inversion (n.)

is the word for
that feeling when
the cold air sweeps underfoot
at dusk in the park
and for a moment I can imagine
the asphalt path
isn't a path
but a river
deep and eternal
carrying me forward
into the night
and up
towards the stars

The houseplant you gave me
sits next to the kitchen sink.
Which is nice cause
usually I forget to water it,
so at least it catches some peripheral spray.

It's pretty confident, that plant.
Stands tall and earnest,
reaching and growing for something more.
Just like you.

The succulents I took from your sister's wedding
sit on the dining table.
Every day I eat dinner with my parents
and study the curves and corners of each leaf
and remember the times I've spent
memorizing yours.

And sometimes I can't sleep at night
or lose my place in dinnertime chatter
because I'm worried about those plants
and if they're getting enough water
or sunlight
or fresh air
or if because one leaf is weird does that mean they're all dying???

Because, I figure,
if only I can keep those plants alive,
then I can keep you too.

what I would say to you if I never had to see you again
I was so tired
of giving you more than I was able to give
only to not just get nothing in return
but to feel my energy leaving my life
I was throwing emotional capital at you
like a desperate stockbroker
trying not to lose it all
but then the lies began
and suddenly I lost all my capital overnight

my market crashed, plummeted
except to you, I was the unintended side effect, an inconvenience
something that could be apologized to and then pushed away

don't think for one second that just because we don't talk about it anymore means I've forgiven you. I'm simply done talking.

what I say to you (since I see you every day)*
My weekend was alright. You?

she was so used
to being alone
that to be needed
was an adventure

The first snow
keeps the company of my tears
as they stop, frozen on my face
confused, concerned
as the words you are saying
don't align with the reality
I've assumed

I wait
for things to make sense
for mistakes to be unmade
for everything to change

I wait, frozen on the sidewalk
my thoughts stutter
and my heart falters
as the cold becomes within me
throughout me
bound to every fiber of my being
twisted with my sinews
climbing through my bones
dancing up my spine
and greeting my heart
with an embrace
long overdue

But this won't ever make sense
and those mistakes will never leave us
and everything's already changed

So I take my heart of ice and unsaid words
and leave
you standing there
with words half out of your mouth
and regrets already peering over your shoulder

And the tears start moving again
racing down my numb cheeks
as the sobs leave my body
they no longer leave puffs of memory in the air
as the breaths inside me
match the stillness of the molecules around me

With every broken heart
I find myself
scouring the past
searching
for some clue, sign, pattern
of failure.

Can I find a rhythm
among the voicemails
and unanswered calls?

Do the stifled tears and sobs,
collected from various midnights,
carry a tune?

Is there some kind of code
among the bruises and scars
scattered across my soul?

Is there any hope that
all the falling and failing and breaking
is their faults
and not mine?

As I lay here
in the same bed
with the same pillows
and the same pajama bottoms
as I did a year ago
and read the words you never shared with me
by the twelve am glow of my cell phone
a lot of things cross my mind.

Mostly, I miss you
and the romance we almost never sorta had
But also I'm worried
about where you're going
and where I'm headed too.
I'm afraid the future will never be
anything we ever hoped
and that it will beat us both
into a senseless death
before we even have the chance to try.

And I know
you also feel the same
which is maybe why I still get texts from you
(though I like to think it's because we truly
       have a profound connection of friendship)
and it's definitely why I bother responding
because I like to make sure
I don't have to mourn you
(or me)
just yet.

You've been lurking
in my thoughts all week
(ever since that night
we spent in each other's arms)
which has been made worse by the knowledge
that you haven't given any thought to me.

I had given up
on loving you
except now
the imprint of your arm across my chest
and the smell of your breath in my hair
linger on,
each memory a tendril
attached to my body
dragging me deeper into
the waters of the past.

That night we spent
together
(as friends but bodies curled
against each other like lovers)
has been following me around,
a second shadow
goading me
a dull reminder that
what mattered so much to me
(that night together
your head against my back
your legs against mine)
(and all those other nights
flirtations conversations smiles whispered exchanges
promises)
meant so little to you.

We danced
on the precipice of love.
Hands clasped,
elbows linked,
twirling and laughing
as the music filled our lungs.
Feet
stepping in
and out,
hopping to the rhythm,
tapping to the music around us
and the beating of our hearts within.

We danced
on the precipice of love.
A finely tuned balancing act
of half-extended invitations
and half-remembered promises.

We danced,
our feet searching for purchase
among the loose earth.

We danced
and held our breath,
waiting for the fall.
Waiting for the tumble,
the scrapes and bruises,
the part where nothing else matters
except your eyes and your heart
and mine.

We danced.
And I slipped.
   (You did too.)

Fitzgerald wrote
of a faint green light
(and so many other things too)
"So we beat on, boats against the current, ceaselessly into the past."

Am I beating on, now? Face pressed
against the cold window,
I feel the wheels beneath me
rolling and rolling
slapping against the pavement,
but that's not me.
That's just the minivan- at most
the person
holding the wheel and pressing the pedal.

They beat on,
petals of a different sort,
elephantine limbs
rotating
rolling like the wheels of the car,
but moving in
a different fashion entirely.

The red lights
      blink
in unison
on
            and off
as each massive
wing crests
and then descends again.

