The bathroom is white
And bright like heaven.
I fill the tub with Epsom salts, bubbles,
Some essential oils
(emotional vaccination),
And bless the water like a priest.
Then I disrobe,
Fold my arms and dip myself in,
hair weighing me down.
The water is womb-temperature.
I float a little. I think about why I’m here.
I ask God
But the tiled walls
And the shower curtain
Don’t answer.
Then I rise,
put my robe back on, moisturize
So that I’m like a baby again,
And go about my night,
Helpless, teary-eyed,
Begging to be held.

Am I doing it right?
I took a bath with eight capfuls of eucalyptus bubble soap
Instead of the recommended four.
I ran the water fever hot.
I wonder how long that feeling will last on my skin.
It doesn’t last long.
The next day,
I read a poem about this bath
To my creative writing class.
Call that vulnerability.
Gold star for me and my vulnerability.
I make tea with my vulnerability,
And sometimes I let other people sniff the fumes—
Raspberry-pomegranate-flavored-matcha-green—
But I never make a full ***
Because I guess I don’t want anyone else
to burn their tongues on my scalding vulnerability.


They like my poem, I think.
I don’t really listen to their response,
Am glad when it’s over.
I answer their questions about it without
Really answering their questions.
I don’t think they notice.
As for me,
I absorb their comments like vitamins
And, as such, the excess is filtered out
In the middle of the night when I’m trying to sleep.
When I do sleep, I try badly to stay awake,
When I must sleep, I am kept awake by various physical sensations,
Which I may complain about on Twitter
(Gold star for my vulnerability)
But maybe not, because I’m trying to detox,
And by that I mean I’ll stare
At Duolingo, the Atlantic, YouTube and Netflix,
Instead of Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and Snapchat,
And when I talk about it to my friends,
I feel the need to compare myself to an addict
in rehab
to get over heroine.
Because, in my mind, they are the same thing.
Call that empathy. Gold star for me and my empathy.

Am I doing it right yet?
This poem makes me feel good,
When I write something that makes me feel good,
I feel as though I could be talented.
But do I like myself for it?
If I get too cocky I might have to cut my own **** off,
Cut myself down to size.
But it’s no use, my ego haunts me
Like a bad childhood memory.
I didn’t feel guilt for the first time until I was fifteen.
It took that long
To feel sorry for pruning the leaves on my relationships,
until the plants disappeared
And I forgot what species they were.
Even now that I have friends I can admire,
Can I be trusted not to rate myself more highly?
Call that self-confidence.
Goldstar for me and my self-confidence.


When I get home from work,
I take another bath, hotter than before, with wine.
The wine and the heat make me dizzy, which is good
Because I can’t fall asleep unless I’m dizzy.
But later I will not be able to sleep
because this is my third hot bath in a row,
it’s winter, and my skin is so dry that it will itch and burn
As if every fabric I touch were made of fire ants.
But for now
I am comforted.
Call that self-care. Gold star for my self-care.
More of a participation trophy, really.

She is organized in a way that’s unfathomable,
An alluring contradiction,
Both still as untouched water
And expanding outward, reaching new spaces
With her fingertips.
You can’t see this because you’re too small.
You claim to be down-to-earth;
Just admit that you’re short for a man.
There’s no shame in that.

She has the eyes of a madwoman
And the body of someone more laid-back.
You can try to ****** her but she is everywhere
Above you and too far in-between.
You meet a different part of her every night.
You call her a different name,
Yet every woman is the “same.”

Except for that one.
She’s not like other girls.
You discovered a new celestial body
And now you have the right to name her
After one of your favorite gods.
Pick it out from a list,
And tape it over her mouth.

You try to calculate her patterns,
But since you met her it seems
She has worn nine different faces,
And in your sphere she dresses
As too many species to name,
So you think she should be tamed.

It’s true that she does less damage
Than she is capable of,
So test her limits, but remember
That a galaxy doesn’t truly have an edge.
She’s not a body you can lasso
And pull towards you,
Uncomfortably close.
Like you, she is made of dust and ash
And she breezes past you
And goes her own merry way.

