I'm itchy-throat,
ripping open packets of tea,
waiting for the sickness to come.
Sweating at night,
shivering through wind to class,
(southern winters are very real)
My body aches the same way,
all through my limbs,
and I regret not kissing you more before
this overtakes me.

what can I do with a sleepy heart,

what can i do when it is sprained and strained,

a heart that makes me feel crippled and dazed.
I can’t react to his words,
his lips,
his smile does not warrant mine. Sinatra plays in my head
and breaks up the black hole in my chest, grinding it away,

"good bye, good good good bye"

it’s just one of those nights

i'm completely devoted to falling asleep slowly,
those 3 pm's, laundry mountain on my bed,
dreaming/thinking possibilities and plans
and too tired to have anxiety about to-morrow's
and to-do's.
i drift in and out of consciousness,
the upstair's neighbors' crisp footsteps
thieve me from dreams
but i always settle, and still,
and drift back to my dewy and downy snooze.

some kind of weirdness about the way we connected. i swear a sweet whisper was poured down from a distant planet, a loving hand brushed over the milk of our lives and joined us two, floating,

oblivious in the white. we joined the others in the stars and it didn't feel wrong. it was meant to be, a smile shared captures an infinity

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

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.

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

fireworks sprinkled over 8:57 PM, sounding

as if the sky was a glass and the shots that rang

out were giant ice cubes falling into it, like

ice cubes the size of my head. I don’t know what

blind people dream about, but it might be of feelings instead,

the thunderous rush of a honey whiskey handshake

to your mouth. a kissing-so-much your stomach turns

to make things other than butterflies for once.

the feeling of a hot spliff between your fingertips, inhale in.

say hey, and motion to the door,

where the cupid’s playing matchmaker and the men in red cars

whistle at girls in black skirts. Where you wish you could join in

so badly it hurts, but you

are you and you’ll never belong in that room.

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.

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)

to undo a body, is not to undress her
but to

speak as though each word was a
truth in itself
and each smile on your face is a gospel.
keep assurance by never walking behind her
(don't ***** the animal inside)
and leave out the words associated with the
past and family, and why
she crosses her arms walking down the sidewalk.
no questions,

but kissing, that is an honest thing,
that is a piece of scripture.

here, i offered a small thing,
a weak thing. a thing that doesn't speak
or move, but briefly feels warm to a palm's touch.
i offered it so slowly, without realizing consciously what i'd done,
but when i do notice...

when i do notice,
my palms shake as i watch it spill to the floor,
regret twinges all over and i
made such a huge mistake. such a huge mistake.
i took a chance. i risked, i risked because
life tells you

reach, reach, reach
whispers
don't think, do
paints a possibility portrait, makes you fall in love with ideas
and then you stumble through
you trip.
you offer it,
and you can't take it back.

A yellow, Klimt-colored aura,
knuckles brushing,
the scent of old money. Vaguely
I get a feeling that I'll remember you
for all of the rest of my life.

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

O sister, and young wife and her groom.
the anguish, hot candle wax spills like tears.
the older brother. he is the strong one, the family
knows they have won,
"he beat me in everything, he got married first,
he found his calling first, and he left life first"

when am i going to be
enough

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

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.

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

A reverence and a platitude sit side by side

in an empty theater

One has Jesus Christ and the other has

John F. Kennedy

for the next twelve months, i will become an open flame. i will spread my body, i will raise my voice, become a wildfire,
from the inside out.
i promise this to myself,
each tear that swims and spills is never again a sign of weakness
but an expression of my heart, that my mask has burned away to show my new skin, my scar skin, my healing.

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

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

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

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.

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 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

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

i'm born out of a habit of self-destructive patterns

i'm born out of a foreigner's vacation
i am the product of anxiety, of wealth ill-gotten,
of american 90's dreams and excuses

i'm shaken like a passenger on a wooden roller coaster
i'm mixed like "mutt" like "i don't know what you are"
like exotic
like *****

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

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

waiting to be understood.