I heard them rummaging through your drawers,
the click of the stopper
pulling them all the way out
searching under shin guard socks and boxer briefs
for the warm companions
of the beer cans they saw you throw
from your dorm room window.

I heard you knocking on your neighbors door,
begging them to hide your bottle of ***
in exchange for something
you'd think of later.
A slurred IOU.
A "pretty, pretty please."
Dear god, how could this be me?
I heard you exhale through your smile
after I kissed you
on the other side of your closed door
stealing my heart
weeks before you got caught.
I heard my cotton t-shirt move against my skin
as you rubbed your hand up and down my back
smoothing out the knots
and pulling me closer.

I heard my phone ring after security left
your room. I watched your name glow
on my screen through sleepy eyes.

But you didn't hear me answer it,
and you didn't hear me ask you to stay,
and you didn't hear me ask you anything.
I didn't ask you for anything.
All you heard was what you wanted to hear.
I'm really done listening.

My mother chewed her nails off, trying
to consume bones enough to
scrape away the
space that's always been
there.

She still remembers
from time to time when
she had to swallow
the whole earth
just to feel full.

She found herself afraid of her ribs.
So she built a panic architecture,
calcifying her lungs, breathing in
nearby rocks and tree branches,
scattering the animal hosts in
her spinal fluid.

By now the elephants
have multiplied,
stampeding through the open
cracks in her ventricles.
There could be time zones
in the cracks
but just the ones that are
still sleeping.

About once a month I worry
I'll turn into her.

Time heals all wounds, but
scar tissue is always visible in light
and feels smooth to fingertips in the dark.

Time heals all wounds. Time heals all wounds.

Time has never healed me—
And I was never wounded.
Yet my entire body is smooth in the dark.

Writing about you is cheap and easy:
Fast-food poetry.

I can queue you up in ink
Wherever a pen is given to me
With little more prompting
Than that soft black hair,
Those unhappy eyes.

You're new old shoes,
Worn thin around the edges
And where the world weighs the most,
But I reach for you for every long journey,
For every quick trip.
I wear you in line
At the McDonald's in the airport.

I don't order anything,
But I pour you onto napkins
And let you flutter away-
Nothing new.

'Q

People come in
and out
of my life
like millions of
little leaves,
skittering across the sidewalk,
in late autumn.

And I,
I am the tree,
who always knows
when things get better
the leaves will return.

Fairweather friends
and leaves alike
will always return
but I,
I am the tree,
and I am still strong
without them.

-t.b.