When I see you fall asleep,
closed eyes, expressionless face, sprawled form,  I hold my breath until I see you breathe again-- it's true my heart doesn't beat 'til you inhale. you are the most handsome face of death, asleep. I'm afraid if I try to wake you, you won't wake up. and even more afraid that when you're sleeping, you're not really asleep at all.

2. Your hands are not cadavers,
and I know this fact because they are torn and callused. funeral hands are pretty and funeral faces are powdered. make up is not an art for post-mortem, but a sad reflection of what was. I like you a little unkept because that means you're not 6 feet under.

3. I refuse to wash the sheets**
because they smell like us, throes of passion, loving contact.I can't easily let go. all i can remember is clutching them like a lifeline and then clutching you. safe as a cradle, we'd drift off in languorous sleep-- twisted limbs and all. no matter what, we are somewhere in that bed still. and I don't know if I ever want to climb out.

your arms feel like home
and i've been homesick
for quite some time

I. Cherry blossoms, lilacs, I
swam to the surface where
I could just barely make out
your fingers tracing a pattern
on the water

II. I thought about your heart
your heart your
heart, wondered if I could
convince you to let me take
the smallest bite out of it

III. Oxygen masks are not
just for the weak anymore,
they are the laugh lines that
seem to spread back to the
very center of you when
you know you've just said
something I hate, or your
thumb rubbing over a bit
of my jaw as you leaned in

"That's something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities."*
Seamus Heaney

it is not enough
the eyes, the ears,
the ebb and flow
of calcium in bones
of iron in stars
sometimes silence pours down
like a blessing
some left their offices
and they're now deciphering
the eyes of thunder
some inner power turns me around:
the tribes of air
the shapes of a child's wonder
the involuntary rehearsal of words
this passivity of language
like jazz phrases
the wrinkles of that woman
imprinted in my heart
(by her murderous fingers)
spring gives me rose-like mornings
(because of my bedroom curtains)

and there is something else
this feeling of oneness
the cedar and the flowering river
motherly care, exhaustion, or not knowing
and the hues of morning skies
countless fleeting little gestures
and the cries of birds
tearing solitudes
my complete abandonment to him
in the sea of time

I let the window open
every day is a declaration of love
even when I hate
the dance with the unknown
the inextricable
the polyphony of laughter
and darkness

you live in me during the day
and I **** your name each night
anew

lost the sacred part of life in my twenties
because knowing that i participated in a normal act comforts the crater in my chest
where i was ripped from normalcy by my mother the month i was supposed to graduate highschool.

society has a real effect on people.
like rocks and minerals deep under pressure and intense heat i formed
in the magma pocket of this culture
pressured into fusing what was born inside of me
with what i was made into.

all these silent rules that drop and fall like dinner plates my mother threw
hot food splashing our arms
spittle flying from her lips as she screamed
just things that were put in place before i existed
just rules that i can hear crash
and feel burn
but just watch
silently
as they rage
by me

i wonder what it would be like to not know the rules.
to not understand what wasn't "ok"
or expected of me.
i wonder if i would still like the things i like
or let myself sit in prison dorm rooms and cry over a relationship i deeply don't care about.

i can feel the fringe of society
the frayed edge that begs for someone to cut away the loose strands
i see it
i feel it
i know it
but i do not wish to sever it.