There's raspberry
red paint
smeared on my hand
like I wiped
the cherry lipstick off
my lips

I heard the sparrow singing

She walked in wearing
alligator
backless, silhouette
hair like a flag
blowing in the wind
and bows on her heels

Singing where I cannot see her

This is a moment in time
where I'm not sure which way
the wind blows
which way the bird flies
or ***** its wings and
where she hides, but I can always hear her

I wasn't made for here.

I wasn't given the tools
I need to
survive here.

I don't know who I am.
I can't tell who
you see me as
who I want
you to
believe me as.

I do not belong with you.

I have fallen off that
cliff again.
That rigged cliff
that gently kissed
the night (away).
The rocky cliff,
it cannot hold our
weight.
And so who is to
fall, if not you?
(Then me).
I couldn't catch
the stars for you,
this time.

Underneath a quilt
that was
always on your bed
that you left
when times got
hard and the
baby cried at
night

I'm nodding
away
nodding off
to Blue
Moon
to the
saxophone
soothing
years of where
I didn't think
you'd go and
I never thought
I'd stay.

I used to search for
love and soft
words whispered in my
ear
and [brush the hair back
from my eyes]

for hands on hands
cold fingers entwined

dodging rain drops
with your arm over my head to
keep my fried hair
dry.

I used to search for
your gaze
eyes drilling a hole in
me
and [drill until I'm weak in
in the knees]

the laughter
the blush of the cheek

dodging judgment
with my hand in front of me to
keep my sensitivity
dry.

But now I do not search for

love.

I do not care at all.

I brought back
a bunch of maps
to hang up
on my walls

but they're
folded in a
lonely drawer
so I'll
forget them all

I never thought
I'd go so far
and neither
did you, dear

That's why I
can't love
my maps
(I don't want to be here)

I don't want you [to leave]
You're so beautiful in this
light
between branches of
fallen trees.
[I saw lightning 3 times
last night
I couldn't help but
wonder,
if your
eyes
saw it too]
Please,

I don't want you [to leave]

to start this other life
away from
me.

[the thunder came out of
nowhere.
And the rain flooded
the streets]

I'll never say a word to you.
I don't want you

to leave.

I dread the day
where I look to
you
sitting next to me like
there's nothing new
to learn or
find in
me

Where my hands are
so familiar
and this old
routine is
dull
and you
forget I'm
loving you
with all my
aching soul

you exist in the
darkest forests
of my thoughts
the deepest,
Ash Grove swamps,
and I'm afraid
of the lines I
can't change
the fault in me
that remains,
and you losing the
spark when you hear
my name

Oh god,
I dread the day.

I go back and
forth from
knowing
love is real
and does not
exist at all

but for a moment
usually right before
the sun sets at dusk
and there's a veil of
light flooding
the sky, a blushing
pall of pink

I feel the pull of
ecstasy;
the magnetizing force
of longing in
sleepy hues
of orange and ginger
where the thought of you
shields my skin.

so what is gravity,
if not love
and a sunset,
if not love,
and this life,
if there is not love
to watch the sunset and
know that I exist.

If only I hadn't died that day.
in the icy air of
that car

i didn't want to get out in the heat.

you looked so serious
and i felt so alone,
water bottle in hand,
I kept drinking.
If only there had been
more water.
i needed an excuse
to look
away from you.

i wish you'd let go of
my hand.

with every dance
I forget your face
as I pique across the floor and
turn and turn
and turn
and spin
and try
to lose the dizzy
refuse to stumble
to the barre.

you always loved a ballerina.

I forget your cold
words
as I pas de chat
across the floor
and I jump so high
like my feet are burning
like the floor is
filled with
burning coals
the feeling I had
the last time I saw you.

Jump, you doe,
hop away.
get out of here.

I forgot you until
the waltz turn.
until my arms went in and out
and my feet pranced up and down.
and I spun and I spun
and spun
and let the dizzy
fly away as
I refuse to stumble
to the barre.

I had never been a dancer until now.

i hate the way that shapes
make shapes
and lines all
connect at
the end.

that i cannot separate
from you

that my end
eventually
meets your end

i hate the way that shapes
repeat all
the time and
connect in ways
that
make me
sick.

and miss you.

and ways that make me miss you

all the same
i hate the way that shapes can never end like you and me.

