it's only a little bit like a toothache when your
eyes well over in that muted, melancholy way.

i had so sorely forgotten this place
the anxiety, fresh like a cresting wave
that languid boil in my throat
the therapist tells me that I have to take deep breaths and
hold myself where it burns, tenderly
but i always end up choking myself.

limp attempts to strangle the fervent clamor
my brain revolves a harrowing dialogue,
masquerading as novel thoughts

this afternoon i stood, back to the sweat-slicked masses
my own mess of rank and fear dripping from brow to navel
tears vaporizing mid-air before they could season the eggs

and i realized in the most painful way
that the pallid, grease-burned hands stroking my neck
in some strange semblance of comfort
might as well be his,



they should have cremated him.
i ache to hold reverence on the same ground in which he rots.



you were humming between my legs while i twitched and gasped and then i burst into tears. wracking sobs, really, the kind that make my chest hitch and your mouth kept hitting my ***** bone while i shook, orgasming and crying.

i want to say a lot of things about the why, how and of course and to be honest with you and i think

but my lips are too swollen with his death. his bloated corpse is hiding in my throat, slicing up my insides, and i'm so ******* allergic, can't you see in the ways my hands flail and my eyes bulge?

all the lengths of my skin are boiling,
your validation a soothing salve
for a moment, before dissipating in my wretched heat

can't you see that this all fell into place decades ago? from the very first time you had somewhere better to be, someone else who needed your time and space, i was already burning.
so small and slight, trembling just a little bit.

it was you you YOU

all of you, now dead and rotting or just as good as




i refuse to join you.

if i hate myself, just look at the skin of my palms
about the matter of my skin, and the translucent hair
if and when my eyes waver, softly, just for a moment

you, you, you don't even

i am all a mess of words and fragrance that doesn't have a label or a real taste. just a sticky, angry smell. i am all the frayed socks, every ragged hole and i keep ******* the circulation from your toes.

it's thursday, the children are doing that whooping and hollering like they never expressed a real pain between then and right now. where's the pain of tomorrow? do you think their baby fat has ever trembled in the face of all the evers and wonders and hows, all the wretched aches of "not yet" and "maybe"?

that seems a simple question, and all the dreadful needs come wheedling out of the woodwork like maggots. i can taste them, their want and flush and wish and scrape and oh for the love of all that is holy, i would like to be the plaque on your left-hand incisor. let me crawl up inside your cavities, taste all your stagnant air and need like maybe i'll save you if i can just fill my lungs up fast enough with you and all your rot.

I feel you in velvet.
In dark, drowning blue.
In ambling jazz.
In the taste of red wine smooth
on my tongue, like you were.
I feel you in empty spaces,
that could’ve been full but
instead ring as hollow as church bells.
I know you when at night I close my eyes
and wrest with my hands and thighs and skin,
trying to coax them to remember you
the vivid way my mind does.
I can hear your breath wild in my ear;
and the way you prayed my name,
and the way your heartbeat slowed
when I guarded your dreams.
But when I look into the cold, still,
photograph eyes,
I do not know your face.
I know a name, an image, a date.
That is all.

a letter came for a dead man today

and i was certain, if i looked down, i'd see a ******, mangled mess beneath me where my heart sputtered and dropped right out of my chest cavity
as  i watched, through a stranger's eyes, the pad of my thumb smear the ink of your name

the serrated p's and t's slicing open the makeshift stitches i used in vain to yank close the gaping hole left by your gravestone

five hundred and eleven sunrises I have seen without you

counting each one like I counted the letters you never wrote me

because I wrote you letters, but they never left the sweaty lines of my palms.

