped between your palms, clasped like you're afraid
that if you let go the Faith will just tumble out and break.
No, she was the Faith that was bigger than God and so intimate
that sometimes I was the Faith, sometimes you were the Faith,
and sometimes the Faith was me.
So really, Faith doesn't have a name.
But Faith and Fear, they both breathe, they're each lung
and when I fill one, the other billows, after all
you need two to breathe.

And so then I, feeling bold, learned about Bravery.
I had heard about it in newspapers and history book indexes
and in our local volunteer firefighters.
Wondered if I could buy it.
Wondered how much it goes for.
But I couldn't find Brave until the moment I gave up on it
and said, ***** it, I'm so scared but I don't care anymore,
I'll just do it, Brave be ******.  
And surely enough, it was hiding beneath the tremors.
So really, Brave was the Siamese twin of I'll Just Do It.
which, by the way, wasn't in the glossary of this or any history book.

Everything changes, you know?
I'm changing, you're changing.
Oh, it storms me like the sea!
I secretly raise my glass to stasis, my faraway frenemy.
Don't tell the other Sagittarians, they'd exile me surely.
Change, letting go of my old faces
feels too close to dying,
feels too close to leaving you behind.

And I'm not ready to leave you behind.

Oh the West, keep your Mountains.
If only for a little longer.

I've excised my soul again and again
transplanted and sutured
but there's just no time.

Even with these visions from under the knife-
there's just no time to heal
before I'm laid on the table again.

Faith hold me-
Fear teach me
so I can...

Steady.

Please- stay with me.

*Ready?

Four days ago
I was diagnosed with
Mitral Valve Prolapse,

Otherwise known as:
Click Murmur Syndrome.

Oh, life be clever,
that I must take my name
to heart.

I  a m  b e ll y up
w ait ing f or the g ull s.

well, now i've done it.
Got just what i asked for
fought for
and the sun keeps rising
and all horizons seem to picket-fence
the ruins of my waking life
when your head is beaten in and down
and your words are your banner
ripping from your throat
when you win the war
and all seems calm
larks and flower-like
you cannot fathom
the devastating cost

of rebuilding the world.

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.

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.

Who the-
What the-  

What am I?

I am misinterpretation
I am disintegration
I am abomination.

What is my destiny?
I'm writing, I am,
I am waiting
and searching
in the faces of
everyone I love.

Good guy?

Or...

bad guy?