She is organized in a way that is unfathomable,
An alluring contradiction with the eyes of a madwoman
On the body of a laid-back cat.
You try to ****** her but she is everywhere above you
And every night when you meet her
She already has you trapped inside with everyone else
who is propelled by her many solar systems.

You watch her when she appears dormant.
You can try to calculate her patterns,
But since you met her she has worn nine different faces,
And she dresses as too many species to name
Yet you may think she is tame.
This is true, she does less damage than she is capable of,
So test her limits but remember that
The universe has no edge.

She is curved and always expanding.
You can’t decide if she is too fat or just the right size
Because she is shapeless and swimming before your eyes.
Her stars are many but her constellations are uneventful.
She bursts her stars like whiteheads
And swallows herself up in the muddy, black potholes left behind.

Her galaxies overlap too much to be teased apart.
Each sun has its own ideas about gravity
And claims each others’ planets as their own.
This is not a harem though for she is not polyamorous.
Worse, they are tessellating love triangles.

Love for her is like politics only there is only one wing, one branch
And all parts are just a sum of her.
She couldn’t love you even if she wanted to.
There is already too much for her to maintain,
Too much to spread evenly across your small body
And too much for even God to see.

You’re not an astronomer, a telescope is a peep show to you
You lie in your hammock seeking instant gratification, all of her all at once.
Even if she were simply one of those stars
She wouldn’t travel light-years for you.

You think you know her, the brightest star above you,
The one you stare at thinking she is staring at you,
The one who flips her hair like the other girls you like,
Who all share the burden of giving you
The satisfaction of having something to flirt at,
Something glorious to form into feeble prey
With your small, shallow eyes, and which you use to glorify
Your own simple machine of a body.

You deserve that new leopard print dress
you bought to straighten your figure.
You’re tired of A-line dresses that hide your broad hips.
Your new dress has no form, but it clings to you
Like an ex-boyfriend whom you deserve better than.
Your new life is doesn’t replace the old one; they are co-dominant traits.
The fact that it feels new has nothing to do with
The new threads hanging on your shoulders, weightless but slightly burdensome.
Your face is older but it looks better to you.
You sweat less in these drafty spaghetti straps, and when you do
The beads don’t reach the edge of the armholes;
They just keep sliding down to your hips.
This is natural for you and if you would just let your hips dance
You would find the sweat cools their pink-hot heat.
You may be sore afterward, but your mind is usually sore anyway
From recalculating and budgeting your love.

You are steam, a romantic thing--
Silent, hot, always moving,
Ever-present where there is heat,
Life-giving substance and abundance,
Where there is tension and congestion.

But you are the kind of steam
That comes out of a humidifier
Your healing powers come from
A store-bought jug,
Worth less than a dollar.

Distilled--lacking in others’
Emotional impurities,
The little minerals that give the rest
Of us compassion and soul

Children try to play with you--
They engulf your furls in their mouths
Then open them and let you go, like dragons.
You linger in the air for winter.

I don’t know about her,
But I’m not sick anymore
Thank you for clearing this mucus
From my lungs.

The wind tries to control our ribbons.
They blow across the dirt,
Not quite light enough to be lifted,
And they crawl at our feet,
Whispering of our potential
Trying to break our defenses
With their mouthless words.
The ribbons want to tie us together
In a pretty bow, on top of a big,
Materialistic present,
But we are only as vulnerable
As the expensive electronic inside.

Sometimes they don’t make a bow,
But weave around our ankles
And up our thighs,
Pressing our hips together,
A group hug of sorts.
We no longer know how to fight,
But we do the closer we get,
And we can’t decide whose
Fault this is.

We can blame metaphors or love,
But either way, we are just too
Knotted together,

Our only weapons blunt scissors.
We try to tear ourselves away
Whilst making out.
How many of us are there?
It’s hard for me to tell--
I push one away and begin kissing another,
But they are all just friends--
Or friendly acquaintances?

