to me, you carry the scent
of birthday candle smoke.
your eyes firelit with
facile wishes
and I'm the match you long
to foment forever

there’s a poem in the hands you touch me with
song notes every evening from your lips

I wish that I hadn’t quit writing in my diary
because I don’t recall the date of the night that you first told me this
or which day of the week it was in August
but I will remember how you brushed my hair back from my ear,
hushed the buzz of summer nights so that I’d hear—
how my heart in the split second that followed,
kept its habit till your beat caught up to me
your low-lit face a song I’d hummed
forever without knowing
    and I’ll remember then, how you
    traced your lips across my skin that it might also feel your love

they say there’s poetry in the last snow of prosaic months
and although I miss the chirping summer sparrow,
the skies that set in lilac after storms
I know you’ll keep your whisper in my ear tonight
that I won’t miss,
“I love you more”

i'm here still
at university housing
a three hours' flight from the hometown where i knew you
the rain outside here's rolling deep like it used to
loudly,
loudly
and i miss my out-of-tune piano where i'd
pray at an altar of sadness to play out the few songs i knew
and perhaps extract a single seething passion in my solitude
now walkersby can see it, the simple joys in a newish love
his stolid hand is the one to hold my own in the grey october
his building a midnight minute's walk from home
with a heart that's kind and strong and stone
sometimes i wonder how it feels for you to know
you're the man i only used to love
university housing is a fortress from emotion
and i in it, am alone:
sometimes quietly happy at jupiter's brighest hone
only when i ever swallow hope
(sweetness) like a quiet, loving home

you know me, I play
pianos just where I find them
and smile at my zeal

i guess that i just can't believe
that you and me—
that i thought that this could ever be
we said that we loved but our love
never swayed gently with the trees, our love
never stayed in the event of a breeze, our love
became a season that flutters in degrees

there is a bottle out there somewhere on the sea
and inside is a letter written
to you from me
of all the things that i wished that we could be
and all the things i chose not to believe —
of all the words i swore i'd never
speak

all the stars above remind me
of the only things that we both see
and i know you're either half-alive or half-asleep
wishing wishing wishing wishing
wishing wishing
wishing

there's a feeling which flows ascendant in me
something like rapture or love
at the movement in your chest, and when i
recall your heartbeat by my head
your song whirls and dithers around me
like a mourning dove or a
euphonious revenant, composer of all my
lyrics unsaid
something stirs like a spectral presence
when all of your music counts me condemned

this broken thing, we used to call it love
well it f*ing tore me to pieces and it still does
choking on air where the skyline floods
I wanna unlearn you
untrace your kisses from my hands,
forget the things you did
that made you an unloving man
I wanna have one day
to just wake up and not think of you at all
you awful creature of habit,
wretched love gone bad in every facet
some day I’ll wake up seventeen
again and unloved by you
one day it will be true
one day I will wake up and be
myself again, having
completely
forgotten you

tonight there is a newborn autumn
and pictured in it a little photograph of what
could've been
when a novel rain broke this drought and a
poem in my heart sang like a little wood thrush
almost free
tonight there is a young notion
rendering a rush like october rain
and rupturing this dryness
like his arms around me
tomorrow nears an almost hope
a tuneless number i can almost sing

i just find it so **** crazy
     (or maybe i'm just crazy)—
that the preying mantis on my porch
has a soul
and that earwigs experience fear
     and that the honeybee in my backyard
knows all her peers
and that one of them, perhaps
hopes to grow old—
     or, at least, to make it a year—
and now finds with her eight eyes
her daughter a smear
on the picnic blanket on an
     arbitrary Wednesday
she's watching with eight eyes—
    
perfectly clear

maybe i'm crazy but isn't it also crazy
     how we look just like ants from afar?

your aching lungs seek life—
is breath mist or is it smoke
from fire underneath your tongue
borne of words you nearly say
but don't
trust the fire—burn the leftover
sawdust in your mouth, don’t put it out
there’s stardust in your veins
don’t put it out

i feel your arms around me in phantom form
i feel you here and it hurts me more, but
i embrace the pain in seeing
your phantom face
because i'd rather dream you up
than not have you at all
here in this lonely place

