When Chaz broke up with me I was
painting the old room on Hartford,--
this rich prussian blue--in the middle
of an indian summer, thick solvent fumes
shimmering outside the windows.  And the
sweat didn't leave your body, just dewed up
on your skin in a thousand glittering beads--

When he called, I walked to the playground and
began  to internalize the heat in anticipation--
the thick chunks of ochre tanbark and red-hot tar in the
playpit--sat on the edge of a scorching step and said things like
no, really, I'm okay.
of course not, I'm fine

When he hung up, i only remember the true indifference to the
mothers and their startled babies, in awe of the spectacle
of beings other than themselves crying--avoiding the strange
girl dissolving on the swings, a sweaty, positively remorseful thing,
baking in a pair of caked shorts.

When my parents come to find me a half-day later, I am a dried up husk, salty and shriveled from sunburn
--Sitting in the same place--
you vow this will never happen--that this pain, this hurt--will never touch you again.  It's too much to say that that day you broke, at most, you cracked down the side, a piece of drift wood hanging onto its branches
by a few sinewy fibers,
sewed yourself up with moss, with steel and rice paper--hoped no one
could see through you, enough holes for catacombs, fissures from here-to-there, across the state of i-never-thought-this-kind-of-heartbreak-was-possible--

at best, slightly used, worn once, okay condition. 19.99.

And you've been keeping your distance since you were fifteen,
where people deflect off a touch, bounce off your atmosphere--
so now, people come into your orbit and your gravity is thrown, when
he reaches for you all you see is the way it ends a year from now, a loss
you've already counted when his hands are threaded into your cerebellum--when he's beginning to push apart your ribs to know
you a little better, when your spine is not just a column of bones anymore but a grecian pillar, your body is not a cavity but a temple,
when he starts to wonder about what it might feel like to love you--

you only know a couple ways to keep men grounded,
maybe here, maybe there, maybe close.  You're so scared.

You're so scared.

and men don't like timid women
men don't like women that need time
he calls you cold and you say yeah, maybe. Yeah, Maybe.
How else should you be? How can you be warm?

I am trying to be less of a tomb, turn my insides out and
show you i am the warmest I have ever been, that if I am
to be pitted with holes then they are sweet and I am full of
honey--that where you were hurt I am hurt too--that I am
healing just the same, hoping for the best,

whispering


get to know me

get to know me.