3pm *****
a ballerina learning to slow-dance in jeans
is the stolid way you call me pretty

I've known better, never to settle
as I order another, please
I can forgive me
But we've just been kissing
& pity breeds missing you, weak

I'm never bored, never sorry
watch you pull me from the ground
much like those Macbeth witches
I could have guessed
you aren't around

but you talk like you're so sorry
only to wipe it off of your belt
Steel-toe folktale, go home
& tell it to somebody else

I raise my hand, she
mimics me. Her
hair is yellowing, fraying
rope ******* to a boat,
knotted to the dock
she thinks she's seen
the whole sea yet
never moved from that
one
spot. Pathetic.

She is useless and broken—
not fragile, not
romantically so.
She's not a girl
people would want
to try saving. She's
pudgy. Vile. Boys
on the street spit at her.

She takes it graciously. She
once would have been angry,
once held herself in high esteem,
once thought herself pretty,
a clever wee girleen.
That imposter now she
hides from me
I could almost
break this glass and touch her.

Water, Diet Coke,
eggs,
lean chicken breast. Sit
in front of the mirror and eat
naked. Eat so much you get sick,
eat tomatoes, avocados,
eat eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs,
watch them spin down the bowl
when you flush.

"You're not fat" no, not fat,
but too fat still, not
huge
but too large, just slightly,
just time to stop
hiding and eating while crying
stop dressing
like a stuffed
sausage. Time to start
smoking again, sniff ******* I
hear it helps with that kind of thing.

Who has the keys to this Wednesday night?
I wanna ******* drive, I'll take the exit
               off I-90
  and these bloodshot eyes
  they won't slow me down
  or catch up until bar time.

Greyscale cityscape--it's blurred out size
               can dissemble time
and make a smudge out of our plights.

Not asking questions.
I won't need to lie
if I just keep quiet.

               Not gonna slow
                                     me down.
                  Not this time.

Door to the weekend has started creaking
and leaking light.
But my threshold's high
and we're not on foreign ground.

Dim reflection in your shouting eyes
calls for some more time
so it's one more round
and keep running for a place that's high.

Not gonna stop until these blurring lights
               and my X'd out eyes
can make a streak out of my sight.

No further questions.
I don't mean to pry.
So I'll just keep quiet.

               Deal is, you've gotta
                                     hide                  
                           me tonight.

Let's pitch the keys to this Wednesday night
and ditch this beat-up ride. Let's make our exit.
               Torch these bridges,
             flee through rainy night.
              They can't stop us now
             or catch up until bar time.

Let me once more wake in my
Grandparent's dusty home.
Baths in the sink, belly out,
cereal on the table.
Petting the big brown dog;
putting my fingers in his mouth
to feel the warmth of his tongue.
******* on lemons;
picking out their seeds
with my small hands.
No thoughts of loss,
no thoughts of war.

You’re drunkenly screaming,
hands against the skin where
my kidneys would be. Telling
same-old-stories, you’re angry with me.
Fingers flexed on a cigarette, smoking through
yellow teeth into my hair, sipping
a yellow drink in a clear plastic cup.
Your accent is familiar, doesn’t
belong here. Sounds like what
home used to be.

You’re telling me I may be profoundly
sad, but I’ve come to understand
that even if you love someone
they may not stick around.
I’m fine, in an unbreakable mind frame.
Happy. That’s not up for discussion.
You’re begging me
to not wind up dead.
Just shut up. Drink your double whiskey.
I’ll cry when it suits me.

My best years are over,
how bittersweet, this home run.
Dark chocolate I
would never have ate 'til now.
I'm no child, but still
belly-achingly young. Still pregnant
with hopes and dreams, still
curled up
in a wine-soaked ball. Just happy now,
not teary-eyed, lamenting.

