She's the kind of girl who
locks the bathroom door
in her own house
when she showers.

I would pray to whichever God
that could make me the water
that runs down her neck,
and every other part of her,
down to the drain.

it was only meant to keep me alive.

I see how you did that
I see how you grew your fingernails long enough to wrap them around yourself
tasting cruelty on your unbrushed teeth? is it there yet?
you'll bite your lip to seem kind
: secretly let it bleed out to seem pained

you are so small
your biggest actions fit beneath my tongue better than a honey lemon
cough drop
the words said themselves,
I didn't have to put them in front of you,
you simply held out your plate and asked for more.
what more did you want?

it is too often that you hear yourself through a megaphone
mute it mute it, stop it
everything you want is hiding in your eye sockets
this moment is too microscopic you complain
it's too scary to see what's behind you
so I stand before you
mirror
hit me
look at yourself
hit me

there's nothing in my hands
nothing in my pockets
I'm not tricking you, and I never was.

There's a glass in her
hand, trembling,
because it's the only thing
she has to hold onto as
she fights an endless reality
nightmare and can't
grip the table or turn
a sharp edge the wrong way
and pierce an inner urge
that tears her skin, stomach
writhing as her body's
reversing dying even though
she dreams of acid trying
to escape the sliding
mass within her throat;
so used to an acid coat
to save her face, her waist,
and even though her world
is shame
she cannot leave or
change her blames or
tolerate the world's flames;
she has to jump on
hot coals and turn to
steam and simultaneously freeze
and break out, sink in, learn to BE
because this pain is her recovery.

Time is where we
aim our hateful fists
and weighted tears
for rain slowed into mists
our fingers are
icicles

Slow down and see
the face beneath your head
and a pair of watching eyes
next to the heart left in your bed
and Cry! - for distance
separate chests rise
and time, slow chime
Two hearts and a beat, repeat

Fairness, none
until, undone
a child stands screaming
to be heard
Tired! - from years of screaming
and not being heard.
found.

Two children, we can laugh
and fall asleep and meet
where distance and time
are forgotten
awful things, rotten
things, forgotten.

"I miss you" is
the simple way
to "say"
it

But I know you would
understand if I told
you that sunlight in
an ancient city
is giving me shivers

Everything about this
place is tiring because all
I have is me
And I'm in this stagnant
particle of thought and
thinking and being
that I have been
avoiding

Oh, I tire, and sleep

But though I am alone
I still know none of that
old shadow named "loneliness"

And I dream through
listlessness and spidery skin
of a night and event that
sits in the center of my
heart, in
sunshine and spirit
And of you...
eyelashes, fingertips, and
things I started to feel
that woke me,
half buried,
from my grave.

you can die whenever you want,
but you can't live.

matching sweaters:
it was nice to see you today.

lumps of cat fur scattered over
the **** carpet of my brothers
hallway.

he says he's going to give me
a hug tomorrow.

I don't know what to say
as I stare at his unshaved face.
His eye's are more worn than
the voices that scream up the
stairs to him. He looks at me
as if he's trying to memorize:

this moment:
t   r   u  t   h
   r  u   t   h  t  r  u  t  h
      u  t  h  t  r   u  t   h  
         t  h  t  r  u  t  h
            h  t  r u  t h
               t  r  u  t  h
                       p
                          o
                             u
                                r
                             ­     s
                                      out.

these open spaces were born the same way we were:
                                         only opposite.

it's okay if we don't know what time it is,
she's got that whole look together
like it were a saturday afternoon and
she has the whole world at her feet stones.

******.

she like's her mother but she doesn't
know her father, she's hated her brother
but she hasn't met the rest of them, not
to mention her sister.

she doesn't like to write about herself
it's like she's looking through water.

her knuckles are read with kool-aid
and she can feel where she needs to be felt.
when did that part of the body begin to exist?

(what kind of man does it take to resist?)

she's written letters that will never be sent.

"hand delivered is the way to go,"

another drag
from the holder of a cigarette,
about 11-inches from
her covered face,

"because then you can watch them
read it."

a smile spread
and wrinkles saw what they were.

love,
I'm still thinking of a question that doesn't fit
when I should be listening

the cigarette smoke hang in the air like
tropical transpiration.
dancing, dipping, she hung on to him tight.
flight topical sensations
starts rapid elation
to sacred vibrations.

Lovers in a lover's dance.
One in each others trance.
They form a flower of shape and motion,
and raise their smiles
like the sun
in an eastern ocean.

When, like a sudden shadow
with such outdone bravado,
a man sprung from underfoot,
from under carpet and soot,
and began to introduce himself,
his hand a continental shelf,
waiting for a shake from the lover's ocean.

Without attention, his hand slunk back to
it's bright blue breast pocket cave.
"Henry Ennui, man o' soot " he said was his name.
The lover's proclaimed "You're insane."

The words tickled Henry, like water the drain
then he let the lovers look
inside his brain
where the rain was
and the flame does
what it wants underwater

UNDERWATER:
the lovers gasped,
the ash man rasped,
pulled a pistol from his patched pants,
and proceeded to shoot them both.