My head hurts, and
It's unseasonably warm.
I read that a concussion
Can cause mild depression.

But what if I was mildly depressed to begin with?

Then, night two of the ******:
That evening ran rampant.
With ounces of beer filling each skeleton bone,
Flashes of indigo, and a friendly plate of pasta.
And us Hispanics have to stick together.
We made a home in the sand pits and
On the college buses, we must have been
Going one thousand miles per hour, and
I heard from a good source that the wheels
Weren't even touching the ground.
Bruises, baby. A concussion to match.
Still sprinting through the indigo, you know,
The night sky has never/will never be Black.
Blue consumes me. I am drunk.
My best friends dragging my lethargic limbs
To and fro. Warm ***** at the apartment party -
I am in love with each of them. My friends, that is.
Riding high on all that reckless rebellion,
No matter what happens, this was, this is.
(Forgive me, but - We Are)

The river water was in and around my mouth
As four silhouettes screamed through shiny phantom limbs.
Like the moon's reflection was the only thing keeping us afloat,
And there was talk of some radical ******* and a doctor's appointment gone wrong.

Then after the movie show, we thought we'd die in that torrential highway downpour,
And you let it slip that your ghost was ready to leave your body.

And, for all intensive purposes,
I love you.

Oh, my God.
We had it all wrong -
It was never Weird Honey.
No, it was Wyrd Honey.
It was Fate, honey.

We are beings of narration
Killing all those trees
Then turning into some
Demented Johnny Appleseed
And how do we experience religion?

There are reasons why we are
Moved by the art that moves us
It lies in the state of your own handwriting
The good music playing outside the clinic
The sound of where you are (were)

The idea of the uncanny
That clown was only scary
Because it's almost human
How sonnets singe my fingertips
And it's entirely illusion

And I've got this tragic talent
Where I can fold up my feminism
And stuff it between my legs
Torturous ******, it's toxic shock syndrome

Apologies to suitors as I run fast from their drunken hands
When really I should be cutting those inebriated limbs loose from the bodies they've succumb to
Because I was taught not how to defend myself from charming attackers,
But rather to refrain from setting my drink down at parties and bars and family reunions

How is it that the Boy's Club manifested itself into the bible? And how the ****** Mary is only remembered for carrying greatness below her breast
Giving birth to the boy wonder all while keeping her ***** intact

And finally, once that sacred space rock exits the womb
We must answer to that almighty lord of genitals
Like if Jesus was a girl, the Ascension would have taken place much sooner
And that archangel would have had to start all over

I'm sorry that we all had to stand by and watch
As they packed your mother up into a box and
Laid her to sleepless slumber on the huge cross hill

I'm sorry about the Evil Machines. How they ate away at
Her heart and left her so unrecognizable that her
Face looked more like a window than anything else

I'm sorry that we're always forgetting to ask if you can breathe

Three kids sitting cross legged in a homemade shed
A trifecta, if you may
A band of crickets screaming prayers into the humidity
One recounted stories of robots in the high school hallways
All laughing and golden, whispering empty epitaphs into the abyss
Singing songs of nothing to a comfortable god
One spoke of aspirations shrouded in cigar smoke
A life of more than mother's wishes and monetary muteness
Being caught between stagnant calculations and hammered guitar strings
Lyrics tattooed the back of her teeth, curious wonderer, light wash grief
Questioning the deities found anywhere but her circle of friends
And we must sacrifice ourselves to rock bottom
One drank a singular beer and couldn't see straight
A hole in a head, filling fast with all those secret woodland soliloquies
Like for the first time, she could see
Clumsy ankles treading through the over brush, love or lust
And how should we go on living through these nights fated to end
There was a soundtrack to our revolution,
Haunting hymns over the busted stereo,
Love poems washed away with morning

But the night sounds
Oh, the night sounds
The holy ghosts in moonlight reflecting off the leaves
The sacred rub of skin on skin beneath the moribund trees

Perhaps at some point
She was in love with
Each of us, individually,
Or different parts of us
That she smashed together
To form a glowing deity
In her mother's pottery barn

This being created was
A blistering hybrid -
A lake water guzzling,
Guitar string swallowing,
Paint brush *******,
Hair pulling, ring bearing,
Monster in a pair of old fashioned skis

Eulogy singer
Blood bullets explode in my throat
Blood, ink, rusted piano keys
Church pews and surgical scars
Christmas feels like crying
I hope I don't die in Italy
Drinking ink on the bathroom floor
Everything was, but wasn't
It was white shoes, but off white, really
In love, but not
Warm water in the garage
A champagne bottle and a butcher knife
We drank in the streets, and no one got caught
Blood bullets on Main Street, everyone was drops of old beer
That time of year
Bullet holes in the headboard
Used, abused, we don't get to choose
Christmas felt like joy or melancholy or pine or something

