This poem has been waiting for me out back for days
it’s been waiting for me to wake up    see it    offer it a spot next to me under the blanket
but I’m still waking up in a cold sweat in shock from the way it’s eyes find me
this poem has been waiting for me patiently
until now
waiting at the fence with a cowboy hat under one arm and a sad smile tucked under the other
condolences are what it offered me when you were found misplaced cold on a hotel room floor
oh you pretty things
hands bruised knuckles frayed like old rope eyes not meeting the right ends whizzing past the mark every time everyone everyday passes and into something other
pink fingernails scraping the dirt from the side of your face
a thumb brushes under your lip and you can’t smile to meet it at the corner of your mouth
it’s reassuring you at the corner of the street and you chase it off until it becomes a golden glimmer too far ahead
can still hear it whispering
tag you’re    it    somewhere near your left shoulder
the calloused hands are back and they tell you
to stay far away from being with anyone that reminds you of your parents
you go in the opposite direction    trip over a tree root and end up flat on your back
staring at the sky
the way the trees are scared of intimacy too    they won’t hold each other’s boughs    fingers ever stretching    they sustain it to let the forest floor below breathe
and you’re grateful as you settle on it
let your mind go blank    and feel yourself come out of the other side    you want to see the other side of this
where breathing is a bit easier
not such a shallow pool     and you can meet your lovers eyes without a trembling breath paused in your esophagus
not where there’s something rising    and again you keep waking up    
falling in each direction
it goes from tripping over a pavement    through to falling straight through nothing    
feeling rather sick now    can’t remember the glimmer in his eyes    the glint you were before you were born
not even a thought
nothing that could be abused or stretched or held against your own will

I’ve been scrubbing underneath my fingernails
ever since I pressed them into my palm to create half moon shapes
my skin but your imprint    your trauma still in my handbag
I tired to throw it into the sea but it caught a wave each time   and I’d find it each Tuesday
washed up in front of my feet    looking at me sad and sort of forlorn
I couldn’t step on it    put it out of it’s misery
needing to shower every time I hear your name   I want to hear nothing from it

been biting my own lip in the cold again    responses coming out delayed and slow
the skin rash a slow rejection    the bust lip from the holding back screams    the cells inside me growing where they shouldn’t from each time I let you pass through
rip up the carpets
   pull the paper off the walls
and demand I clean up the mess    
I imagine my body telling me a story as things begin to catch up in head    too    trying to find my toolbox in the chaos
letting my brain go fuzzy against it
there’s nothing in here    butting against this wall    nothing good anyways
learning to breathe    learning to lean    letting the rubber band go slack for better reasons

letting the poem catch up    open the hatch on the gate and come inside    a wry smile on her face
she never left
but she was hoping the next time she saw you things would be different
and it washes over    they are
when you can’t breathe remember          when a tsunami hit the house
remember how it took everything away to where it came from    and you smiled
nothing standing
and you thought how beautiful it was
the whole house wrecked
and gone and
you grinned at how lovely nothing could be
to not be overwhelmed for the first time
the walls that trapped you when you thought you were home    taken back
no more cabin fever
how glorious it was having     nothing    but a blank slate    and two hands
how things coming apart can be things repairing themselves    how
everything came together when the walls
came down.