I knew it was the end
the moment
they became
more important than me.

the moment you
stopped at nothing
to spend the time away

the time you used to save
to spend on me.

I knew this was the fall
when you rushed our
goodbyes, quickly.
Words off your lips,
spoke quickly
when they didn't seem as genuine

as they used to be.

I knew it was the end
as i felt myself
be switched onto
the back burner
behind the boiling pots you'd left behind
before.
but had suddenly found interested in again.

I can't lose you.
I can already feel the aching in my bones,
in my skin, my deadened joints.
I couldn't take it if I lost you.
[Let me fall asleep] where I cannot see sunlight,
I could not bear to see the sunlight,
without your hand in mine.
I already feel the absence of your
                                            touch.
Your whisper
                            [in my ear]
and your breath on my neck,
deceased.

And I can feel what life would be like without you.

the endless night of anguish.
the days of too many hours.
the fog progressing in.

It'll never stop raining.

And the pain my eyes would bear,
having seen all that they have seen
[and seeing you in everything]

Oh,
the thought of if i lost you.
and a sea of blankets cover me,
with agony,
numbness
sweeping
over
me.
If I lose you,

I lose everything.

Usually I'd be
brokenhearted, and,
believe me,
I was-
knowing that we
can't be together
and that maybe,
maybe you don't even
love me and maybe
never will-

but instead,
I'm happy.
I'm so ******* thrilled.
I am so in love with you that
even unreturned,
my heart's in bliss

Passion
is capable
in me-
and that in this
earth,
on this plane,
somewhere where I
was ****** into
at birth,
you exist.

God,
you exist and
I'm able to
love
you.

I feel love.

I can speak French
and I feel like
I'm Parisian
with my perfume and
my crooked
bowl of pears

I feel love.

I feel the pull,
the push,
the quiet dance
of romance
in the deepest
sinews of
my being

It's France and
it's Asia
and it's anywhere I see
myself
I know that I'm in love.

I'm reading a book
but there are no
words

the pages are filled
with lines and curves
while my mind
drifts, it
drifts
away

behind my glasses
it's foggy
behind my eyes
it's hazy
behind the text
the lines of text
You're the text
and I'm the crazy

Crazy,
staring at these words
but I'm not seeing
the meaning,
my mind
pictures you
here, and
commence
silent screaming

Because
on the next page,
it's you
and against the hard spine,
it's you,
when I close the book,
and close my eyes,
switch off the lamp,
you hypnotize,
my bare feet
find and take me
to my
bed

it's you,
and the softest place on earth
(your heart)
*it's you,

It's more than words can say
It is.
I must be a fool in love.
I must be falling as you
climb the rocks for me.
I see you in
love with me.

I haven't skinned my knees in way too long.

I haven't fallen in the dirt for
so
so long.

I must be a fool in love.

In sheets and in
quiet,
5 a.m.
bird song and
linen-
standing in
front of a pan
on the stove-
you love me

in opening car doors
and peeking in
and filling up
thermoses with
steaming coffee-
chilly April
mornings,
you love me

In the touch of a hand,
cold, red fingers
itching from
the morning freeze
and turning up
the heater, touching
your hair and
hearing you
breathing-
you love me

you love me and I love you.

You are not
a sonnet
a love poem
an E.E.Cummings
inked in
abstract, charcoal
dreams

you're not a great poem
written by a great man

or a beautiful
cadence of
words that
flow so softly
from page to page

you're damaged
and troubled
and completely
unsettled
and the way I crave you
is annoying, at best,
and you're a mess of
fractured
sentences
straight-forward
predictable
unwieldy
phrases
and I
can't
stand
how much I
love you
in protest

It's like I'm the air
inside a canyon
[I mean,
that's the air I breathe]
Like I'm hot, dry
I come gushing around
the corner.

The edge
where
water is supposed to be
used to be
what's supposed to be in a canyon?

