I swear the barber shaved my eyebrows off
like nothing happened. When he asked:
is this okay?
I moved my head like everything was fine.

It all was alright. After all, the mask
would gather more attention anyway,
and if you laughed that would be okay with me,
since this was all for you, anyway.

Even now I think of all we went through.
It is mostly what was expected.
And I still want that sort of life
with the walks and the slowness,
where I drive pass a Subaru
and go:
oh, look at that Subaru. And smile.

What I meant was I want that
with you. where your worries
and my worries
became a life weighed down together—
that slow aging away from wanting.

I can feel it even now.

My best thoughts come before the thing,
like *******, love, and therapy.
Driving there, a perfect day,
God got a little lazy,
Ctrl + P’d the clouds
all the way to Kansas City.

My therapist liked your poem better.
She didn’t say that,
but I gathered as much,
when she said you became real to her—
isn’t that the same?

The spaces make the same word
different. That final sway,
like two people
hurling away
from one another.

In the end, she couldn’t hate you,
you were real now.
I thought:
you’re not allowed to hate her anyway,
so watch your mouth.

But I said nothing, and
we listened to a song.

It is hard to be quiet.
It is hard to feel the
parts that must be felt
when wanting is louder.
To want the heavy weight
of your wanting, to want
skin in the game, to want
skin at all, to touch you,
almost approaches a
forbidden blessed thought.

Do I only want change?
From you? Are you absence?
From me? Absence by proxy?
I only wish for you
and your yawning wide gap
to envelop me wholly,
to feel breath on my nose,
to put hands through thin hair,
to exchange wry glances,
to accept these changes—

but I hang loneliness
on you like rain-drenched clothes
and expect you to smile.
My loneliness is here
with or without your gaze,
it is mine to bear and love.
It is the stolen ring
never given, it is
future unrealized,
it is the part that is

felt when want is absent.

I miss you, love.
Even with all the
Rediculous contradictions.
The misspellings and things we tell ourselves.
Not lies, but maybe closer to stories—

I try to be cute and clever,
Distracting from the fact
That it was given up on.
Confusing thought with expectation,
At what age do you assume you know?

I yearn very hard to be more
Than myself; a trait that’s honestly
So ******* tiring. But
My father, at this age,
Told himself he was in love.

I am maybe three when he
Pulled my mother across the room,
By her hair,
They stayed together for 25 years.
And still even now when

I look at him, not thinking
Of those times and feeling,
With all sincerity, Love
For him.
He is himself.

I hurt you in different ways.
And hurt myself even more.
And so tired, tired of
Spacing each line in some special
Way to say some special feeling.

I want to just feel
With true sincerity the things
That need telling.
No metaphor, or simile,
I miss you imperfectly missing.

I’m sorry for the times I molded you
out of worried thoughts and expectations.
Striving not observing,
I gave up giving in.
Falling in love forgetting self,
lest you become alone.

I have a timid heart.
Its wallflower movement
ceded only by its
viscous veracity.
Really, the problem is
I know how not to love (

broken plates are needed;
gypsum, joint knife, and hope
for a past patched over
suggested. You must hide
you must hide you must hide).
I’d love to not know how.

Moving with a kind of
insidious intent,
these long-legged feelings
beg to be seen and shown
and owed and owned. Really,
I know not how to love (

I have given all and still
I’m not yet willing. Or
does it sink like heavy
cream— dark until you stir
the memory of her)?
I’d love to know not how.

I feel like falling rain,
the sound of gaps on pavement making one,
an empty constant painful sacred note
towards you. I’m angry at the world
and angry at myself,
for being angry at myself,
for being angry.

(if only I could remember all that I have learned,
surely I would be okay by now).

Like how there is no okay
that exists separate, or
that I loved you,
the barefoot walking bird watching all of you,
your heron neck, your shaded wings,
and how that wasn’t enough,
wasn’t nearly enough.

Divide both by zero.
Watch the walls disappear.

We joked that I was mostly blind,
no color I could see.
You’d point and ask, you grabbed the thread,
what shapes could we both be?
You rubbed these thighs with your green eyes
And asked what does that mean?
It means the slate was not a lie,
your blue’s my blue obscene.
I wanted something else instead,
perhaps to raise our dead

or maybe even turn for you
damnation on its head.
The secret held that I was wrong
when I was sure I’d be.
I wanted something else instead,
released from you or me.

But I remember seeing you,
the lambent yellow shirt
reflected in the light, you stretched
beneath the cupboard, hands
were out of sight. I saw your face
exasperated,
inundated, out of place.
You looked at me with love
or hurt, your gaze was our embrace.

I snapped the pic, I got
a kick, from you and out of it.
And even still that look
could **** the parts I won’t admit.
Too selfish to love anyone,
anything, even me.
I wanted something else instead.
Freedom is never free.

This tentative reaching will be no more
than a grain of sand, perhaps, slipping down
betwixt fingers to beaches of hurried
memories, harmless until they bury
with heavy forced devotion all of you—
save for parts that until seconds ago were
deemed central, the sun beating a red hue
into skin; sinking, painful, just like your
moments where silence would seep in, demand
all attention, peel off into the sand
and wait there— a stranger with untrained eyes
might even mistake this instance as sweet,
or honest, sincere, and see the laughter
from children toeing the line between wet
heavy clumps of smooth celerity and
the blistering stuckness of the past as
almost holy; smelling saltwater now,
every laugh you hear holds a bit of fear
that all breath and blood will be lost. The tide
gifts the world with its imperfect motion
and still you hope. Maybe now you will not
drown.

A piece of the accent wall
is different from the others.
The color so subtle
most do not notice.

Tapping for sound, we
found hidden nails
showing hidden structures
and drew lines down them.

Pretending to know, I
measured and marked while
you stained. Pickled White
they called it (our fourth choice).

(We both know
there is a kind
of comfort
in making).

After, a mermaid touching naked knees,
more water (you said),
with burnt clinching toes.
Knee to knee we both tried to be seen

And fail, the varnish sticks all too closely—
What truth is truth
that too often quails?
I wanted us to be connected there.

Like the time we cleaned, and
you showed me the dog hair,
collected, on the floor. There was
never a time I loved you more.

But now I cinch, and hold, and wait.
Did we always guess it was going to fail?
We both know there is a kind of comfort
in making.