I promised you a wink
We got drunk so we could kiss
Fireworks, smoked out sheds
Tee-*** man fell in love at the Taco Bell
We lived beneath the tree
Twenty years old
It's been three since that night in the basement
Citrus something and secret kissing in the office
My hands rested on your legs, and your sister sat outside
Summer is always showing up again
Oh, I remember the Indie Rokkers (who could forget?)
You've been on my mind since 2013
One day, someday, it's been too long
It all started with that Free Festival Concert

I haven't felt this in a long while
That same old, beautiful teenage rebellion coursing through my twenty year old veins

Remember the grass we'd tread on during days of
Extracurricular activities all hungover and dread locked

Or the Saturday night in late September
When three girls first inched their way toward a mirror
In the thrift store and the coffee shop
Gourds and games and locking ourselves in the car to listen to that rust colored song
Amid the high school hoi Polloi
Three girls, still, getting closer to that mirror

There were books about the body in a Goodwill
About the diseases that afflict our tiny bones
And science hung from a rack while she put on an old mans sweater and fantasized about the death that could have taken place in each stitch

Catholic school boy bonfire
Doing donuts in the field because, well, life is a highway
And can you believe it? She hit her head again
Oh our blonde believer, knocking her brain out of her skull and onto the highway
While our other friends smoked secrets in the woods out past the driveway

When we parted from our dear doe eyed psychopath
And found ourselves a trifecta for the first time in months,
There was only one thing to do -
Admit there were robots among us, chug a beer, and say goodnight

We haven't spoken in over a week,
But really, we haven't spoken since May.
And how many times can I spell out I love you with a fistful of gold dust
Before you believe someone could love you with a fistful of gold dust?

How was that party with the mountain boys?
Did my name fling itself through the windshield
As you pulled in to the driveway and back in time?
Was it all 2012? Ski slopes and corduroy?
The herd of heads you've only ever heard of?
Were you a wild child in the deep woods?

I see champagne bottles scattered under trees,
And guitar strings echoing, resonating, suffocating.
When she pulls away you fall into blue eyes, all wrapped up in books.
Good for you, perhaps the happy couple will one day
Take up residence in Georgia or wherever the freckled girls gather.

Where did you go?
With flaxen hair, all whirling and twirling
You escaped through meteor showers
And we got tangled in afterlife moon rocks

We lie in familiar basements and discuss
An ink on skin memorial for the best friend you gifted us
An eternal mother's day playing to the sound of
Loose change in my pockets

Still, no one cares to ask if Rachel can breathe
We continue through the motions
Sailing over your hometown on glass shard boats
The ice is getting thinner

And I must wonder if we will all erupt into
An overflow of you
Or sink into the sludge
Not quite knowing what to do

We keep faith in sure hands
The secrets lying at the bottom of the bottle
Cigarettes on the overpass
The promise of August and Everything After -

A freelance writer with knotted blonde hair, coming through in stereo

You thought you'd see her around
Not everyday, but fairly often
And no one quite knew how to take it,
When a new boy took your place up on the mountain

Remember those endless days you spent
Frolicking through fields and licking cement
Spelling out each others names in twigs
And stitching your bones together with gold thread

Now she's got everything she needs
A blonde boy from the state park
Who lives in a barrel of beer beneath the southwestern rapids
And a home made from the backseat of her secondhand car

You have sternum pains and you know far too much
You used to wear your hair long to keep those mountain secrets  
These days it grows to hide the footprint left below your bottom lip

Some bonds lie strictly in memory
And
She knows she's been on your mind

On the drive home -
I barreled down a
Familiar highway
Numbered - 43.
******* that old
Catholic school
Coffee through a
Bright orange straw,
Down a melancholy
Throat, I accidentally
Witnessed summer
Collapse in on itself.

The very last
Glimmer of June
Covered by a
Cumulus cloud.

July waved in
My rearview mirror,
And I swear,
I almost cried.

August started
Shaking, hard,
And cracking
It's gum.

I saw the world as it was,
And then suddenly,
With no prior warning,
How it was not.
I watched as the things I knew
(Or thought I knew)
Crumbled to ice blue dust.

I drove through
Your hometown.
Past your parent's
House, the gas station
Where they called you
All those pretty little
Names you'd prefer
Never to be called,
The table we mourned
At after the polar vortex.