If not you
or me.
Or everyone in between.
[Montana
Idaho
Tennessee]

There's nothing
in a canyon,
but this air
[the air I breathe]

These days,
when I'm feeling alone
   or finally excited, again
or have a thought to
  hear your
               voice,

I get the urge to pick up the phone
       and call you
for a
second, only a
passing
          moment,
as quick as the light of a match before
      I remember
you died, last
winter and I slept in the
hospital
for weeks

Instinct hasn't caught up to
   reality

     yet

There's so much
sadness in
my hands
the way they
hang so lazily

the way they do not
have fine
control or careful
touch

There's sadness in my hands
the hands that held
you
that rubbed your drying
skin and warmed your
biting bones

There's sadness in my hands
where I hope the memory
remains
of you in robes of blue
and the last words that
I said to you.

I saw a falling star.
tumbling from the sky.

nobody believed I saw it
falling as it died.

behind the
hazy mountains
above the tall
fir trees

I saw a poor star falling,
and nobody believed
me.

People are always
saying
be brave,
like it's something
that
I can
control-

and at night, when I lie
in my bed
and I'm on my back, quieter than
a branch
or the floorboards
beneath my frame,

I want to tell you
that I am a bird-
who does not know
that she is
brave when
she jumps and trusts
the fall-

who knows no difference
between courage and
instinct and
is not brave
at all

You want to be friends
but I can't because
I love you
and I think about
moving back to
France
and I can't,
though I 'd love to.

and I can't bear the
thought of another
winter spent
an hour spent
an eternity spent
without you
a season spent
with someone new

I know why singers
sing
that Christmas is so blue.

I feel myself fading
in the midst of all
I've been told to believe in.
Am I the
only one
who
feels as if
the world wasn't made for me?

The world makes no sense to me.

No logic.

The questions I have that won't be answered.

All I can do is
exhale
"faith..."

It's Autumn and I remember
your hands
the way they held, and hold,
always will hold me.
The way they ran against
my spine.
bump bump bump.
It's Autumn and it feels like
forever
[your eyes]
and their icy darkness
that saw me.

Everything says yes
when I'm with you.
and there isn't a sunset that
tells me to
slow down.
Or a sunrise that knows
more than I
about you.

It's Autumn and
Every bird could sing for me
and it's only yes,
it's only yes
with you.

The moon spins and nods to me.
It pushes the waves
pushes you onwards towards me.

It's Autumn and
everything says yes
with
you.

It's fine by me,
   I told you

for you to come
and follow by the
Spring
beneath the
Ash Grove trees,
droopy
Madrones that
cannot bear
the weight
of memory

I told you it
was fine as the
piano
continued
    to play
and the tension built
between the chords
and you and
I

being so close
to you
and feeling your breath
and your song
your pinecone
burdened
forest floor-
walking on
egg-shells

I told you it's fine,
so I'll stand beside
you,
but I'll also
be running
away.

I dreamed about you last night
after six years
of leaving all of my thoughts behind
letting them be closed up and padded away
in suede suitcases
dusty boots under that patio
where
you held my hand so
tenderly

tenderly,
I loved you

and quickly you
flew away

and frightened,
I fell.

How hard it is to be in love
and to forget it all
when I still see you in my dreams.

It was so silent as I felt
Your hand in mine.
It’s heavy, you told me.
It’s heavy.
Heavy is the word I have grown to fear
On the lips of you, lover.
The lips that have been so kind
To me
Sweet to me
Fidelity.
But that’s all soiled now
With the dirt of lover’s past.
Of moments where you fell – I couldn’t catch you!
Moments where you didn’t want to be here
Anymore.
Lover, the ribbons are unraveling
In this quiet.
This quiet hum of the engine (roaring) and
The thought of only
Your hand in mine.
The shade of your eyes
Looking back and forth,
Whispering forgive me.
But all I hear is heavy.
Buried by your heavy.
Forgive me, laughs your heavy.
Your hand is so heavy in mine.

There aren't enough hours in the day
to watch your
hands

the way they serve me
whiskey
or dance on a
baby grand

I wrote a tragedy
last night
with my finger on your back
you felt my hands move,
trace patterns on your skin

and the glow of daylight
flooding in
and touching your face
and mine

my hand making shadows dance
and swim over
your spine.

you smiled as my fingers moved
the hair up on your arms

it felt like Indian patterns to you,
but I was spelling out
"It's over."