It's so hot
So torrid in broken-heartland
I'd become accustomed to warm wintry
stolidity
"Our everything" murmured blistering
undertones from so far away
What sad moths we were–why
did we ever succumb to the flame?
I’d never listen to music with wandering
chords–since then I never listen
to love-drawn swords;
All I see is four hands molding
sculptures from aching cells
and then hating themselves
like Michelangelo's Raphael
I see your eyes, drawn away like
flimsy curtains and feel it all again
the falling together and falling
apart
That inestimable work of art
museum hall guards forgot
to monitor; we felt it all then and now–
nothing
except during these stifling midnight minutes
When upon a frenzied impulse I want to do something, when
I want to do something wrong—
I want to put on
our long-
forgotten
moth-drawn love songs

i long for that time
when we were just fourteen, and
you knew me at all

I was always afraid to call myself a poet
Whirling around in little dark rooms
scribbling
Meaningless ink blots
Like a confused typhoon
Scared not to be led by my sisters’ driftings
Towards poetry and song-writing and all the
wonders of
Human creation, and all the while
Scared to be led
We’re always writing and running
And running and writing
And we don’t have time to think and
It’s too much;
The storm was always a shameful habit that
we had to hide
But what if, for just a second in the eye I let
myself
Succumb to the tide
And whirl around in little dark rooms like a
raging wind
To make a mess, to write and cry and to
finally
Call myself a poet

i say i miss you more
i see your face all etched
into my mind like mount rushmore
i say i miss you more but maybe
i've been missing my hometown or
the way i felt my cheeks flush pink
from sun i soaked in on the shore
i miss the heat, i miss the warmth
i miss the pretty things i wore
you noticed them,
i noticed more
i'm sorry i never talked to you
i wish i understood it for
myself

i try to stop loving you —
how does one stop loving you?
you're an august rainstorm, though
summer's so faraway
i died the first time
you touched me;
your voltage and my vulnerability
hurricaning like houston does,
flooding my eyes like the torrid streets
last may
what i wouldn't give to be struck by you
again, just one last day

I’m weak without you and I’m weak
in your presence
Admiring your essence
Like you were sculpted by God to stand in the Garden of Hesperides

i'm all broken pieces
you looked at me like my hair was
dessert *** dripping down,
a dream, your eyes tearing through me
tears raising my exalted
sea
floods shattering my precipitous
strength
like my body was porcelain, i'm the
doll you lived to love and to hold
but never did
oh, brush my hair the way you’d do
just put me together again,
i beg of you

today's for sitting still
the small girl in the window sill
watching as my silent rivalled whispers die
in february's lilac skies
today i am working, rubbing remnants
off of dishes and walking back inside
from the bus stop in 30 degree weather,
half the temperature from where you now reside
today i plan on kissing my teddy bear goodnight
kissing for love where your lips aren't
today i am getting in someone's car and then we’ll drive
to dover beach and maybe he will smile with those eyes
the two that beam like someone i've been
missing my whole life
tonight is for the prospect that could make me someone's wife
but today is for our nothings
in a february sky

i'm going mad, sylvia
  sylvia, save me
    from the psychopath
my writing's bad
  but i'm a scientist
    i won't lie, it's
true that my own
  words evade me
    and non-truths persuade me
i found a love, he's faraway, he
  loves me too
    but i'm a writer,
not a liar;
  i'm not someone he can call his
    in this
world or the next
  my writing's bad but i'm alive
    i'm getting sad but i can write
about it, i suppose
  sylvia, i'll be a crying rose
    that dies when the words rain
because water doesn't suit
  me
    but i'm a swimmer, i'm the rain
so words will always
  choose me

the news calls for predestined stormy weather. truth is I don’t want to fight with you, my love
though if I’m being brutally honest I’ll say that I want you in all your seasons
I want you in december when the rain turns cold on your skin and the gardens begin to run grey. I want you under the fresh air of arizona sun rays and in the autumn as the memory of june fades.
please listen, I don’t want to have to watch you cry
only to kiss away your tears when you ever do—
I want you when the skies are glaring red from your view, when you do and don’t
feel right I want you to let me love you
because that’s what I think
that you would do
and I’m starting to think that you‘ll take me in all of my seasons
despite all these reasons I give—I’m
straying so far from perfect but please
let me live in the twilit gloom until I see the light in your eyes again, I promise I’ll
be back soon
swear you’ll take me in all my stormy seasons, love,
I swear that
I’ll vow to take you, too

you take me to the ice cream shop where i used to work
i don’t know how to tell you that i’ll never learn
i don’t know how to love if it doesn’t hurt
i don’t know how to love if it doesn’t **** me first

you take me to the fire station where you go to work
i don’t know how to tell you i’m already burned
because i don’t know how to love if it doesn’t hurt
i don’t know how to love if it doesn’t **** me first

but we take the bus in the morning as it's been rehearsed
you always keep your hands near mine
in case i become ready again
to ignite myself on fire again
this time with your light
this time maybe
i’ll learn just fine

on the second snow of the year i came over to your house
(your home has quite nearly become my own)
you smiled and left your desk and laid
your head on me
and i didn't think about microscopic troubles
because they didn't exist
in the midst of snowfall and an internet crash
or even in a measly monsoon
i was just wondering if this was happiness
if this was happiness
if this was happiness