I’m sorry, can we go back?
I think I’ve left my head at the door
I think I let myself get lost
I let myself forget myself
I meant to let myself out earlier
I met you to meet myself
I’ve left myself to meet you
I think
I’m sorry, can we go back?

you know i'm in trouble
everyone does

but i'm not going to stop now,
i weave you into my mind's tapestries

i make up stories about us, i choose
you to star as the lead

i miss you when i'm with you, the parts
you choose to hide
you remind me to be calm and
accept what i can't see

but i want you to be mine
in all capacities

under the pretense of sleep
i lay down to be kissed and constricted

your fingers, the rolling docked boats
my mouth, the harbor

it's too easy, us,

and i want to keep it that way

I have made a flight
to the shining lights
subway cars rattling and rolling
shouldering groceries with raw red hands
rooftop champagne sunsets

I have been carried by winds
and currents who
tell me to try in the face of failure
and debt and loneliness and heartache

I have grown and wrapped my
hands around the sizzling iron
held ashes and dust and let it fall through,
crushed the doubt

Little bones,
covered by the tissue paper white skin,
is going to hospice,
is going home.

He is thirteen, with the body of an old man
and a frail voice that is beginning to
float away,
and no one can stop it from happening.

i'm imagining a hike in the Appalachian
next to pine trees and waterfalls.
my heart is a dali painting, dripping
goo for you

every conscious wave of breath
i'm wondering how you feel about it all
and i'm crossing myself mentally

because in 30 days i'll be in the City
and i won't be your wife in the forest
and i won't be here to notice how empty you are

where do i put this un-used love?
i ran out of reasons to call you, i fought against it for years,
and now you know.
where do i put all of these tender touches?
my pockets aren't deep, my hands are full.

holy, your body
secular, your mind.

sweetness, salt. I am
so in love with your bite.

taste, tears, eyelashes
lifting to the sky.

my prayer, my book,
my legs, my lips, time.

forever, nothing, fever
dreams, endless climb.

you, the writing, the
records, the cries.

how did i get here? outside of the fishbowl
in the dark trees
in the scary place where no one can understand me
so it feels like soap bubbles are coming out of my throat instead of words
and my tears are making them angry
and my anger makes it worse.
too poor and
too attached to the feelings of lonesomeness
to run away

let's talk about alternate universes
a shattered mirror, shards scattered into possibilities
karmic, cosmic, inevitable results

one planet:
i'm an old dog who rests her head down with a sigh

another:
watching you making toast with an oven, it's raining outside, i'm a dying plant on your porch

one more:
we're together finally and i want you so much still but you somehow never satisfy me enough with your words, like bad lyrics

I have a dream where you
lay still, with me,
watching the devotion of the moon to the
side of my face through the curtain
and we've just exchanged breaths and I've
said some questionable things while high
but you take your fingers to my temple and traced it
down to my jaw, along my neck. Going along the
white glow from outside my window,
and these moments don't even
crease the blankets of time passing on

I can already feel bits of it leaving me,

swirling down the drain. Each sunset,

the garbage collecting in the street, the smells of the

open grills and the handmade bread in the medina,

the last footsteps of the night, the adhan

clearing the noise from my head each time I was awake at 5 am.


my protesting nails, so deep in its skin,

its leaving me!

no words, no pictures, no old and unwashed

laundry or empty suitcases

or twist-tied bags of spices can bring it back to me


the old, the poor, the singers, the blind

the rich, the banks, the embassies

the pool halls, the Parliament

collapsing in on itself,

melding together like

blots of oil paint

a smattering of birds in the sky

I'm enlightened, illuminated by a
man on a red couch

Pelvicly: describing a connection. An encounter that left me

changed, curious, crazed
as if I had just discovered the amazing health benefits of aloe vera after years of suffering

My burns have cooled

I fell into a fear, into honey brown eyes
into a stomach full of breaths
into a pool of whispers
into him

Oh God, again? This unrelenting ache
for your hands and your wrongness.

Scraping my heart out with a spoon,

I've felt the under currents.