You can't see them
but I know they're there
from the fraction of a shadow
that falls over each
red light.

We're moving too, though
maybe not like Fitzgerald wrote.
This minivan, this minivan
is moving forward
with the current
and the longer I spend
thinking about it,
face against this cold window,
I know I'm
moving forward too.

Inhale.

Let the cold sweep through my system,
tracing its way
through veins and arteries,
the chill running down my spine
and staying there.

I embrace the tension
where the air meets skin
and welcome it through my pores.

They say the feet are the most porous
part of the body.
So if I stand here long enough,
bare feet on stone,
will the cold enter my body
and inhabit my veins?

Exhale.

Warm air rushes past,
relieving the tension,
and at once I miss it,
hurrying to
take
one more breath.
Arch my neck,
gazing upward.

Inhale.

The stars have slowly
disappeared, winking out
one
           by
                      one
as we replaced them
with highrise towers and shiny automobiles and city street lights.

All that's left
(exhale)
is the moon,
fat and solitary
in the city night sky.
But even she
will be gone soon too
(inhale)
as we paint ourselves (and her)
with telephone poles and skyscrapers
                                                  into a corner
with no escape.

Exhale.

Your hair is growing longer
as mine grows shorter.

Hair does that.
Sort of.

The remnants
of whatever we shared
fade
as time speeds up,
the length between our visits
and our conversations
growing,
from weeks,
to months,
and possibly years.

We see just snapshots now.
Each greeting
a glimpse
                   into
the change we are no longer affecting
in each other.

I feel a longing
for the days gone by.
And I think you do too.
There's stability there.
All our lives we've screamed and cried and clamored
for change, but
once we have it,
palpable and in our hands,
we don't know what to do.

"I miss you,"
is what I want to say.
But instead I say,
"I love you," and "Good luck,"
knowing that
not even words
can keep us together.

Your hair grows loner,
as mine gets shorter.
Our faces change.
Our mouths learn new words,
our eyes new faces.
Time does that.

Could you sleep last night?

I read somewhere
that when you struggle
to sleep at night,
you are actually awake
in someone else's dream
and have them to blame
for your bleary-eyed
stumbling and grumbling
the following morning.

And I awoke today
with a fresh memory
of a dream spent with you-
laughing and smiling
being together like we never have been
in the light of day.

So I want to know:
Did you sleep last night?
Or did you toss and turn
and failingly yearn
for comfort at last?

I want to be sure
that my dreamtime companion
was actually you
and not some
incomplete creation
of my unconscious imagination.

When I was younger
I refused to sleep
with the windows open.

I denied myself
the relief of fresh summer night air,
preferring instead
the stuffy silence
of a closed window.

I refused to allow
the sounds of faraway trains and cars
to permeate my sonic solitude.

The absence of sound and
of movement cloaked my bedroom,
with the blankness of a blizzard
and the density of a rainforest canopy.

I felt safe
in the silence,
content even though,
only sometimes,
I lay awake in the silent warmth
for hours,
in various contortions or
prone on the carpeted floor,
in a desperate plea for
the planets of my mind and body
to align so that I could sleep.

These days,
my window remains open,
environment permitting,
so that the crickets and the sounds of passing cars
sing me to sleep,
a suburban symphony of mundane sounds.

Some nights, a wind
creeps in and I become wistful
as I drift away,
for days that have been,
might be,
and will never come.

on the way home tonight
I took the route
you usually do,
going straight here
and turning left there
mostly because it took me
past your house
and I could look at
the muted light behind your windows
and wonder

if you were reading or
watching television or
eating dinner or
not even there or
wondering about me too.

but also because it took me
just a little bit longer
to reach my destination
and through the looking
and the wondering
I could enjoy the night
just a little bit longer.
I prefer darkened side streets
to thirtyfivemilesperhour streetlamp-lit thoroughfares.

the shadows crowding the road
and the contented blankness
of the houses
make the music louder
and the thoughts deeper
and the loneliness lesser.

When we were kids
we liked to open the plastic kitchenette,
don our aprons,
and assemble the baby dolls.

"Playing house,"
we called it.

Sometime I was the mother,
or we were both children,
and mother simply wasn't home.

We created worlds
in that corner of the basement,
loosely based on the facts of our lives.

"I'm stuck in traffic; I'll be late for dinner."
"Daddy's out of town this week."
"Your brother is home from college this weekend."

And now, we're not even friends,
first of all.
separated by some fourth grade quarrel
and 700 miles.

But "house" is no longer
the fun it used to be.
There are no aprons.
The kitchen isn't made of plastic.
The babies are human, not dolls.
I'm a sister,
not a mother,
yet I cook and clean and worry all the same.

"Playing house,"
I call it,
since I so readily assume
those roles we pretended at
so long ago.

I like the smell
of pavement
after rain.

It reminds me of camping trips
from when I
was a kid.

I would lay awake
listening
to the rain hitting the tarpaulin roof.

ping
              (pong)
ping

A symphony of raindrops
sounded like golfballs
to my childish ears.

I imagined a barrel
tipped over
with those dimpled spheres cascading

into the
           air and onto
                           the roof of the camper.

But in the morning
I would step outside and
would only be met with the smell of the rain.