"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.

When the day is over, we crawl back into our spaces.

While others wrap themselves in sheets to ward off the cold,
you swaddle me until I am blue, and black, and you
I am the color of you.
(which is a strange thing to say
since people don't have colors--
then why do you?)

You are the shade of dead lilies strewn
like lovers over a grave. No you, you are
the hue of the dawn that peels itself from
the arms of the earth that stretch across
everything
just to hand the world to the sky.

But your color is different tonight.
I recognize the color of aphids trapped
on windblown dandelions. I could count
the wisps of a dazed summer that wandered
to sleep in the nebula of your hair. And your hands
have grown into flowers, and you give them to me
and I

don't know how to water your hands.
So I pull you in by the stumps of your arms
and whisper

"I want the rest of you."

at night, i strip you until you're naked
peeling the layers of day's dust off you

sometimes your touch replies to mine
like when you shiver against the sponge

but on most days, you just lie there
blank eyes staring, sometimes waiting

for the ceiling to cave in on your body
pressed tight against the heat of my skin

and a part of me is hoping you're listening
for my heartbeat in this strange silence

that somehow you're scared of losing me
through your inner fog and nightmares

but when your fingers wind around mine
there are slow vines on the trellis of my arm

it's a lot like suffocating in a forest of you
where your scent overpowers and i am lost

knowing my roots are bound too tight
around the surface soil of your sins

and i know that pulling myself loose
would only break you all over again.

I read her skin like my favorite novel

memorizing the lines and passages of time
and tracing her character outlines

until we hit the ******

-- they call it the apex of emotion
I call it the pinnacle of her arch

because her back becomes broken dialogue
monologues reduced to gasps

while the innermost character struggles are flung
wide open, until a million errors spill out
punctuation out the window
grammar's gone through the door

my name becomes an expletive

I read her skin like my favorite novel
-- there's something different every time

Lilies mean I dare you to love me.

When you slipped out of your white dress, I saw a pool of petals around your ankles. You kicked them with a smile. It must have been cold, because you walked into my arms and whispered “Color me”.

And I did. With kisses that came and went, a flash-flood of hands over your skin. With the scent of wild summer nights that we spent chasing our paper boats along the stream.

We tripped over fallen logs who must have been lovers who had forgotten to breathe, because beauty is a drug and love is just as poisonous as ozone. I wound my toes around yours, and we lay on rosebushes. I watched you stitch your fingers into mine, and to color the thread of thorns, I chewed the inside of my cheek.

By the end of summer, you were turning purple and I had already gone gray.
Lilies mean I dare you to love me. Which flowers will dare you to stay?

Tell me we'll never get old

because age is just another word for weary
and you're never going to get tired of this
pocket-to-palm life we've built
out of everyday knick knacks and
the daily delivery of baby's breath
from your lips to mine.

Tell me I'll never be alone

because empty air on our bed isn't wasted.
It's just waiting, spaces unfolding
like pressed lungs in the dark--
like the way I've memorized your nape
the side glanced so often
that I know it more than your face.

Tell me things will never change

because change means progression
and we've got perfection tucked away
inside the spaces between us
where the lights are so bright
that cataracts can't keep you from me.