i start  losin' you but you bring
me back around without even
being here--

I wonder about all the blond-haired
green-eyed heroines with lean arms
and venus dimples, who stomp their
feet and shake pomegranates
from the sky, stretch lithely in between
the gates, between arms, who fit into
your side a little better than I do
who glide across the cattle
guards and look good in miss-mes
but then there's

me

and could I ever be so beautiful?

I feel a little out of place, if your heart was full
of daffodils i'd be the single cattail, a plank of
polished wood in a barn--out of keeping with the
regulars--can't dance, can't swim, can't dive--
but I sure want you to teach me
  I learned five albums of george strait
just so we could relate and made a mental note of all
the people you knew just so i could call them by name--

bought boot cut jeans just so you might think a little higher
folded my hair beneath a hat to let it grow out since you
you loved my long braids, (should have let them stay)--
you said we always do what you wanna do and my heart
raced out past the blocks, because I'm scared I'm
not
enough.

because God, I'm so quiet.
a songbird that doesn't sing, a girl that leaves no
trace on your pillow case, a book full of nouns,
pages and pages of soliloquies about peonies
a pen melted to my palm, pockets full of change
and spearmint gum, I don't want to be what you want
certainly not what you need-- I just want to be, to be
and if we're both steel, then I have hope--the plates that
shift beneath the earth have no where to go but up

and mountains can be moved as they say, the faith of a mustard
seed, it supposedly takes.