Looking in the wrong places for you, in strangers
in confiding my secrets, giving away my affection to
an ocean, an ocean, an ocean

What could I do, resist? Stop the tide of a past going on 10 years?

I hate you for drying out my bones, shell shocking me with a wave of nostalgia

I love you for washing me clean

I'm a woman.
it means I am
crushed between a boot that smells of cologne and

asphalt, hot from an unrelenting summer. I live
in a body that

some cannot handle. I live in a body like italics, like windy wheat
fields, swaying laundry lines, like white caps on waves

there's protests and colors on flags and I miss
someone but I think it's in my head
and I love the oranges here
and the tea as it slides down my neck
"mint" "menthe" "nyah nyah"
it's all the same meaning

i eat through the horoscopes and predictions for the new year like the words will cut through the raging fire that is my anxiety and lovelessness,

(i had bruises all along my jaw)

i regret that we never fell together, i regret the way you left me and the way i let you leave
the way i know you like the sound of the car pulling up in the drive way
and the taste of cappuccino, the warm glow of hydrocodone
the greybrown of tree skin

A reverence and a platitude sit side by side

in an empty theater

One has Jesus Christ and the other has

John F. Kennedy

We can compare hearts-

pomegranate juice.

We can each lay on goose down comforters
and trace the landscape, the light and shadow

We can drive through the Delta
with Spanish moss hanging like shower hair down my back

The rain will come to wash it all away,
it's a promise I can keep because it's not mine

my Yearning, acid trails all down my torso,

stomach pits of tar
my heart a fluttering nervous moth
at a lamp,
fitting so well in your arms  
like it is
normal to be holding you and to be held by you

what matters is that planes exist
and drugs can blip blip your brain
and machines w/ blue screens
make it easy to explain how youre feeling

what matters is that someone else will
find your pain and swaddle it in a blanket of
well-meaning words and youll still end up feeling
a little choked

buried, muffled, telephone voice

it's time to go to the doctor and get "serious" this time
now

i don't know how i got to work, and then i didn't realize i called you,
and i ate half a jar of peanut butter without stopping
,
    i started crying because no one will help me and my mind is telling me no one will ever help me.
one day it's going to be fine, but right now my room is on fire
and my throat is itching

It's Libra season
and I forgot who my friends were
                           I think they forgot me too

I said no to a pity party this year

so instead I drank a bottle of champagne

plus some
plus some

It hurts so much when you call, it hurts so much when
                  you say you miss me
it hurts all over when I throw up the next day
and no one rubs my back

no one kisses me anymore
no tenderness is afforded on my body

and my weakness is seen as weakness

I get no
relief for hours, the day after

I wish underneath my sobriety I wasn't scared
     I wish I understood love the way I understand drunk speech
and mixed drinks and lonely afternoons and trashcans

i bring you to Tru, it's a wine bar
(and they have sandwiches during the day, in which i over-order avocado and eat sloppily over my homework sometimes)
close to my home.
raw wood tables, low lighting, black leather couches.
i order red wine, cotes de rhone.
you order...the same thing

i ask if you like red wine, because
that's something i know a little about

we go to sit outside with our 6 oz blood cups
and my teeth go white in the dark

its a 78 and humid september night
but i just came from work so i'm sweaty anyway

you're from Mumbai, or New York (long island actually)
or Raleigh. I grew up around here,
so you just bring up my hair and my legs,
i instinctively feel the need to run

smelling like dryer sheets, i stepped out
to a crisp fall morning.

a Southern fall doesn't start until October,
but something was rushing the chill on to us
saying "bundle up now, and cover
those goosebumps"

i haven't heard from you in a week
and i wonder if the Jewish New Year will be good
to me. i
clamber through my day, like
a child's first time at a rock wall.

at the top, i scream to come down
but they told me i had to jump,
so i didn't move

Is it not so sweet
to spread across a bed and
fall asleep before you have time to imagine a lover crawling in after you.

Is it not wonderful
to walk down the street with your hands in your pockets
without wondering what it would feel like to have those
fingers laced through another's.

The alone time, oh
how precious and coveted.
How loneliness can sometimes void your mind
of ache and desire
for a breath.
For a moment before your heart strings clench again.