& i wrote you sonnets, couplets, painstaking metaphors like how my heart living inside your hands was like a telescope reaching for moons.

but that's the thing. you left mine unwound, dangling towards the ground and all that my lips held never reached your sky.

all ever i wanted was to make my stars and moons live inside your eyelids.

but my wishes were like flowers left next to tombstones, and you never brought me daisies.

five hundred and eleven mornings I’ve awoken
and found my hands disgusted with the way my body moves beneath me

and it wasn’t until you took your last breath that I started being grateful for mine

I hurt, do you see?

i could write you more than one poem about suffering, as routine as a heartbeat

the things i've done, the mistakes and places and the ways i've lost my pride and grace for the sake of sanity

i've spent too many hours weaving windflowers between my fingertips
hoping the stinging vines stealing circulation will bleed safety
hoping if I say your name enough times it’ll lose its incantation

but you were a magician
and I’ve still got too much pride to admit that I thought I could get rich on the lies you pulled from behind my ears

you told me that you loved me
you told me that you understood me
you told me that you needed me
you told me that you wouldn’t leave me

five hundred and eleven days ago I learned that the things you told me were as worthless as the promise you made to keep breathing

and now I’m second-guessing myself on the corner, begging strangers to tell me i’m worth something more than the words you imprinted on my lips

all this time I’ve spent trying to make the pieces of my shattered self fit together in the same way they did before your eyes became the reason that I opened mine

I don’t care what they say
They can’t tell me I’m wise for my age when I let you redefine the truths of my own existence

But I’ve had 511 days to rewrite this one, and I’ve got enough modesty now to tell you the truth.

when you died, you stole all the ways I ever felt validated
you had my secrets in your pockets, my innocence like an offering on your altar
when you took your own life, you did me a favor

A letter came for you today.

i ripped it up.

once again,
curved fists and clenched eyebrows and your words are venom in my mouth
MY LIPS ARE BLEEDING, BROKEN THAT I'M ONLY TRYING TO HELP
little baby, little boy curled up in your accusations
he reaches a single finger, gnarled and unsure
your violence and insults and broken hands are turning him from boy to
m o n s t e r.

"you're the only one who understands me"
watch as my heart crumbles and falls into the ocean  in every single
way i've ever wanted to save you

i'm sorry
the telescope lens is still cloudy
i have to cut my knees and crawl back through the ******* dungeon
find my way through the bramble and glass and barbed wire
I'M TIRED OF GOING BACK GOING BACK GOING BACK
i want the safety
of the muted nest and momma's lemon tree
i promise
i won't eat all the broccoli
if you'll let me come home.

it has been one year, eleven months, and four days since i last saw your face
since i watched your hand raise to your lips like a nun in silent prayer in a farewell
just for me
through the ***** window
as i held the folded up note in my hand like my heart that was drawn with the words i needed to explain to you that I was scared I would forget how to breathe with you gone
that i still needed you
and then you were gone, your body disappeared out sight
it has been one year, eleven months, and four days since you left
and now i have something to say
i was sixteen years old, and my eyes were bright
i was sixteen and the way you dragged your fingertips across my back as you walked by like mice scurrying across the floor made me feel more than i ever thought it was possible to feel
how naive of me
i was sixteen and when your rough lips grazed my ear like an animal stalking its prey my heart exploded for every single possibility that your words held
i was sixteen and every time my father struck me i could feel it reverberating through my bones because my tender mind hadn’t caught up with my aching body yet and i knew  i knew that you were wrong
but when you stroked my hair and kissed my fingertips and your hands grasped my waist like you were holding on for dear life the only truth i could hear above the frantic beating of my heart was that you wanted me
that you validated me
you weaved your hands between my ribs and slipped your fingers around my heart and when you left YOU RIPPED OUT MY HEART AND TOOK IT WITH YOU
YOU SHATTERED EVERY WAY IN WHICH I THOUGHT I WAS WORTHWHILE

i’m not sixteen anymore
and i spent one year, eleven months, and four days trying to make the pieces of my broken self fit together in the same way that they did before your eyes become the reason that i smiled every day
i’ve spent all this time trying to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault, wasn’t my fault, wasn’t my fault WASN’T MY FAULT
I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY SAY BECAUSE YOU CAN’T TELL ME IM WISE FOR MY AGE WHEN I LET A MONSTER REDEFINE THE TRUTHS I THOUGHT I KNEW ABOUT MYSELF
it has been one year, eleven months, and four days
I want my heart back