The best days of my life
were mostly awful. Some were sunny,
some were sweet. I was
torn
between reckless abandon
and believing I couldn't feel worse.
My arms and legs
slowly self-dissected. My mind
slowly unravelled. Boys "broke"
my heart to smithereens. I took
my first
drink.

I loved my third or fourth drink,
puked up my fifth or sixth,
I drank
away irrelevant sorrows. Now
I watch my sister do the same.
She's sixteen in
one
month. I want to tell her
this is the last day
of the best years of my life.

I have crossed the rope bridge,
climbed the mountain.
I'm one step, one roll over
in the bed
from the top, the end,
the fourth base. Adulthood
welcomes me quietly. I am
triumphant. I am
the youngest
I have ever been.

Little peach, you are
too sweet to be real.
Too good to be true,
too unbelievable. Your juices
taste like melted Calippo,
you must have been factory made.
Built by men in white coats
in a white lab from orange E numbers.
The softest skin, so ripe for picking,
there must be a stone
in you somewhere.

Little peach. I will not
eat any more of you. I think
you might make me ill.
I think you were genetically modified
to make me fall in love with you.
Who taught you to taste
like caramel? How many girls
have ate you down to the core
only to *****
when you were all gone?

There's only so much flesh to go around,
if I don't do my time
you might rot in the bowl.
And what if you're wholesome?
Garden grown beside pea plants.
Sunshine citrus, full
of thirst quenching nectar.
A sweet little peach for me to eat,
I'd never go hungry again.

My peach yogurt tastes like your skin
in the morning when you used to stay
at my apartment, the leftover sweat
of a night spent loving each other,
and the sun slipping through my *****
blinds, while I'm eating my breakfast
at my desk checking emails, always peeking
over at you, bare-chested, snoring
through the sound of my fan and my music
turned down extra low.

It's five months later and my peach yogurt
tastes strangely like that iced tea
I had instead of liquor on the night my friends
threw a party in my living room, us
sneaking off to my bedroom just to kiss
ourselves through another evening
we'd rather spend in our underwear watching
a movie over smiling in group pictures
or dancing to cheap country music.

It's so much later and my yogurt
still tastes a little bitter, a little sour
on my tongue as I try to swallow
a breakup that's bigger than a jawbreaker.
It still kind of tastes like the bottom
of my sink as I put my dishes in it
just to wake you up, watch you
get dressed in a pair grey sweatpants,
sticky hair that I'd comb through.

It's far too late for me to think about
your hand in mine as we'd walk
as far as we could before we'd have to separate.
It's far too late and far too many people
have intercepted your memories and turned
them into something new to smile about,
but today I pulled the lid off the container
and licked the silver side clean
just to be reminded of how sweet
things like you used to taste.

For me, you are Sunday. Today is Sunday,
and tomorrow will be Sunday. Because I am stuck
in gingham yellow sheets, small white saucers
with matching ceramic cups, cigarette ashes
like a crop circle around them as I sip homemade
coffee. The ***** brown liquid sloshing
in the back of my throat, scorching my insides
as I swallow something not nearly as
painful as looking up for an answer to the crossword
and realizing you are not in fact actually there, and your hand
is not on my thigh, tracing the outline of my knee
with your thumb. I am stuck

like a kid on the monkey bars. Deciphering
between reaching my hand out to grab
the next rung or just allowing myself
to fall into the wood chips, welcome
that scraped skin and soil in the worry lines
of my palms. Because calling you,
reaching out to that line, could end with me
face up on my bed staring at the blades of my fan
trying to pinpoint just one to follow around and around
again. Or I could get your voicemail. Or you could
see my number and decide to hang up. How close
were we really anyway?

Or you could answer and we could talk through
how bad the weather is, how we've been doing,
and then get to the poignant silence, that hum
in the background that coils through the wires
into my ear, down the canal, and sinks into my heart
until the pressure becomes too much. Until
I tell you that its Sunday. That I need the 1994
Tony Award winning musical for 3 across, and hopefully,
you'll give me the right answer.