And we are mummified in shrouds of love.
After eternity, dawn like a dove,
A merry archaeologist – he has the light.
-from "Here We Loved" by  Yehuda Amichai*

It is so heavy now, it is so juicy,
this fat peach sun sinking down.
I want to slip between your fingers
and plunge through,
Can I weigh on your chest and your
legs and your arms
and your breath?
Wrap up all the hurt and burn the ends,
like a two-way candle
when it's done and all my
excess has melted off. I am feather
I am ghost, I am heaven

89 degrees and humid, sunset at 8:30.
Eastern barbeque smokin out in the backyard
the grass is getting lo-o-o-ong, but
it can wait until next Sunday.
iced tea, sweet, sinful tea
and no cowboys in sight.
just Low Drawled Camouflage Men
and Freedom to Own a Gun,
black n milds, porch swings and
mosquitoes turn up in your ear holes
like politicians touting their pro-life campaigns.

There are orange canyons
against a crystal sky that I would like
to return to someday.

Fat cacti sit amongst the
landscape of Mars, of
one hundred and seventeen degree
heat,

oppressive weather, like God left us in
his car while he went to do some
errands, and forgot to crack the windows.

I would still like to feel that once
more before I go on to some greener
pasture. Some Colorado spring where
I could believe in miracles
all wrapped in
gold, trapped in the bottom of a blue river.
Where I could start my life
over.

you were sitting on a chair, in a shallow pool. your feet were submerged. everything was grey and blue. she approached you and started kissing you, like really kissing you. but it wasn't her. it was her memory-ghost.
i don't know.
i was next to you. i kissed your neck. slowly, and surely. like your skin was going to provide a better future for me.
i kissed your shoulder. then, your collarbone, your throat. i wanted you to know i was going to win you over with these kisses,
and then
it was just us. our two mouths, submerged in our pool of water, our own world. it was slow, careful, heavy.
then i pushed you backwards in your chair, to see
if you would get up. to see how badly you wanted me again.

Every day that we don't speak
brings me closer to knife-shiny clarity...
the kind of voice in my head
that motivational speakers
tell you not to listen to!
i've messaged you (x 4)
and you've left me fuckall.
You've left me, *******.
I need money, I need money, I need love. I
need something more than
Euros transferred into dollars, I need
compassion and some sense of stability
and a trust that only comes from a
voicemail waiting for me as I wake up.
i know the time difference is ... a difference,
and there's been a whole lot of time
I've had for my thoughts to fill me up
like a black water bathtub.

guilt will peel you back
and expose your motivations,
your inner self.
the altitude on a high horse
will pinch your lungs,
it's a long way down
to humbleness

i took root. settled into birthdays without
fathers,
men attempting to reckon with me. saying they'd
like to hold me like the crescent moon against the black
(i am the night light that ran out of life)
texting me, texting me, texting me,
coaxing me out of my cave
and then shooting me in the back,
blowing out the candles, snuffing my breath.
the hunt, the chase, the game.
i'm stuck in this trap for another year

Me: a tiger pacing back
and forth in a cage,
but the bars to the cage are made of bull
**** called "your twenties"

Not pictured: Me, waiting for the bus,
checking my watch,
caught between being on time and being
too late.

I stutter-stop, I choke back some choice words
through my small, off white teeth. It's 808s as
my heart beats, it's anxiety as a normal thing.
This is only half of the power of the Big City Atmosphere
and I'm already feeling tired of it.

What are you thinking about?
the way your lips might cause my slow death
How are you?
tears don't mean a thing to this generation,
but they keep on flowin' anyway
What's wrong?
*have you ever wondered why fish mistake
their babies for food

Do you know what love is?
*love is red-rimmed eyes, bass line,
cosmic soda pop in your blood,
unabashed shame

well, I'm a foreign dialect,
and musically uninclined, I'm the exoticism
fetishized by old white men who want a Greek-Italian-
Latina-Persian harem.
I am the the voice that doesn't match the body,
the long-limbed and quiet. My insides are not my
outsides, my tenderness with them won't
be afforded to you, not just yet. And I lick
the wrapper on every dark chocolate bar,
my O-mouth on every milkshake straw,
knowing I am being watched