Maybe it’s just me the ribbons have *******
And everyone else just happened to be there
When they did.

Do I know myself?
This girl with her doe eyes
And blonde hair;
She might have a lot going on.
Otherwise, she might be a liar--
After all this time,
Still convinced she’s never committed
A crime against another person’s heart.
Who really knows
What damage a girl has done?
She doesn’t even remember.
She takes everyone’s word for it,
And the whole world says
There’s nothing wrong.

Those eyes,
They are baby blues
That sing the blues.
Boy, does she look sad.
Not a week goes by
That she doesn’t waste by counting
The number of eyelashes
That fall out of her little head--
Two at a time
Yet as gradually as running out of time.
At night she pleads for excitement
That doesn’t entail
That deer-in-the-headlights feeling.

Repulsion
Has a funny way of creeping up.
It’s like there are two magnets,
And she is both.
The “wrong” side of one magnet
Yearns for the “wrong” side
Of the other magnet,
Yet they push each other away.
Likewise, she pushes herself apart.

She’s also learned that
Stuff you’re afraid to do
Happens anyway,
Like the “right” side of the magnet
Sticking to the aforementioned “wrong” side
Of the other magnet.
Things come together
When you do as you please--
It feels so wrong to let opposites attract,
But it is oh-so-right.
She needs to realize
she is not Jekyll and Hyde.

Wrongness is relative anyway--
Those eyes may seem too dark
Or too green
Or too gray
To a different person--
As for me, how I love them so.

When she bats her lashes
I can only imagine
They sound like a bat’s wings;
A rush of air beneath
Every rise and fall,
Heard only by the keenest ears.
But this memory doesn’t have
the same power as an act of self-loathing
Nor that deer-in-the-headlights feeling.
In my reflection,
She bats her lashes
but I still drown in hatred
For those stupid, doe eyes.

My heart has built a factory
Whose main exports are
Fallacies that have a dreadful way
Of creeping up
Behind my every thought and word,
Their paws locked in the snow,
Poised for a one-on-one battle
With Sanity.

I look in the mirror and think,
Boy, does she look angry.
Not a year goes by
Without some sort of inner vandalism.
She joins a stampede,
Runs without stopping
By the river to drink.
It tramples every blade of love left in her.
It crashes every flower she grows
So that she will never see
The beauty she bestows upon the world.
When she finally does stop by the river to drink,
And the bucks continue to run through it,
Her reflection is distorted.
The doe doesn’t wait for the water to
Become still again.

I call her Jane Doe
Because she doesn’t remember who she is,
And because her doe eyes
Are the only thing about her
That isn’t like a blank canvas.
Sometimes when she looks at me
I can only see my reflection;
We become one as we are meant to be.
I paint my body with compliments.
I can see myself
Draw lines across my skin.
There was a time when I pressed too hard
And the lines scabbed over.

But I am forgiven,
Because wrongness is relative
And when I envision myself,
This is what I wish I could see:
A mix of positive and negative,
Both sides of the magnet--
Never repelling each other,
Attracting one another--
A field of anger, of blues
Of lashes and bats’ wings
Of one-on-one battles
Of scabs, of humor,
Of crime against the heart,
Of no more time left to restart
Of irregular rhyme-schemes
And unfamiliarity

I don’t know myself,
This girl with her doe eyes--
This girl with her green eyes--
Or are they blue?
Or gray?
Or black?
Or brown?
I bat my lashes and I drown.

She says she has an opening
At 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning.
Whose permission do I need
To respond to what is essentially
My own request, my own persistence,
My own action. Do I regret it
Or don’t I?
Do I dare to eat this peach?
Do I dare to bring this moment--
At 9:15 Thursday morning--
To its crisis?
Will the mermaids still not sing to me
When I become less willing to drown,
Or will they sing louder than for
Anyone else, for want of that
Which they cannot have?
I will arrive at 9:15 a.m.
On Thursday morning
With the bottoms of my trousers rolled,
Not to dip my feet into the
Misleadingly temperate waters,
But to show a counselor
The over-worn, many-colored
And many-patterned
Socks that I wear
Much too often,
And she will tell me
It’s warm enough outside
To just wear sandals.