See, it's been almost
A year now. Since we all
Rolled down the hill
Into tiny, wooden caskets.
Since you bought a
Hairbrush to untangle
The knots in our
Best friend's chest.
Since none of us knew
What to do, but drink
Coffee and make promises.
Since we had to grow
Older, and smoke
Cigarettes on the overpass
To ease ten shaking
Shoulders.

You dropped the garage door on your knees
At the teen party that summer
And you bled some fantastic blood onto the sidewalk
With a cigarette in hand and a lighter in your mouth

We would roll around, naked, on the trailer bed sheets.
You may recall, it was reckless as ****.
And how you almost stabbed yourself with epi on a whim
While we barreled down the highway, fifths of gin residing beneath the seats.

I wasn't the only one who had words to say about the dagger on your bedside table
Or your self made haircut all untamed and screaming

I was tied to your ribcage with fishing wire
The same day you hid all the knives.
See, I'm still here beneath the string light ribbon tree, and these days, Rachel's washing her face with wine

You're slow dancing at the state park,
With river guides and alibis.
At least now no one cries

You can bleach your hair
Or cut it off with a butcher knife
All of this done by candle light,
In the middle of the night

Get him just drunk enough
On perfume liquors in the backyard
And whisper little things about
The parts of you made of glass

Trace his name across
Your open veins in vibrant reds
Mailing him dim lit photos
Of  scar tissue evidence

Crash your car into the drive-in movie screen
Think about how things could have been
If you never let it slip
That you dreamt of his top lip

It's when we're all apart
That I begin to lose control of my body
Swallowing lemon juice by the jersey shore -
Things have been worse

Mostly, I long for that physical closeness
To hold a jaw in my hands, careful not to shatter it

And don't get me wrong -
I've seen photographs of myself
The way I live with my shoulders pinned to my ears
As to block out the irreparable chatter of finites and hydrangeas
Like the world has never seen your hair peak through closet dirt

Rachel bleached her hair to
Mark the end of something silver -

To counteract the epitaph

An eternal "I was here, and I didn't want to leave"

It all washed up on shore, dead
The same summer most of us
Gave up on God and gave into one another
Or those saints found below the belt

Death is not the color black
It's water growing gradually stagnant, yellow
A slow crawl on all fours to the finish line or a sunset swallow
The faded leather found sourrounding your veracious belt loop

And then there's Elizabeth
Storming down the church aisle to call the whole order off
She'd return to the dive bars in red lipstick
And break hearts through notes written in checkbooks

Cosmic chaos comforts
The living in regard to the dead
We have faith in stardust and song lyrics
A road map, phone number sent through the telescope at a camp sight

But caskets close and
Bodies burn
They scatter on hilltops and
Scream out in stereo

Sleepless slumbers remain
For Rachel and this is her
Peroxide obituary
For a mother gone too soon

I sit on my bedroom floor,
Sweating,
Contemplating chopping this mop from my skull.
Watching my strands fall to the floor,
And writing each one a four-chord goodbye song.
The junkyard dog alive in my back pocket
Whispers things like "he'll never love you anyway".

Now I've got
Blue hair.
Are you
Still there?

No, now you're dropping acid on the mountain top.

Your arms are just two pieces collected from Saturn's rings
We're all made up as the same stuff as stars

The car beside me is from Quebec
And I hear children whispering in French
I'm accidentally realizing my own existence
Trapped inside this steel contraption
Like if I were to take off my clothes I would simply be naked
Or if I were to cut my hair I would just be carrying around a few less secrets
Who likes shoulder length secrets anyway
So maybe I'll sharpen this car key on the parking lot pavement
And give myself a good old fashioned trim

How is it that all of the songs reeling through my speakers
Call but one thought to mind
A boy in forest green, and then my own reflection
I watch myself float past in a mirror made of river water

These are words I threw to pavement
Many Mays ago
Not for you, but about you
Not dead, but dormant

My shoulders quake in your memory
And I keep dreaming that you shaved your head
There were sopranos hidden in the bed frames
And altos renting out the bathroom window

You rest your head on state park driveways
In the backseat of your best friend's car

When you walked across that stage
I thought you'd shudder at my ghost
But you didn't
You staggered behind classmates in robes and
Forgot about the shirts I stole from you

Forgot about the first night by the river
Forgot about my brand new chipped tooth
Forgot about the night in the shed, a shirt pulled over your head
Forgot about the night I sang about fire water in the walk-in closet

I'm still lying numb on the gymnasium floor
You found your way to the big city's door

There you go again,
Sprinting through 300 and some days,
On your way to find the time machine.
Twenty years spent trapped inside a
Toy chest featuring constricted breaths.

I'm sorry that any of us ever got older than eighteen.

When I said
Meet me in Monatauk,
I meant it.