Straight-across-bangs-girl,
licking sour sugar from the inside of the gummy worm bag.
I want to be her
(sometimes)
Angel Olsen slight small type with a 40's voice,
top choice for an indie movie heroine.
but I-

"and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.”
-Anne Sexton*

strong jaw, tight lipped,
strawberry candy wrappers
littered all over,
i sit and wait for you to come home.
the creak, and the pace of your
feet as they cross the floor.
I'm tempted to reach out and grab your ankles
where they peak from
the tops of your socks.
shoes off, jeans to the floor,
i want you to know you're safe from me,
because while the closet has skeletons
and there are monsters under the bed,
i am the anger-love child, i am the
passion-hate child, i am the child of
a recycled metaphor, a scribbled tired song
who wouldn't dare let those eyes drop
to the floor

To me, you were like
cinema breath, that black and white
suspense. I hung on the lips, the chin,
the tongue
and craved the line

*"Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"

blonde rays of sun over

popcorn teeth, baseball lover

who sits on the outfield and waits for the game

to come to them. slow, easy, drunk, and nonplussed.

the Man who smells like tobacco and Indiana

tells you that the earth never started warming up

until you were born.

He could lick my neck and
I would feel like a Rothko,
a colored, controlled canvas

waiting to be understood.

The only thing I hate more than a boy
who doesn't know what's good for him (which is me)
is a boy who doesn't realize what's better for him
(which is not me)

i couldn't go as far today,
because i started up hill.
and i thought, as i turned the corner
heaving
cherry-faced
sweating:
*****
isn't that just life lately

Black bed sheets, Big blush brush, back and forth.
Pouting, popping, posing. "Can't believe he's single!"
Oh my god. I know right.
I say with the expression of a taxidermied doe. Texting
until I want to pull my fingers off, First Class Ticket in a
bottle of Sky. I'm a ****** who can't drive and it's ironic
because I feel like I'm in high school again and I want to die.
Please ask me one more time if I think you look good,
as I reach to lift up the window, It's April and I'm cold,
I stare at the asphalt ground down from 6 floors up.
Contemplating how I managed to make it when I fell from heaven all those years ago.

Est-ce que tu aimes les mots?
The words which
drip-drop, pitter patter,
tonguing like teens in
a Durham movie theater. Sticky summer
sweetness,
Doucement* My Desire, my tender
needing, who nods along,
rocks away,
hands gripping thighs and clinging thoughts.

He offered, "isn't that just as valid?" with
tired circles under his eyes
and his dark vinyl-shiny curly hair
and the silly smirks, and those coffee hands.
What a disappointment, I think to myself,
that I could have ever wanted to fit that body
into mine. Jig-jag-saw-like, scraping,
punitive, masochistic, I understand rejection like
lyrics, like the depth of black, like a password.

It's 1 in the morning and I'm thinking about
all the possibilities of someday,
and what you would say to me right now
if you were lying next to me.
Confidently unsure, probably high,
listening to crickets outside,
tangleing your legs with mine,
You. Philosophy major. Addicted to coffee. Studying film,
but you can't even sit still
for ten to fifteen minutes
and that's too bad because
I want to talk to you for much,
much longer than that.

"God, I love you," He turned away. "It's hard to get that close to someone."
Then, he let her go, as one does. Because Life doesn't tell you to simper and sigh in the face of death,
Life is a phone call that you wait to receive.
It curls your bones with anxiety,
it is the breath your body needs as you break the surface. It is sweet windy spring. Cold milk. Firecrackers. Synthesizers. Loving until love becomes pain and turns back to love again.

Is it getting hot in here?
or is it the breath of summer
sliding down the walls like
the sweat dripping off
of
you.
Just the peek of skin under cheeky
jean shorts, worn with the sway
of someone who may know more
about holding a body than a pen.
Just a preoccupied tongue,
rolling cinnamon candy in
a salsa circle,
sticky teeth
******* clean a
hot asphalt moment between
you and June,
that girl who makes do with your
pale legs and turns them into
firewood.