I will do the things
I'm afraid to do

I will drive a car without thinking of
Hydroplaning and rear-endings
I will carve my name into walls
Without thinking about vandalism
I will write this poem on my phone in the bath
Without thinking about electrocution
I will talk to the tall looming figure,
Whoever they may be,
Without looking down on myself
I will read you this poem
Without thinking its even true
I will tell my friends I love them
Without needing them to need me
To love them
 I will tell everyone I'm scared
Without thinking about it being true
I will leave home
Without thinking about comfort
I will get a job
That isn't always comfortable
I will make things that don't have power
Without thinking they need to have power
I will flirt and fall into some arms
Without thinking about the falling part
Or whose arms they are
And I will make love
And I will push away my love
And I will make love with someone else
Without making myself think about
The others I've made love to

But I will think about the others
I've made love to
Because they may not always seem worth
The fear I had to drown in
In order to gasp for air
And I will quit my uncomfortable job
Because I will think I have the right
To never be sweaty under the eyes and arms
And I will delete my friends
Because I stopped talking to them
A year ago when I made love the last time
and quit my job
And I will move back home
And I will stop driving myself elsewhere
And I will stop letting the world know
I have a name
And I will stop writing poems in the bath
And I will stop taking baths,
And I will stop writing poems

And I will try to do these things
I'm afraid to do.

Don’t leave me loving you
Here alone.
Stab my finger, at least,
And lull me to sleep
Before you go.

If I dream of you tonight,
Don’t be flattered.
I care too much
And dream of everything that matters.

Don’t leave me loving you
Here alone
In my imagination
Where it will feel too right.

If I’m looking ill,
Leave me to die.
Otherwise, stay the night.

This planet can trek around its star a thousand times
And this will always be true:
I didn’t ask for you, I didn’t pray
I’m not asking for anybody else to save the day,
But I may have to settle for somebody else.
I’m not asking as a favor, I’m not asking the universe,
“Can I have this one thing? This is all I ask.”
One doesn’t ask for something that’s a given.
It’s more productive to say,
“Where are they?
Can I have a clue?”

I wasn’t expecting to find you.
Likewise, I wasn’t expecting to find
so many of you, and I wasn’t expecting
to throw one of you away.
I’m not expecting to find somebody else,
Nor do I think I never will.
Mother Earth will complete her journey
at least fifty times more in my lifetime,
and I may never be able to steal
that profoundly steady heart
from your high-security prison.
I’m not predicting our fate--
the stars are just gas,
the universe just organized chaos--
I’m just saying I might have to find somebody else.

The milky way doesn’t know
of its own existence,
a cat doesn’t know of the sentience
we’ve given it. In almost the same way,
we don’t know who we are.
We are opinion, and opinion is relative
My magnificence isn’t relevant to you.
I’m something to admire from a distance--
apparently too chaotic
to see all the details up close.

I don’t remember what I thought of you
when we first met; all I know is
I like holding your hand
whether I want to or not.
Interpret that you want.

Your eyes are like supernovas
When certain lights hit them
Once they caught my attention.
I was a photographer for the National Geographic
capturing a solar eclipse, a comet, a meteor shower
every time you talked about something you loved.
An ash cloud from an excited volcano,
your eyes made a natural disaster of my heart.
Except, well,
it turns out everybody’s eyes are like that.

Traveller, scuba-diver
Sailor swearing wherever she goes
But never in front of a crowd
No, if you want to
apologize for something
you've said,
better find out where she's hiding.

Look where it's darkest,
but bring a flashlight;
she wears black
to hide from spiders and snakes.

What a pleasure;
a woodland drive on the edge
of a cliff
with James Dean,
glamour by the sea
A star at work,
fawning over me
We will be
in the gossip magazines,
you and me
and evening chatter
about how things
are supposed to be.