I tried telling myself
that love exists
but it's hard
when I've been lonely
so I felt that maybe
love was real
but not,
it's not,
for me

until I saw the way
your hands
can touch
and the way that they
can feel me
and I felt your
heart beat to my
name

All this while
I've been alone

and so far away,
you have too

Where is it that love grows? Goes?
when all sad songs lead to you?

So baby,
I am saying,
that out of all I
thought I knew

I was wrong,
I'm so in love,
and honey,
it's with you.

Where there is a
ghost
she walks with
thunder

moving through the
tombstones
where
her skirt
is floating
in a twirling ribbon
defying
grief.

It's wonderful

to see her dance so
much and
walk like bones have not
fallen down before
her and that nights have
not been black
and that the inky
stain of death
has not soiled
her soul.

Every situation feels
worse.

When I'm sad,
I want to be indifferent-
Indifferent, I want to be
numb.
When I'm numb,
I want to be hurting-

so why is it I'm in
a constant fight between
nothingness and
pain
where I need to feel
suffering
and also
nothing.

I want passion.

I want to be overwhelmed
in the shadow of
100 cacti
mesmerized by a
myriad of bay leaves
rocking in the wind

I hope to be overcome
in the waters of
1000 rivers
where my toes are frozen
and my heart is full

Where America
isn't everything
and fireflies aren't the only
ones who light the night
and where you throw
away the lock
the key
and I can fall
into the arms
of love,
once more.

I told you
to put the masts up
to set sail
to the seas
of all you ever
hoped for

I told you to go into the
deep
into the rocky blue of
infinity
that is
nature's lullaby

And then I shouted to you to
let go
of all the anchors
the weights
the sandbags holding
you down so that
you could
float into
the night
without the burden
of your
pasts

and as I sank into the
hazy blue
the foggy murk of
uncertainty-
the final,
seventh sea
I realized
you had dropped me

a dash in a bucket,
a bead in an ocean,
a tiny piece who loves you and
is heart break in
fluid motion

it's then I learned I was the weight
and that your ship had been set free.

I was told I
look like you,
and man,
I hope that's true

'Cause you were made
of morning skies
and
every shade of blue

and clothing lines
and working hands
and every field plowed

You were made
from lovers' hands
and dance in
every cloud.

Some nights, I am fine
and the candles stay
put away
on their shelves

and I gulp my
instant coffee,
watch a
funny
tv show

and some nights,
the candles are
burning
and the wax is dripping
on the floor

where  I can't take a
gulp,
a drink,
a sip,
and the tv
remote
will change
nothing.

some nights
it's like
I never
lost you

and some nights
I feel
*I went
with you.

There's a woodpecker
in my chest
tapping on my ribs
tapping on my breast
tapping on my feelings
even when I rest

There's a woodpecker
in my lungs
smothered by the tar
muted and unsung
choking on black shame
swallowed by my tongue

There's a woodpecker
behind my eyes
beating its blue wings
chained under the lies
weeping for passion
under my disguise

I want to set you free,
woodpecker
from the cage inside
my chest
but this conformity,
woodpecker,
forces you to hide
like all the rest

I would let you out if I could.

Early this
morning

when the sun had
started her
rise

I put the needle
on Janis Joplin
and she sang to
autumn's chilly
dark

and I filled in my
eyebrows
with a soft, brown
pencil
and I stared at my
self in the
mirror as
I curled my
hair

and I saw you in my
eyes ,
                 somewhere.


I'm giving it my best shot
not to see you
anymore
and so
I put
my
feathered
black
hunter's hat
on and
I venture out
into the
day.

I don't know how
but I need to say
I am jealous of
every gust of wind
who spends a
moment in time
wrapped around
you

every day on the
calendar who
demands your attention-
a wristwatch that
always finds your
gaze,
you
need it

I have to say
I'm jealous of each
waking moment
that begs your presence
and that I do not
consume your thoughts
like you do
mine

I know you're not happy
and baby,
I'm unhappy too

but the difference is
you can go on without
having me,
but I'm too jealous to
go on without
you.