"What have you been up to?"

Without a thought, i use the word “lately”
as though introducing a brand-new, better version
of myself — happier, less broken

i use the word “lately”
to insinuate that this development is NEW!
RELEVANT! SIGNIFICANT! NOT AT ALL TEMPORARY!

i use the word “lately”
to pretend that i’ve changed
that i’ve grown out of my default state
of blue

should i tell the truth?

i haven’t changed
i haven’t grown
i just keep breathing

i hope that’s good enough for you.

my name is an expletive on your lips tonight
as your nails dig their way into the grooves of my shoulderblades

you scratch them apart
and i feel like you’re freeing wings out of my back
wings that had long been stapled inside
by crucifix nails that were bent and meant to crush
the natural curve of my body against yours

i am aching to touch you
with a certainty of faith that could move mountains
so tonight i will tuck your name under my tongue
and recite a litany of whispers

that i love you
i love you
i love
you

your name is the only prayer i need to say tonight

she says
i want to read you like a book
pour your words over me like honey
and drown in their sweetness

i whisper
i’m sorry but i am not a happy story
my poems are often like trauma surgery
and i write words to close these wounds
with barbed wire stitches

she replies
i want to read everything you wrote
point out which scars pair with which poem
and tell me the story of how your flesh
was rent, shred and healed by time
show me how the edges of the tear
reached for each other and made you
whole again

One night, I awoke on a beach, lonely but not alone.
She sat by the shore and I crept beside her.
And when she opened her mouth to speak,
an ocean swept me away.

She showed her abandoned sandcastles, lost underwater
as long-forgotten relics to represent impermanence.
I showed her the treasure chests I’d buried in the hope
of giving them to a lonely traveler who had moved on.
We rolled back our sleeves to reveal the fish hook scars on our skin —
caught only to be thrown back into the sea.

By the time morning came, I reached out to touch her
only to find myself lonely
and alone after all.

she has a tattoo

the next boy who sees her naked
will see that ink on her skin
and might wonder about the story behind it

but i wonder if he’ll ask about the poems
i whispered into her neck, where i used my teeth
as a substitute for braille

i wonder if he’ll recognize the lullabies i wrote on her back,
one slow lazy letter at a time to put her to sleep
in the cradle of my arms

i wonder if he’ll realize that the road signs
with which she directs him around her body
were carved by me — my mark on her history

i was the first cartographer of her skin
redefining the borders of her preferences
fine-turning the limits of her begging
exploring until i had finished more than a thousand revisions of her topography

i wonder if she remembers any of that after all

there is a language
that has no words
and when it's quiet
i learn its vocabulary with you

there's a structure without tense
in the way we lose ourselves in time
the present quickly becomes past
so what's the use in saying things like
what was, what is, what will be--
we are and we will and our heartbeats
are loud enough to drown out the clock

there's a statement without sound
and a destined kind of dialogue
between your hands and mine
because we shape hopes and fears
born out of our old battle scars--
but intertwined, our hands lose spaces
and suddenly, there's no distance
between your lips and mine

there's a message without medium
and we don't understand
how communication transcends
how nothing is verbalized
lingua francas aside, we are
speaking in this silence

there is a language
that has no words
though it might have a name

i think i'll call it love.

my fingers slip out of yours
and wander the crests
of your knuckles
for the _nth time

and i apologize for the spillage
of words from my mouth
whenever our eyes meet
because i built a faulty dam
of sarcasm and forced humor
that just gives way every time
you look at me like that

the pad of my thumb has memorized
the curves of your left hand
and i'm sure you noticed how
my hand curves around your wrist
in silence, in pleas

and i want you to stay

i want you to stay:
where the crook of my shoulder
has forgotten its first form,
where my arms encircle air
that held you moments before,
where my heart wants you around
because with you, it's being heard

i want to apologize for my sweaty palms
because they're not used to handling treasures--
i would have trained them sooner
had i known i was going to meet you.