And the only thing
You've ever meant
Was well.

I was hurled from the heavens
When I fell through a cloud,
Right arm first
Reaching for your hand
And what keeps my sides scraped
Is the way my rib cage drags
Just a few feet behind yours

At 5:00 am
We  take on the identities
Hidden beneath the car seats
All nauseous guilt
And sunrise afterthoughts
Your fingers shake while the
Fire takes its place in the sky
And you've been up all night
Deciding which way he'll break your heart this time
But it's not a certain someone's fault
How we belong to no one
The same way no one belongs to us
And everything built on or around an amen or hallelujah

Delusions set in with the dawn
Like am I sleeping or dead
And I make big plans to string lights
On the porch
Like one glimpse at Christmas and my mouth goes magnetic

We were born side by side
Invasion of the body snatchers
Bluish hair cut and swept from the salon floor
We both got lost in each others curls
If I could return to a certain October
Believe me, I would
Some kind of magic in the way you were lying dead on the highway
Like I breathed that sparkling dragon powder through your lungs
And resurrection took shape as a boy named You

We live on the line between two worlds
Boys and girls and the animal collective
We reside on the scientist's bookshelves
All this attraction or lack thereof
Dancing in the dark when we're pushed to the brink of normalcy
Your wrists remain the sole body part that ever made my veins shake

What is a guitar, but something to smash off the bedroom walls or throw from the roof?

I'll invade your recreational days
In D.C., Canada, or Maine
I'll push my wrists through your favorite drinks
At the basement show, local bar, and skating rink

You are not dead, but your actions are post-mortem

I write you letters of apology
A certain kind of eulogy
A never ending repetition of hand references
You gather evidence from my numb inferences

I don't recommend your behavior
Leaving me on the bathroom floor
Loving someone and throwing them to the flame
We drown ourselves without ending this game

You are not dead, but your actions are post-mortem

And maybe one day
I'll tell you about the night
I tied my wrist to your ribcage

And how I don't have the heart
To cut myself free

Maybe I'll get published
And you can read your name
In a literary magazine
Yeah, maybe I'll get published
And make a couple bucks
Or better yet, struck by a bus
So you can visit my bedside
And play out that hospice epilogue
That's been reeling through our
Brain cells
Since the first Fall apart

These days I'm writing in red ink
Trying hard to get back to blue

Lying in bed in the late parts of May
Fingertips cracking in numb disarray
I never thought your voice would stick
To my throat box or glove box or melodies, thick

You return to the trailer park with warm ****** laughs
And mosquitos they bite you, your head and your calves
But you don't think of me and ******* I wish
That your arms would go shaking to catch my red drift

And you barely remember that night in the car
When the rosary played and we went way too far
Cause you blocked it all out with my notes and my screams
Now your lips exist nowhere but inside my dreams

And how will I ever get past your wild curls
Or your questioning laugh, warding off other girls
For you've hurt quite a list in your short twenty years
Now I can't find a difference between Windows and mirrors

I wake up with a fever fueled mainly by your hands
Or lack thereof for that matter

I disrupt the monotony found at the bottom of my coffee cup
Or ***** glass for that matter

I can sit idly by on the bleachers
And let you make me cry
Stand in front of the fireplace
Or lay on the carpet
And let you blow a hole through my head
Because in my dreams we're kissing wrists
And you're running your hands through my curls
As I trace your face with blistered thumbs

You're silence -
It kills me
Cracks my rib cage clean apart
Brush burns the sides of my skull
And rips my skin to shreds
All the particles left screaming your name into the wall

And am I getting too old for this?

It snowed that October,
It was just like Christmas

Until you spent three years away,
The moon was always shouting in my ear.
Through the drapes, past the glass -
In my ear.
I recall our ribcages, reflecting light in May.
Perhaps we were all facing west.
We stood near the river once,
All baby teeth and gold dust,
All glistening flecks and fleeting.
Where have you gone, friend?
Campus coves kept us close
From September till now.
But you return to blonde hair
In fevers, like she is/was
The window to your dizzy spells.

And so you'll sit,
Suspended on wires.
Strung across our
Darling country.
Resting on boyish charm
And
School day soliloquies.
Celtic claddagh knots -
Upside down and
Everything.

