My hands looked like ghost hands against
Your ghost body
Are all ghosts cool and tall
Or is that just you?
I like to fancy myself cool and small
But I'm burning
Like a house that's been saturated with fuel
(House equals me, fuel equals you)
For weeks on end
(It was forever and ever The End)
Sitting. Soaking.
Everything seeping
And finally flaming
You set me on fire
In that vulnerable moment
When I wasn't sleeping
But already dreaming.
(Dreaming meaning
I was silent as a ghost
While I was screaming.)

I don't believe in ghosts
That doesn't mean they aren't real
Just that I don't trust them.

I hate to say I 'gave' it away.
There's nothing to say about whatever
I lost.

I'd like to lose the thing I
finally got.

I have been growing memories of it
like weeds in the rain,
Coming up through cracks
in a parking lot.

The only thing I lost that night
was the thought that being touched by you
would change my life. It has not.

It has added to my poetry.
But not a lot.
Another thing to say and write:
"I've been touched."
So what.
It happens every night and day.

I've been touched
In every way. Been kissed,
Shown bliss.
And still nothing to say.

There are no words to express
The feeling in my core
When I’m
Cradled at your lips
My heart is the size of your fists
As they tangle with mine.

I have always been the umbrella type:
Cloudy, with a chance of dying.
Water is petrifying—
When it rains, I listen to sad music and enjoy the view
Hoping I never have to venture out to you
Because I have no idea where you’ll flood into
And then I’ll have to peel away my dress you seeped right through
And nakedness is frightening and sitting in the shower
--shivering--
is not very inviting.
In fact, it’s very unpleasant when you’re by nature private
And have a hundred empty places to keep quiet
Covered and compliant.
Getting wet is terrible when you’ve spent forever piecing together
A paper-mache umbrella to cover
Your cracks.
Storms are not my style, I’m still trying to dry
From the tears I was born crying.
I was born cloudy with a chance of dying
Cloudy with a chance of never even trying
And when you’re born with a heavy heart
the last thing you need is to get
drenched.
Wringing yourself out is just a defense
It’s common sense--
--to never lose sight of the shore
SO, this is why I hide from the downpour
Under dusty cotton covers
And don’t ever even wonder
What it would be like
To be dragged in your wake
It’s not like I’m safe from you anyway.
I wasn’t built on stilts
I’m not a flood-proof gate,
I’m a rusty fire-escape that only reaches halfway
down
And I don’t want you waiting at the bottom and begging me to jump but of course you are,
You always are
But even though I know you’d catch me
You are scary and I’d rather jump to concrete because at least it looks like solid ground
And when I go down, I comfort myself with the 100 percent chance that at least
I won’t drown.

We’re finally “together.”
It’s like a crash course on each other
After months of restraint I finally get to that “place” in you.
An intoxicating crash, our paths finally “collided”
And two human hearts beat fast,
With a relational feasting, a deepening
A seeping saturation with each other,
over-taking
And not realizing
A little scientific fact called:
Momentum.
We crashed and combined but could not stop and life has a way
Of moving you often and sadly,
People are intersections moved right through, because we all have
Different directions.
Courses connect and then somehow we just—
Well, it’s not that we forget.
It’s not even neglect
But a slow disparity collects
Whatever tugs us takes us and even if we don’t feel the pull
We feel the distance, when it’s full.
Our hearts are weak and light and we are flighty
And we don’t know when to fight
And even if we don’t mean to flee
People leave. It happens
See,
The way I saw it
Parallel was a pain.
Moving along the same course but never any collision, only frustration
Separate lines never meeting at a glorious point we could call us.
I said, better to have loved and lost
Than to love and love and love and never get there,
As if love is a destination.
But people don’t come with a “finish line”
There are no simple lines in love.
Nothing is straight--
We are fluid and incongruent
And swung by each other’s shifting weight.
Because, momentum keeps us moving and that movement is often claimed
By another little scientific fact called:
Entropy.
But if something huge
Something really huge that will not fail moves us then that means
It will not sway us.
It draws us not to each other, but to something much bigger, a much better “somewhere”
Then that little point us.
And when we’re both drawn to the same place
By the same force,
When we’re on the same course
Not as finish lines for each other
But as runners in the same race
As evidences of the same magnetic tug we try to trust
Too weak to be faithful satellites of each other
But revolving around the same one--
Then we’re truly together.

So many sweet names on the tip of my tongue for you
When I remember whispers that you haven’t whispered yet
I hear an echo of them
Like I sometimes I hear that stage-voice of mine
That tiny whimper sounding through my hollow insides
And sounding suffocated and small out here
Because I’m nervous and you do something bold
Like take off all my clothes.
I take off my own clothes and I see your hands
Wrapping around my shoulders and
And
And it hasn’t happened yet.
But I catch sight of people that I think one day might make me think of you
And certain smells make me think of crawling over cushions to be with you
Dusty blankets usually
Those definitely do
And when I make coffee in the morning I wish it was for two
I definitely think about you, baby
So many sweet names
On the tip of my tongue
With the taste of your lips and the silky feel of your teeth and everything else about you
That I haven’t licked
Yet
When you crawl over cushions to be with me please don’t forget
How much I’ve always missed you

People make people into banks.
I put everything I had into him
And waited for the day I’d get my check.
And then I figured love is not a debt
Love is not settled like a score.
Love is not for clean black ledgers
Love is like a messy sea that pushes up against a shore
Even though the shore will always push it back.
The only time that love is measured is when you see that line
That marks the shifted sand
Where love relentless
Reached and tethered
Herself to land.
Where she turns white from clinging,
Where, though she drags herself away,
She is always returning—
—if the shore grows weary of her hugs
She is not hurt
He does not owe her.
She does not ask that he adore her,
Or implore her “stay. . .”
Only that he let her nuzzle him as gently or
As fiercely as she feels her current sway.
She is tidal, she is beautiful
Almost brutal,
But, giving more than taking,
The sea is faithful as well as wild,
She can change the shape of a continent
And kiss the toes of a child.
She will be gathering him deeply under her heavy waves
And lingering to lick at his soft edges
Sprawling across the coast like a bed
She will love him this way,
Until the moon crumbles
And all earth’s tides are dead.