The sky has parted, giving a warm yolk
of light:

his first tear has fallen.

I see it like melting clouds and
baby blues
that ache to open

their ribbons of
earth lace
tying colors down to the sky, our last
seconds hot enough to

be condensation,
to rain.

Dew

saying he misses me. Of all the
compositions
of air
like syrup
being the blood in the heavens’ veins

it is milk buds
honeycups, butter becoming silk –
of all compositions of air

he is mourning mine.

I am writing notes to ghosts
and realizing
that there are some bad habits I will always go
back to.

The morning has opened its eyes
through sea salt
from
the Sandman in
an abandoned bedroom

tides
swim through our curtains
wrinkles
its white skin

I am
next to the ocean.

I do not belong to myself, nor
the shadows –
I have donated all of my years to men
until they are old enough
to be gods

and how I have fallen on my knees
as they grew to be
too old for me

the earth never is. I don't love
it enough, still

nothing aches more like trying to be better
when dirt forms crescents
like a moon
beneath your fingernails.

sometimes, oxygen
kills me more than it allows
my lungs to expand.

I hate myself so I won't hate you. The feelings
swell in me like
parasites or a pregnancy –

think of my dead fetus,
a clump of cells
decomposing. My skin is colorless, it died  
before the rest of me

(or him or her or they).

You
have been the lump in my throat for years, I taste
*** and blood and tears
and I *** and bleed and cry
for myself, as if you would not want it.

I already know what you would say – we are
under the same sky
so you will

always be a part of me
whether I want you to be or not.

I hurt myself so it feels natural when you do it
and finally I have the courage

to hope that when
we touch, it breaks me enough to draw
glass from my fingertips
and carve holes in you, too. (I spread
myself open and it was never enough for you).

I published my first eBook yesterday and thought it would be appropriate to inform my Hello Poetry crowd. :-)

Currently, it is published on two websites - Lulu and Amazon. I am using any profit from this to manufacture hard copies. Really, I just need to get my feet on the ground as an author. Any interest helps/makes me happy enough to kiss your faces. Links are seen below. If you'd rather purchase on the iBookstore or for Nook, message me so I can show you when it becomes available there.

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/woman-child/13772994
http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Child-ebook/dp/B00C9Q4GPS/ref=sr11?s=digital-text&ie;=UTF8&qid;=1365524909&sr;=1-1

I have become even less than a postcard
stamped and dated more than two months ago.
Here, the slight echo of your existence
lives through your ***** swimming in my body
and I think we could have made a baby that
looked beautiful even when her stockings tear.
But she and I are only a hiccup
the wedding waltz you could not complete
a souvenir packed in cardboard: no one will find
I am only known as a second of your life.

draw pictures on my tongue with your fingertips
and they taste like salt,

you are from the ocean
I could drown myself behind your house
or I could imagine
where else your hands have been.

When he left
I thought a lot about a leaf I once saw, who sobbed
while it fluttered away from its
tree –

it begged for a soft landing,
a good home
with a good view
staring straight up the trunk he fell from
remembering how much greater things can be.

Suppose we were lunar,
ventriloquists and sisters and bed-sharers still:
your mouth would open so mine
did not possess that dry cement quality.

If my toenails were painted,
those fingers would be a shade as pastel.
You sophisticate. We would dangle
our limbs on each other like they hung over a

bridge and could not betray us,
the fall would be interrupted by delicate lace
or that photograph of us in twin hairdos.

And when you hurt me,
I had to scrub your stench from my bones.

1.   I am trying not to be the kind of girl
who is wrapped up in
initials and baby names when
all that matters is
if when we
touch, our fingerprints feel the same

2.   I have seen you
in too many hospital gowns
for you to have to see me in one

(I am trying
so hard not to **** myself

for you, every day).

3.   The day we fell in love, my heart realized
it is okay to be black if your
hair is, too.

4.   I am trying to hear your heart live
but sometimes
the empty parts of you
speak louder (and not just your belly)

5.   I am trying to think
of you
as something as bright as the sun, not
just something that burns
when we get
close enough to touch.