I've realized if you're poison,
I will drink to the bottom of your barrel.
And if I told you summer was two sleeps away,
would you fall in love again?
Or did you swallow all the nice things? The yarn bindings and the leather I collected from beach sand graves?
If I say goodnight to you every morning will you gift me moonbeams like Christmas wrapped knuckles beneath balsam necks in the basement

Recall the theater lights that turned your hair
And ever slightly blonder shade of brown

My sonnet went to hell the same night I threw up mix tapes into cereal boxes

I'm terrified of you and you're as meek as they come

Scene:
Everyone in a hurry to get to hell
Where he can't say I Love You
Even when he's drunk and you're begging
Baby, please tell me what I dream of hearing
What I carve into my neck at night
After the Om Nashi Me's go to bed
Everyone running through this death march
And eyes hollow out without a doubt
Your yellow undertones from your mothers throne
Boy this is not slow dancing in a burning room
This is arson, setting the house on fire and rolling in the flames
Because your hands won't even reach out to pull me from the oven
I am tired of waiting for perfectly drunken nights to kiss you and drink from your cup
I am tired of running through this death march
Let's slow down and dance under blankets in the shed
We are twenty, we are not dead

It's happening again
Wires slice my fingertips
And strangle my brain
*** refills my empty veins

You were in Ireland
When I first saw your hologram
On the back porch
In Belmont Circle

Well, I'm back to standing in fires
And busting open my knees
Drinking until the world goes black
And all I see are your nimble nails working the guitar

Oh, why do we place ourselves
So deep into the ribcages of
The only boys that can't love anyone
But ghosts

Pine Needle Spine Man
You housed our hollow heads.
Filled the vacancies
With ink and shouts and Magnetic Zeros.
It was the age of kissing wrists
and secret smoke.
Pulsing plastic bottle poison
Wrote Om Nashi Me on my neck,
So we never had to check
If anyone was still breathing,
Because of how hard our blistered hearts were beating,
And our songs raged, wreathing.
Some nights beneath the blades,
we claim we can’t recall
But fossils were burned into our shoulders,
and I know we felt them all.

Pine Needle Spine Man
We strung you up with lights
The fistful of blonde hair
Had those ****** knuckle fights
With the dead letter secrets
In the ribbon spit trunk,
Dipped our hands in *** and balsam
We sunk into the drunk.
Blast beats, we’d
Retreat.
It was a world gyrating in slow motion.
Dancing on the mulch beds,
We hovered high on reckless rebellion.
Our feet rejected the floor,
But ghosts were moving into our cores.
It was all golden rod and the 4-H stone,
Sarah Jones and the radio wars.

When they cut you down,
We washed your hair with wine.
Found our cigarettes hidden
In the notches of your spine,
And drank what was left
Of the Rabid Bits of Time.

I found cigarettes hidden in the notches of your spine

I am terrified of the flashbacks
So vivid and green
On our foreign ghost's porch
In the park
We were scrawled out on the same page
Holding hands on the track past midnight
We spoke of velvet in the basement office
And I kissed your neck

I am stuck in an infinite loop
Memories of nights spent in the boiler room, beneath the string light tree, on the carpet in the mountain -
Anywhere but here

Somehow in the last moments of this January
We ended up in the same bed

Shortwinded bliss
That's all this ever is
Riding on highs
And hair dyes
The time machine resides corrupt in the pantry
Hysterical light passes through my skull
I am not awake

I can pretend to have fallen numb to my burning chest
My gypsy words (and my taroc pack & my taroc pack)
Flames in the woods - that's all it comes down to
This is tragedy in its truest form

Rub my eyes to smear the tar
My professor teaches careful writing
I will go to my grave defending the fact that writing is reckless
And I don't care to surround myself with those lacking a rebel call

I lost my mind in Tennessee
Too drunk to even sing

If sleep is rehearsal for death -
These songs are the soundtrack of our demise

I still have the scars on my ankle
From the day we got drunk in school

I have a few nights burned in my brain
I have some type of mind
That returns to a mountain girl
I make peace with bodies thought otherwise to be dead
I make no apologies for laughter in churches
And my throat was raw on the first day of spring

I miss flying high in that aeroplane
Where guitar strings did anything but strangle our hearts
I left the state
Just to play our soundtrack to a room full of strangers

Birthdays stick to your teeth
Your ribs
Your shoulder blades
And shins

My bones are made of candles
And my head's an open flame

Too old now, to live without a fever
I wake up in my childhood bed,
Sweating and screaming
Dreaming at over one hundred degrees

Ready to return to the theater
Or to board the time machine
Anything to escape twenty
If you need me, I'll be searching the woods for seventeen

Things were always happening in the dark
And behind closed doors
Or after everyone fell unconscious to the hand of drink

What I remember most is that first night in the basement
The beginning of Year One
You shotgunned a beer in the boiler room and we almost kissed

My hands on your legs felt like something I believed in
It was always all wrong
I had trouble deciphering between your face and my reflection

There are still so many nights I pushed into the space between my bed and the wall