When you laid down on my bed,
you asked if you should take your shoes off.
I said no,
though what I really meant was
right now my blood is chlorophyll and
your skin is an orchid petal
and if you so much as untie a shoelace,
there’s a good chance I’ll photosynthesize.
Daffodil. Sun Ray.
Shape-Shifter.
There was a night last fall
where we sat on the floor of your room
and got dizzy from $10 gin, or
the mitosis of easily bruised lips.
Our bodies as stems, pressed together.
It’s spring now and
I tried writing you a poem about condensation but
I’m still figuring out how to conserve water.
There are days when my skin is more desert
than tropic.
Part of me wants your hands on my body
like you’re learning what it means to grow something
into full bloom.
Another part of me
is waiting for the rains.

The skies were clear the day after he died.

I peeled off my clothes by the river
and watched the water breathe,
folding into itself like a chest wound.
It trembled at my touch,
as foot became current,
kissed thigh and naked breast,
warm cheek and curled lip.
The water was soft
and the world sighed beneath me.
My skin was built of goosebump
condensation.
I floated on my back and my body became the water cycle.

Evaporation is just another word
for rebirth.

(After the poem by Shinji Moon)

Lucy’s smoking spliffs out the window
and I keep thinking about how I’ll probably
always love you
a little bit.
We haven’t spoken in months,
but tonight New York is sleeping under 24 inches of snow,
and the last time I was in a blizzard
I was 16,
and in Chicago,
and the softness of it made me think of you.
Everyday I pass by this flower shop in Brooklyn
and I steal a tulip to pluck
like I’m forgetting you in petals.
Photosynthesis is another word for heartbreak.
The truth is I think of you often.
Sometimes I make eye contact with strangers
and wish they’d look at me the way you used to,
or say my name like they were tasting a truffle,
like the Italian word Rimembrare,
or a drag of a cigarette.
I’m trying to stop smoking.
I wanted to tell you
that I’m not afraid of the wind anymore,
and in the past 2 years
I’ve drifted through so many places but keep finding synonyms for you
in every map
or language guide.
And I guess only you know why that would hurt.
I remember almost nothing about you already
except that you loved the story
about the seagull who taught himself to fly,
and the way you laughed,
like you were imitating
oceans.

Man
   I feel u in my side, girl.

Woman
   These days u think u Adam.

Man
   U come from my rib.

Woman
   And U
   from the garden blooming in my abdomen.

Man
   I’d stomp your hydrangeas.

Woman
   I’d refuse your loneliness.

Both
   We live to destroy each other

   The temperature in Paradise never changes.

Woman
   My nails dug into the back of your neck.

Man
   My knuckles scrawling in the hollows of your cheeks.

Both
   Thy kingdom come

Man
   I’d step out of this skin for u

Both
   Thy Will Be Done

Woman
   To see my bones is to know me.

Both
   On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Man
   I love you in a way

Woman
   I need to love myself.

Every morning
I wake up in a city
that feels a little more familiar
each time my eyelids bloom daffodils
on a fire escape horizon.
Maybe I’m in love with a Newness
that begins to feel like Home.
Maybe I dream dumpsters
in Flatbush
or shoot Harlem
into my forearms.
Use telephone wires as tourniquets.
Maybe this girl I’ve been seeing has traces
of Paradise in her bloodstream.
                                          

                                           And then I have to remember this city is home to
                                           Pizza Rat, and bedbugs in the metro benches,
                                           and **** Holly Golightly,
                                           she never had to take the F train.


But maybe
she and I can share some unspoken reality,
and I’ll walk down 5th Ave. one day
holding my lover’s hand
as the sun turns sidewalks silver
and we’ll decide to grab a
croissant.

I love being gone from a place
long enough to remember it in pieces.
The words of some old song
piecing themselves together
in the back of my throat,
    
(I'll
         be
             seeing
                         you.)

                 Like rust on the underbelly of my car.
Or warm-walled cafés
where I tasted the lips of lovers.
                 The way winter tears
                 my Mother's skin apart,
and how potholes
remind me of
                 her hands.

Last January I embraced a delirious woman
whose daughter had jumped from a 10 story building.
The whole time she talked about the aching
of children's bones
and how she wished someone would fill in
the cracks on the sidewalks.

I used to say this city gave me growing pains.
I wonder if New York will make me feel smaller.

Sunday Confessional, as I sit in front of 'Earthly Paradise' at the Art Institute*

The people in the painting must be hot.
It's 70 degrees in December
and I wore a coat to a museum
and I can still feel the coke in my nose from last night.
I love this painting because it suffocates me.
And maybe these characters suffocate themselves,
naked,
under thick purple trees and overripe skies.
Last night
we wanted to destroy each other.
Called it Paradise
or Garden of Eden.
Peeled back our flesh
to see our insides.
The warm air was thick
as I walked her to her door,
sticking to us like an extra skin.
Asking to be shed,
snake-like.
I need to take off this coat.
It's too warm for December.