there's a paradise in the way you say my name
   or she says my name or he says my name
syllables crashing like head on car collision or train wheels wrestling with the tracks
one time i brought back a starfish from the ocean
hiding it in my sweater pocket
it soaked all the way onto my pants into the upholstery of my father's old car and everyone pretended they didn't see
maybe it wasn't even there, maybe i wasn't there
sometimes ghosts would follow me i would end up breathing on the glass and leaving impressions as proof
of existing, of understanding what it meant to live with the living

getting home, unearthing my discovery in the bathtub
but there was only a thud, an ugly crash on the resin
the fiberglass making the death inhabitable
i wanted you so much you turned to stone
a hard shell of what i found so beautiful i could cry but there wasn't even a yell
ignore me and ill love you forever
i picked you up, cradled on both my palms but the keepsake was in the lesson
a memento of solitary moments waiting
shrivel up

my father found me or maybe it was my mother or maybe it was nobody and i picked myself up silent  
into the backyard where i dug until my fingers hurt, until my hands knew the brittleness of rhythm
i might have never stopped until i reached some kind of closure or maybe magma, a molten crust of hell i had missed before
my jeans dirt-stained and my face red from scratching bugs that weren't really there
maybe we met at the wrong time, maybe there's never a right time for anything
you reach certain points and then head back in the other direction
you bleed until it's time to reach for the band-aids in the medicine cabinet and call it healing
maybe i'll never know some things
never figure out questions that still tap on my windowsill demanding to be answered or asked in the first place
and i think i can fit comfortably in that, in this

i often think about the people that go hit by meteorites
how space shrapnel invited itself into their homes
took its' shoes off and shimmied into the floor
asteroid junk, hold me closer
tell them they're not alone
that one day they'll burst, or be swept
all just soot in the end
this dust, this sand
can fill up a city
i can be that city

how likely is it to be struck by lightning?
and will i be the lucky one
tell me, will it shake the truths out of me
will it burn my hair like it did when someone got too close and their cigarette got even closer
the way it sizzled and made the air hard to breathe
will my veins line up with the electric as if i were part of something greater than a body of earth?
in times like these i hear the word aha!
Geronimo calling from the light-bulb, brazenly jumping to enlightenment
a tiny revolution starting in every little thing that can line up with the other
a thousand circuits jump starting and brashly telling me to
step out of the dark
i could use a little time

when i was ten i discovered these books about summer
it seemed all the chapterbooks were filled with strange stories of girls finding their destiny by the sea as their whole life changed between boardwalk adventures and family urgency, like melodrama in small increments with too much sunscreen
something about one of them specifically stayed with me for years
the cover was of the shore and the sand dollars lined in a row as if waiting to be picked up or maybe had just been put down
something about them gave me the impression that this could be my life
an eternal summer that i didn't have to abandon, the book i didn't have to close, look into the sun and not have to pick my body up from the water
it seemed agreed upon that i could live in a continuous day
nighttime didn't exist and the moon was a name given to my mother's friend
everything was promised warm, my feet would touch pavement while my hair was permanently bleached
but the sunset came and shook my shoulders

2.
i stand in my bathroom
cold and harmless
the window is fragmented so no one can look at your naked body but it makes everything outside look like when you didn't realize you needed glasses and once you did every memory was post foggy
i could be a dying star or a sun brushing its' rays and you'd never know
sometimes my hands are so clean my nails taste like soap and there's no way to go about it but accepting that

3.
there used to be a fire
and if i had to give it a name it would be Frederick
i don't know when it disappeared or how it even started existing
one day someone asked me if i knew how much wholesale toothpaste cost and my feet curled, i bit my lip so hard in fear i would scream until my throat bled
but that didn't happen instead something burst, not a vein but a sentiment
there were theories i used to develop while i went on dinner dates
i remember thinking of what i now reference as the sangria theory
while we sat and ate pasta and i could feel my head drifting while his eyes sank into the bottom of my shirt
i thought maybe all the people that you meet have no chance but a say
all circumstantial until you find something that harvests your attention
until you slip past the underwear and then nothing feels important anymore
was it ever?
you go separate ways, separate directions
as if in fear of finding something too close to whatever it is you're trying to find because then what would be the point of looking?
there was a fire and now there's a glow and i can't tell which one i like more

a swollen finger rising to the occasion
rising to the size of a grape, purple
bloated like a stuffed pocket or pregnant chicken
green oozing out like the slime i got from the museum and the smell of rubber and plastic following me in my sleep

a ghost by the window slipping into my thumb and biting pain
the numb pressure of muscle tissue ripping
the phantom claws out and shouts that women are debris
swamps with lost metal buried at the bottom if you dig long enough the days become one and their hair consumes you whole

i argue with the shadow, threaten that this bruise will burst and blood with meet alcohol, an antibiotic fever dream
it stares at me defiant, like a giant pulverizing a village
my fingers wrestle and before the abscess can pop
the fingerprints unravel until i am nothing but thread
a coil at the bottom of the floor
a dress to be sewn in a bedroom
the shadow stand up and fits her bones into the fibers, a bride in white
the thumb hurts no more

an army of men
ransacked into a ******
part existential cut
part juvenile clawing
to reach
into an empty bag
where coins resided
taste the metal it left on the lining
i wonder if it will lead back
to that ****** lip on the 4th of july
a firecracker brain
hot-headed ready to explode into the night sky
just to impress you
i could impress you

a kingdom of rotten tomatoes
they spit their seeds for the harvest of tomorrow
one over the other they topple
waiting for instructions
"i'm waiting for the day to live"
one says over the other
one over the other

a red pool of friends
everything's my favorite
in between the cumbersome vines they hear
of the escape
the hand that reaches up into nothingness and picks the chosen one
ripe for plucking, into a palm if you're lucky
a unexplained romance to be devoured
don't leave us here to fall, they cry
berry of the nightshade come closer
their potassium-deficient king
is lifted from his ill-ridden bed and fed
feast into the sweet juice of a fruit ready to die
'a milky embrace between the tomato queen and i'

brittle bones
osteoporosis heart
pain slipping into the marrow that sips
the endless routine of motion
those clumsy hands blistering
into the open spaces of hollow ventricles
blood is where you last lay your skeletons to rest
but the closet is where i could lay down
listen to all the hangers falling into seismic harmony
until my chest aligns with yours  
like any other bruise by any other name i would have you
gently misplaced on the side of a skinned knee or
clenched knuckle
i am your god and you are mine
if i could breathe like a king i would as
the romantic exhale is caught in your skin
when the fickle violence leaves the lipstick of my mouth
you talk about the emperor mole in the middle of your back
touching your spine and how i retrace it every night with my finger
and it's almost like the heavens are here
in a small bed on a mundane apartment
that could be anybody's