it’s inevitable
we are two waves crashing upon one another from diverse directions
6 feet overpowering a near five
an abundance of sand collected in her toes, painted sunset in season
salt in the crevices of his cracked lips
                       he hasn’t drank since March
wildflowers on her dress and holes in his shoes

it’s faulty
we are racing towards riverbanks: barefoot, unsteady, and homely
this doesn’t feel like home
he’s a moonlit tower, prewar stairwells, and a bright white nail bed
she secretes meteors in her pockets and a jackknife
slopes and curves and hills to stumble
words and doorknobs and photographs to wonder

it’s vexed
we headline in bold faced Georgia
friends concerned themselves with each petty fight
        oh, boy did we
fight until her tongue wore out
his palms scratched to be healed by hers
her mother was on board, she guessed; his mother said yes

it’s bereft
we’re naked on the South lawn
a rose brush picked, prodded, called to question
her hazel eyes lack the ability to cry and cry and cry
his voice, stripped of rage
politics behind the scene
a young widow’s desperation for peace

it’s mass-produced
we’re political maps facing the chalkboard
colored crayons and heel-high socks
pepperoni’s dot her pizza the way she dots her i’s
                       as she writes lyrics of you
he raids the kitchen for her, prying the fridge for her
glinting sparkles in artificial light

it's submitted
we’re chipped steel bracelets
her straw bends forward at a crease
they didn’t realize what factors meant
                                     his version too close to candor
yielded, the missing L on a paper sign
a stranded guitar pick balancing atop city grates and a below ground maze

it’s whatever it may be
and may be whatever it’s
but she and he and I and you
we perch on seven lines of fact
like birds we wallow, and trees we droop
‘til the ending sunrise
where you figure the truth

Ruby red slippers, rich with passionate love
for you, dear state, as I search your land,
grazing the colors, the life, and the mystery
of weeds choking gravestones, tangling the dead.
But you, dear state, yourself is so gentle.

Kansas, you stretch to ****** my curls;
to stroke my tender cheek with a
flock of sunflowers, blooming vivid gold and
a mizzle of musicality, too high, too loud for me.

Your screams of country overwhelm me.
Why you, dear state, never treat us to
tangles of concrete nor mazes of glass?

Kansas, your heaven gives me migraine.

Poetry’s carved into her flesh,
intertwined with her ribs
and parasitic on her brain, the softest ***** now that her thrashing chest hardened.

It’s the thorn of a plastic rose, jabbing her distinct print, and
analogies crawling down to her jaw line,
sprawling at individual forks of two points; it was always only two.

Melodic qualities burgled her mind to
exist in ubiquity throughout her pores
and soiled strands of hair pinched with a tie ten centimeters from the root.

Poetry, disobedient and sovereign,
lived to spell a testimony
individual to her since no one breathed her air.

I didn’t hand it over
I neglected to sign a consent
I never said you could                                 yet you did anyway

a cavity within my chest
anatomical rather than cliché
the mask told me it’s a ventricle                then I stuttered okay

hollowed inside thick walls
it gathers substance productively
like a strawberry picker                              but the berries are smashed

The moon’s light faded beneath a sweatshirt of clouds;
ancient stars lost their luster;
Saturn’s rings dismembered themselves
the night you typed goodbye.

A blouse droops across my moonlit breast, scarred horizontally
one                                 two                           three
Stars disappear beyond eyelids; they’re too beautiful to view.

He unveils a balded below with vertical, light strokes from his knuckles.
one                                 two                           three
Flames freeze any hesitation floating upon my heart.

I twist to turn the opposite way, to create crooks in my spine, I bend
one                                two                            three
Pressure rises against my bladder, pounding in fervor.

Sterling silver scorches a line around my left index
                                                          engraved with a contrasting verse
“flee from youth
desire the pure”
         I moan
         and moan
             and moan

Last night you handed me glass to swallow,
shards to choke on,                       and I did.
I choked.
Blood immersed my lungs.
It flooded around my kidneys, my bladder, my colon,
brimming the muscular tendrils near my nerves.
Slivers knife the tissue enclosing
a once-pounding-for-you heart.
The soul I sold to you, for
you, is polluted beyond preservation.
It’s the extinct ***** in my body,
a hearth of life no longer there.

You yell at me for something I cannot help;
force me to ignore beliefs when I must deny.
I understand you see no room to budge.
I accept that it’s hard to grasp.
But if you call for me, I’ll run         run         run             to you,
and I can’t help that I love you:
the way you coerce my body to throb
and pump blood               through and through
though sometimes you clot it.
Your lips, magnetic, lure me near,
forcing an opening to suffocate
me as spidery limbs finger my veins
leaving traces of your web to tangle
me whole.

You’re my stonefish gliding
towards exposed skin, preparing
to attack with neurotoxins.
As ashamed am I
that only you are the antidote, too
even in great blue waves swallowing me
like I once did glass
in the end
                                                            I­ still sleep in your sweatshirt.