6.   You are more than just skin on top
of my wounds.

the earth creates pearls
from cream

and

that is how i got to be beautiful
and round and

everything he wished i
would not

be able to accomplish without
curdling first.

Here, this is what I will do
my boyfriend said

the next time there are not a hundred cow pastures
enough grass to fill a continent
as big as oceans between you and I

I can **** his venom from your blood
the places he touched
become craters I landed on with my tongue
molars, a traveling force, fire beads under a rocket

names matter
fortunately I have never heard his

fortunately you have never heard his
because your body is yours, his word is not written
on post it notes flaring up your trachea

and neither is mine
but if it helps I can glue our sides together
bee stingers, a stem or thorn connected to a rose
for you to pull off whenever I hurt you

you can pretend like I died
how I erased that man from your skin tonight.

you could mend me a little bit
stomped and right
kissing your golden eyes

when I awake, there is the sun
of another morning
and another morning song

in front of me, thing of beauty
batting his eyelids
breathing something in

could it be me –
the broken doll of dreams
or something more, glistening?

I see such a tempest riding by
rain glitters on us
a window shows love cry

and you could mend me
a little bit, while my scents you
keep breathing in.

after my heart broke,
my veins looked like the poems
he wrote on my back.

Dust and silk on your lips when you left my house –
murmurs, call me when you find your train
but you never did. Just existing in the last passenger seat
before the windows stopped, arching your neck to
see Christmas lights in towns you have never heard of,
pretending we own an apartment in every one
so we can be as far or as close to each other as we want.
When everyone else was outside
smoking cigarettes, you put your head in your suitcase
and smelled the tobacco air of my bedroom –
mouth full with particles of me, a sand-smooth tear sea.

I remember how you could kiss me
with your body and face
even when your lips were across
the room.

I weave my fingers around
strings of yarn and grass their length
pretending it is your hair again –

I love the way wind shakes nature
just the way your curls
bounce when you ****** into me.

I remember how I hoped that you &
I have just one existence
so we will not forget our ocean
of saliva.

I don't know what has made me so
fluid, how I go from empty to full based on what everyone
wants to drink
or the amount of lovers I can drown just by
breathing.

I am so weak
that I am something
that cannot even be cut open (I am

so sorry that the only thing I am good for is soaking
your clothes so you
feel like you can never run away from me.

We parked down the street, passed a bunch of signs
that gave directions like "move on" "slow down" or "stop stop stop"
and when I remember this
you are telling me a story about how you
miss the woman who raised you, and I know I did not
listen to the road signs for some reason. This is it,
this is why I cannot move on (I've been left, too, more than twice).

Your two syllables
swirl upon each other like strawberries and cream,

I speak it. There is drool chasing my chin.
Talking to yourself is mostly talking to your
two separate halves, or the two girls you’ve loved.

In there, there is you
but mostly it is our two halves of you
and how your name’s the same but can be divided.

Oh my love, my sweetheart, my strawberry touch
the part of you that is mine is so beautiful
                              it has filled my whole heart.

I am sorry if this hurts your feelings,
but writing poems about you
is more thrilling than loving you.

We are nuzzled in our bean-pod.
Our friends believe that honey hit our heads
when we slept, clandestine morning dew,
that stuck us together like glue.

It has not come apart yet,
saying you are not going anywhere
even if the gun-holders bust our seam.

I do not have to worry about you leaving
but that is why I do.

When you are not watching a ***,
it begins to boil,
& I watch it so hard I am writing about you
as I am in my underground
6AM consciousness, only awake in heart.

We are so okay
I have to think about you hurting me
to remember no one believes in infinity.

No one else is attached like us.
It is actually kind of boring to be eight
years younger than you, settled down
for everyone to laugh at & disbelieve.

But some of the things that sound so silly
make the most sense.