Science can pluck as many heart-strings
as poetry, and it can break as many too.
Maybe I didn't want your body,
but I wanted to comprehend your laws
and I needed your laws to apply to me--
I need to be explained
No, I can't explain myself to you
I need you to explain me to me
But would it make a difference in your field?
This imbalanced psyche isn't a new technology
I am ancient, the fate of my health is sealed
You must choose
Only two options, etc., etc., etc.,
Doomed to insanity or sanity
After the last glacier melts into ambiguity

will your understanding of me matter?
The fact is, no, it will not.
So don't sit there and examine
the pulse and pull of my heart-strings.

The universe is organized
in a way that is unpredictable,
an alluring contradiction
with the eyes of a madwoman
trapped inside a laid-back cat.
She tries to ****** you, she doesn't move you.
You watch her only when she is still,
calculating and dormant.
You study her, calculating her patterns.
But she is nine separate entities;
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
etc., etc., etc.,
and perhaps too many other species to name
yet you may think she is "tame"

It's true that she does less damage
than she is capable of--
test her limits, but remember

the universe has no edge.

You know you're sick
when your body is in constant need of warmth,
head aching like a broken heart,
and you know it's not within your control yet
somehow you are to blame.
Trust me, I've been there.
I know that feeling, that disease.
There isn't anything more tragic than
a bad habit which
you don't seem to feel the need of
breaking.
And so, in a way, you're always
breaking the good ones
until you get the chance, the time,
the motivation to build them back up again.

I'm here to tell you
it's no use,
your determination to
cause destruction.
To **** isn't to create,
to ****** isn't to make something
beautiful out of this
personal violence.
Be kind to yourself.

Don't wait for me
to come to the surface.
There is a lifetime of possibility
here on the ocean floor.
Let me be
the bottom-dweller
first discovered by submarine.
The darkness is not
as intimidating
as it may seem.

Don't feel around for my body
with your feet.
You won't find me in the shallow end
of the sea;
walk down the gradual *****,
where there is no air left to breath.
Over the mountains and hills
and great plains,  then you'll find me
Seven miles deep
in the Marianas Trench.

Then you'll understand my immense stress.

By the time I get home from rehearsal,
The world has stopped.
I'm watching the movie
You've Got Mail,
and earlier the director said
our cast had finally achieved art.
Tom Hanks is a businessman
with the heart of a philosopher.
Kathleen saw a butterfly
on the subway
She thinks it went to
Bloomingdale's to buy a hat--
I envision monarchs
preferring kimonos.

like to see what they see
I'd like to be what I'm going to be
right now, not then, not later,
not someday.
Just when I thought I was going to be a bad picture,
they bet their money on me,
have so much hope for me,
know me, believe in me
think of me as some great thing.

I disagree
They insist.
They spend their money to see me.
I tell them beauty is relative,
but they make way
for me
and I indulge
in my fame.

This isn't the love I want,
but they love me anyway.

You have no reason to destroy yourself, girl
This isn't the calm before the storm,
the qualm before everything is torn
It's a wave which hasn't yet
reached the shore
You are more than this

What if I never
Come to terms with
Your
Cockiness?
In another life we
Could be friends
But you prefer
to play poker
Instead of doing
the math
Prefer to play games
Instead of making amends

The story of how
We first met
Goes a little like this;
I was looking forward
To this particular
Class
Until I saw you
Walk in--
I was caught off guard
And on a whim
I refused to push away
The first thought
Which came to my head,
And it was that
Your haircut made me
Want to punch you
In the face.

Love, mostly hate.
Things would be much
Easier
If your brain was
In the right place
It is much too low
For my taste
Stop trying to impress me,
Don't test me
I only have one face

So to thine own self
Be true
And perhaps I'll actually
Like the things you do--
You're quite the hunk
After all
Though you're not
Quite as tall as
I previously thought
You shrank with
Impertinence
The gossip fits you
Like a glove

What are you so afraid of?
Did I scare you
When I said "No"?