I will write myself to sleep.
I will write long, pathetic
poems instead of texts to my
ex. I will write
the novel of my life
instead of asking you
for attention.

I will write
the new bible
on isolation, chronological
volumes
on loneliness.

I will write ten million
haikus before I write
you again.

I will write love letters
to myself until my fingers
bleed, until I
believe them.

I will write the handbook
on neglect, the idiots guide
to dealing with it.

I will write vague
fortune cookies about
self-acceptance and
self-forgiveness.

By the time I'm finished,
I will have exhausted
my depression.

I will write Shakespearean
prose about this
rejection.

I will write suicide notes
on my shield and armor for
protection and I will
save myself with them.

I will write angry, violent speeches
to rally the voices
in my head.

I will write a pledge of allegiance
to myself and recite it daily,
after coffee.

I will pray to the Gods of
"move on," and "get over it."
I will baptize myself
in holy water
that makes me
stop caring
completely.

Holy water, oh well, whatever
move on. Hallelujah.

I will write the ten commandments
on how to be
abandoned.

quite certain, she who hates to be late
was late to our first date,
five years ago,
today.

she still shudders,
over that,
and now,
for other things.
like my poems.

rainy night, hair tangled,
coming from dancing
Argentine tango
with one of its living masters,
no taxi, impoverished excuse.

of that first date,
poem writ, no repeat,
but if you had told me
five years on, we would
wake up, our hair, wires
entangled, yet again...

I would have reply,
wrong boy, unchained,
wringing out bitter herbs of having,
done my 30 years
in the big house
of a failed marriage,
I am a wine taster,
a player.

told her straight out,
sweet certainty is not my objective,
she laughed, replying,
right back at ya, me too,
"same place, same way,"
our pact, healing, sealing,
with a fist bump.

five years ago.
we were certain.
now, I answer her questions
before she asks them,
now, she forbids me from
buying her any more trinkets.
but I am almost  
quite certain
I didn't
hear her say that.

Quite Certain:

of so many things
that seemed important once,
by the wayside fallen.

that I will be writing
fabulous
incredible
virtual
extraordinary

little love poems,

to her, many years on,
even though
no new words I will own.

but quite certain,
will be still reminding her,
she came late to our first date,
and She will still and
always be falling in love with this poet.

i wonder if he looks back on his life and feels
disappointment.
this man who calls two strangers his granddaughters,
strangers who can’t speak in his tongue and who know
nothing about him. not even his name.
to us he is ye-ye and not much more.

i wonder if i will cry when he dies.
ye-ye has heart problems
again, my dad tells me. his arteries are too small,
the blood can’t get through.
i don’t think i will cry

but i can sense my dad’s quiet panic.
it manifests itself in his voice,
the number of phone calls back to china,
his google searches on my laptop that appear on my phone.

he knows his father’s time is coming,
and guilt scratches at my throat because the tears don’t come.

I skip that song again.
Too many memories still hang on the words,
the notes clang like old glass bottles
the woman with the red scarf tied to the oak tree,
they knock in the wind, fragile whiskey ghosts,
of times to sacred to be remembered now.
So I'll skip that song
till the bottle strings break,
and my someday-daughter asks
about the snowflake shards of glass
beneath the old oak tree.

you told me
you knew
we would bring each other down.
you told me the world was cold
and we would drown in frozen lakes together,
when hypothermia turns to terminal burrowing,
we could burrow within each other.
you told me i would **** you.
after that,
i spent 5 hours in the shower boiling off my skin.
you and i
will not sink in tandem, you and i will not
fall apart in unison,
clasping hands.
i am not your personal suicide pill.
i am not your romantic,
selfless partner
in helpless self-destruction,
you're talking like we'll die tomorrow but i have plans to live a while yet,
if you jump from lover's leap
then you will fall alone.
i think you think
i love you.
i think you think i value
your voice
more than the voice of my thoughts.
it is december and the sun is too bright
to look anywhere
but your feet.
it is december and you're waxing poetic
about the boy who broke his neck
falling in the forest at night.
you look me in the eyes like you're trying
to crawl through my cornea.
you make eye contact an act of violence.
[do you
dream about me?]
you ask,
you're trying to be poetic.
i don't tell you about when i dreamed
you snapped your neck
while we walked in the forest,
and i left quickly,
quietly,
lived peaceful and alone.
i don't tell you about when i dreamed you moved on,
or that reoccurring dream where you spread my legs so far,
they snap out of the sockets.
i tell you i don't dream.
i tell you i don't sleep.
i tell you
i wear boxing gloves to church
but jesus never shows, and really,
i shoulda known he'd run from this fight too.
i tell you
i wear boxing gloves to bed but i just end up
chewing on the laces,
boxer's fractures never visited me.
bar room fractures on the nightstand.
[i dream about you,]
you say,
and i take another hit.
you've been in my air for six months.
under my skin for five,
and it's been three months
since you stitched our veins together.
sometimes,
i fall asleep wearing your scarf
and dream of garrotes that smell like you,
dream of strangulation
and bruises on my throat.  
i don't love you like a motive.
you don't love me like a person.
you told me i had a clean heart,
you told me i was an innocent soul,
you told me you would corrupt me, don't
flatter yourself.
your touch doesn't have the power
to make me sick.
only i can do that to myself.
i'm not a virginal sacrificial saint
for you to build altars to.
lets see if we can cut our hearts out with our fingernails.
i bet that they'll look just the same:
****** and red.
the same size as our clenched fists,
guess it's not your fault
you never learned the difference between the two,
you keep trying to fight with aorta and arteries
while my knuckles bruise your gut.
here:
i taped my hands and i'll tape yours too.
this will be a fair fight-
don't break your wrist
when you break my nose.
i'll teach you i'm more solid than a saint.
i'll teach you i am bile and spit and ****.
i'll teach you to love me human
or not at all.

words rack my body
like an exorcism
and i fear
if i do not get them out
i might cry

i'd rather swallow my demons
than let you see me
like that.