I think I have figured out where all those bobby pins went –
of the hundreds that appear in my school’s
lost and found, at least double
could be discovered a little bit under my chest. Where
I breathe, where men touch me, there
are sharp things a beautiful girl could pin her hair up with.

How many times have you shot this rifle?
It rests on you like a young lady asleep on your lap.
Occasionally, she hops in her slumber
and you think (hope) maybe she is dreaming of me.

This pretty pretty thing, her barrel spread like a
dress upon the petticoat’s pillow:
so tempting and so prepared for your touch.

You think of her so much
and spill your own blood just to have her bullet hid

                     where she could see your love.

I see you in the same light of ghosts –
in shadows, against walls
the little bricks that falter as I walk

you are more than meets the eye,
because I barely even see you.

I cannot touch you
or you will evaporate, like water
like a wave that washes away dawn.

Each morning is a phantom,
nothing to be held within my arms.

I see you in the same light of ghosts –
the shivering image I take
in my head, a dream I have made.

I have
turned the moon into
your skin at

at least
ten
times by now

and

I have
pretended that I can
think for her

at least
fifty.

I changed her name
to something
kids

are not
supposed to say
and adults

pretend not to know
of.

It is
a whole lot of
wishing
I have things under

control.

Everything
beautiful can
get

cavities
but nobody expects

our teeth to
fall out,
we just stay empty.

In the name of
the

girlfriend
ex-love
and holy ghost,

amen.

I never wonder if he misses me
when my tongue still stings from the last time I bit it
pretending I could
bleed him out.

A better question is if he does not miss me, I
whose name is not attached to him
forever
and yet I took his like it were a vessel in his heart, like
when I added us together
it was only supposed to change me. I have

the remnants
of having him and I have the broken
shards of my heart burying glass in my palms: he has
absolutely nothing, I may ask
if he misses me but
mostly I just want to know if he is still empty.

There are some people who fill
other people when they cannot fill themselves, but I
have to wonder
where he bought all the rusted nails
that pinned me down so he could get inside.

girls draw butterflies
across my breast, but men put
them in my belly.

As strangers pass by, I tend
to look at their wrists for evidence or something,
some name, some other person, something
that tells me they feel —

once upon a time,
I only knew what I felt, what I cared for, if
it was engraved onto my skin.

I heard women talk about the stars being aligned
and in my head amalgamated the image of
internal wires
coiling around each other,
being inserted in one another so
feeling exhales on the skin, the nerves spark.

I felt more pure after I lost my innocence:
your breath on mine, the scent of angels
chorused from our neck to spine to cheek
and drifted to a southern ridge of my body –
I knew, I knew it was the best I’d ever be,
merged with a man who found my purity.

It was light on the skin, a delicate blend
of morning’s hellos and an evening’s rest –
you you you grabbed a ******’s pale breast
and I I I let you ******, handle, change it.

Then no longer a girl, I laid on my side –
oh, how I felt when you were still there!
I was not chilled or lonely, I became alive
and kissed your coarse edges I had known
inside my frame, my pinkness apart so
he would find my purity going by, by, by.

Your infinity ring turned my finger green.
The figure of something
eternal
there, on my skin, and it is not beautiful –
  we are imperfect and lasting forever.

Hair dye is on my bathroom wall -
now everyone knows
I put myself together like papier-mâché.

June 23rd was the day of the super moon, the day before
was super moon’s eve. Well,
someone must have had too much to drink last night
because the street gutters are full
of something that comes from craters – so I am thinking about
how you said you see my face in the sky
when the dark clouds open up and begin to cry,
how you explained that we can make flowers out of this
watering can of tears or else I will just let them
evaporate. I never know if I am in
a boat or in your bed, if every black coil is a spider in its
web or my hair: you would tell me that I have enough
loose strands to knit the moon a sweater,
plus one for each planet and sun.
It is me, and it is you, we are what make the sky –
other people is how these oceans have gotten in our eyes.

I understand
why some girls call their lover “Daddy”
or at least why I would.

Bare feet, rubbing against jeans

free
for yesterday’s
moon to pour itself into today

the craters like petals,
he loves me, he loves me not. It doesn’t
matter because he will protect me
anyway.

Wrap me in his veins
and we

‘ll blow as cold air swims past my lips.

I paint my nails from that feeling
in two strokes,
small, flat umbrellas for dirt.

Baby, baby,
I hear that calling now,
your hands are chilly, let me touch you

well, I guess that’s okay.
Put me on your lap and I’ll behave.

The weather tomorrow
will never reach above freezing
but my flannel sheets are still in the wash, still *****
because of you.

On Thursday, the temperature will be
fifty over freezing

and I won’t need you anymore I won’t have to miss
you anymore
you won’t have to hold my dress down in
the wind anymore. Nature

wants me
to pinprick my own goosebumps to death,

wants
to show me how fast things can get better or worse.

There is a place for me somewhere
and it is in a room
where your toes curl, retching
out of desire.

I envy the blankets that hold you
when you are asleep,
you crease their most innocent places
mumbled secrets into seams.

I feel I am an alarm clock
waiting to go off, to watch you rise
for morning air to bite
your skin uncovered once again.

I do not need a place in your heart –
rather, a seat in your bedroom.

inside is sugar
and spice, but nothing else nice
until the *** comes.

I would eat my own heart if I could,
and spit parts into a glass locket
so everyone could see inside

me, the breast split open and
pumping. I would eat my own heart
if I could feel its pulse on my lips,

have the red rouge paint beauty
where there was only white before.
These veins that **** compulsively

for something that was stolen, airy
and pleading. I would eat my
own heart if it’d make me feel full.

It was on the first day that we made love, and the second
and the third

waiting for the eyes to become glossy
when we practiced letting go of each other’s hands

I never saw you in any light but fluorescence
the flaws escaping your face

it was on the fourth day that I recognized the taste of you
as the blood that seeps from skin cut

by broken glass.

Every time I go outside, I smell something burning and
hope that no birds have died in the past hour –
some probably have my name or something close, serene creatures
we are connected by a sea of letters first made for greek gods
I worry that I suicidal-think them, play broken wing harps.

A sum of our adjoined parts, a sum of my heart –
I love and I realized everything that has breath can be shattered
that glass is not ever-translucent, it can have feathers or skin.

Nobody really talks about how
their lovers swallow
between sentences, or **** their knee into your
girl parts
bruising them like a too ripe peach
between his dreams. I am having a hard
time being separate now,
when I have learned
all the things I can miss of his. Our tongues
pulsing in sync after swallowing
cinnamon,
music playing that does not match the thrusts
of him inside me,
changing clothes in front of each other,
a rose garden on my bottom
birthed by his palm,
little gemstones of wetness, how stray fuzz
clung to his beard more than I even
could, the certain words he
pronounces like
others. I came to trust their existence,
bits I was alright with not being able to predict:
separated, apart, alone, a divorce
and I have returned to
fearing the realization that we are not the
same person. We came so
close to
melting into our mixed body fluids, and I was
so happy because then he could
never leave me - if he touched another
woman, I would, too. I
would know
and feel everything and understand why it
happened. I would sleep upon
his adam’s apple until
he needed to swallow between words to her.
Being separate
is like having to pass on these things
nobody else cares about,
the torch, the Intimacy Olympics. I believe
the next person won’t notice what
he mumbles as he falls asleep at night. He
may as well not spoken
rather than it dissolve into the air. I
wonder if atoms feel this way when they split
or if they trust
in the science of what their
partner will do once they are gone. But
atoms do not pick up
the winter weather on their face like he does,
do not turn pink in the cheeks in
cold: nobody has
such beautiful things to miss as I do.

they have
become so nothing that they are everything. I
hate myself for
liking the stubble that inflames
my skin

I hate myself for caring so much about
being hurt
by them, for wanting

to show them
how bright my blood is when they turn me inside
out
and my veins show like
the splitting seams of a shirt, tagless
for more breathing room.

men are of no importance to me
so much that they have become everything. I

wait
to fall asleep in
the ocean spilling from their bodies

because I always have this desire to drown where
another girl did not want to.
I learned
there is no god, just
love addicts and the vulnerable
who piece together memories out of

salt. all

bodies are made of salt.
water, ***, I want to care so little that I love the
thought of men
breaking me open like a clam
that dies when they take the pearl out.

I am ready to put
two feet out the door,
kiss winters goodbye,
and leave behind cash
on the kitchen table.

My family will use it
better than I could –
funerals are expensive.

I thought if I gave you my body
you would grind it to dust
and discharge the split parts
in *****, cradled by my blood –

soon a garbage pile of us
would creep into the subfloor &
build a mausoleum of muck

jade, and stone, a heather grey –
my peach insides have their
own place.  To sleep, to hunger
taunt their tiny bownecks away

when I gave you my body
you did the same, handed me a
heart and I minced it to grain.

I want to erase
every person who touched you
before me

how I wish you were a notebook
I could just turn to
the next page.

you only
know how to write for me
because you wrote for them first,
because you ****** them before me.

I have the breath
of other women now:
you kiss me, and it is shared.

everyone should die
when they want to touch someone

new
not just a little, but full
cellular reincarnation, new hands.

and I am mad that they still
exist

with pieces of you

and I am mad that you still exist
with pieces of them

and I am mad that
we use the same language to say I
love you that you did with
them.

I loved him
when his words reflected a shadow, he was nothing more
than a cloud separating Earth from the moon

told me that no one’s heart  has ever been too big for
their head
but he never held me up to the light

(and he broke mine).

This morning
I remembered I am just small pieces of my mother’s body
yet I fear falling asleep beside her
in case she knows
that I want to **** myself, cells that came from her.

It is selfish, now I wish I could be
as opaque as him.

I wondered if it is okay to break your mother’s heart in
some ways, though not others
and remembered that he wanted to paste
another girl’s hair onto me so that I would be happy.

Up against fog
I wondered if it is better to be the moon
or to imitate the sun.

I was not the first woman to grow fluorescent upon heartbreak
nor was he the first man to grab my hair
expecting me to go along with it, but all I really wanted
was someone to ask me if I remembered to take my meds that day
when there was probably
a meadow of them sprouting all up the length of my esophagus.
Everything had to be inside me
from the day I found out he wanted to be inside her. It was better
when it hurt, I shone like a bruise in remembrance of him.

I am a waterfall that's too happy to cry
and so it floods the river
which floods
the roads, I ruin everything
but pretend I am making it grow.

I put what I thought was a castle in my mouth but it stung.
He pulled the pulp from my teeth and I remembered
some use this to make their skin white, some sting every day.

After saying I want you inside of me,
you became everything – miles and music and breaths since we last
touched. It wasn’t that you possessed me in any way,
rather the other meanings left
however they could. I have had grocery store coordinates
falling from my eyes and removed gingerbread paths from my thigh
because everything is how far you are from me right now.
It isn’t that the earth belongs to you, rather
the earth no longer belongs to me. You fill me more than I fill
my bathtub and I love you
in that way no one understands, which is why I asked if you thought
our names sounded beautiful together: I want them
to mix, like every grave in a cemetery
like they are inside each other and sift everything/everyone else out.

I am so sad
that my eyelids have begun to take the
appearance of an apricot,
sickly,
bulging, too ripe, easily bruised.

Please accept my apology
for hurting
whether or not

you love her still, whether or not there is
a mention of her consistency
between your legs –

please
think about how sorry I am for
not being cold to you
when it could save us. I have fallen in
love with
pain

because it looks like a rose's hips
and I am reminded
that she is not a flower because flowers
always die –

nothing else could make me smile
like
knowing the truth will hurt.