We didn’t bloom together the way we should have. We never eyed each other across neat soil; both self-conscious and self-righteous as we sipped the sun and, in quiet bursts, raced to touch the sky.  

We weren't planted by gentle hands in soft plots with room to stretch our limbs and shield our eyes, nor to bud in peace and thrive and find identity in both our own bold blossoms and as a pulsing piece of the whole lavish garden.

We didn't bloom because we erupted.
We running-start-swan-dived into stale dirt and were too close from the very beginning.
We didn’t sprout up straight; we snaked and lurked and left no bit of earth untouched by our vibrant, stencil **** fingers declaring ourselves alive.

By harvest we were tangled beyond repair.
By harvest I didn't know me from you and I liked it.

To be so entwined is lovely but depends on a balance
we could only begin to grasp.
To expand but not uproot requires perfect synchronicity maybe not beyond our years but certainly beyond our maturity. We spread out our emotions like tarot cards on a towel in the grass and reflected in your sunglasses I met the silent pieces of me.
In colorful, grim drawings those quiet, ugly bits floated up veins and settled under ribs.
They stayed silent. Until they began to scream.

And you and I- we didn't have the words;
not our own words that we earned and burned while stumbling across months and plains,
tripping over potholes and finding our feet quicker each time.
We had place-holders words we sang back and forth and splashed around and bathed in.
The words we spoke were profound and cardboard.
We were just reading lines, sharing identical scripts and an ache to be seen
so deep and desperate it was sinful.

We maybe shared the humid cling of regret; which hung heavy in stuck-air auditoriums,
it beaded sweat echoed, rolling down spines and turning blood to sticky wax as we whispered in the corner about the things we could say aloud while our minds never left the things we wouldn't dare.

We were mostly ill-equipped.
We joked about hurricanes
We didn't survive the first storm.

I want you to know you really hurt my feelings.
I want you to know you're the first guy I've given my feelings to hurt.
I want you to know I was terrible towards the end.
And I know that. But you gave up on me

You gave up on me at the exact moment I was giving up on myself.
Even as my tongue stung metallic and veins pulsed so hot and loud
through my eardrum that I felt I would explode- it was clean.
It was all remarkably clean.
and sterile.
There were no explosions.
No shattered plates, ****** knuckles or blown out voices
that scratched and rose in time with the sun.

Just a quick slash of rope-
an anchor cut loose and left to sink;
our secrets were set free to
rust over and collect algae.
We were suddenly off the hook
for any vulnerability we might have spilled
on each other in our fits of laughter
and hours of sleep.
A deep sigh of relief.
A deeper sigh of desolation.

The moment exists in sad yellow lighting that must have been added in restrospect.
I tweaked the floor of my memory too:
at that moment I was not wearing flipflops on linoleum- but sinking, slowly and barefoot, into chilly riverbed mud as it turned to ice.

I opened the door and there you stood.
You knew I had been crying and I didn’t try to hide it
it was too exhausting- running on fumes.

And I did expect something from you,
anything from you, that might dull the singed-dagger plunging
stab to my chest with each breath I gulped and spat .
I wanted anything that might reel me in from the cliffs edge
where my thoughts had carried me on horseback.

But you had nothing.
I watched your eyes swallow my swollen lips and pinched, glassy eyes
like a quick, sharp shot of warm whiskey.
Careful to avoid eye contact you slipped ‘**** this,’
under your breath and started to reach for my hand.

You started to, but then after a second suspended
you let your arm fall back to your body.
Head lowered, jaw clenched and you turned and fled with a new heaviness pushing down on your posture.
It looked painful and adult.
It looked like you finally felt the weight of our season.
And watching you go I shrank in lighter and thicker because I felt it too.

We are not going to get a happy ending-
not with each other and not right now.
Maybe not ever.
And that will have to do.
(Though I will miss your hand in mine.
I hope one day you'll remember being tangled with me and it will make you laugh before you cringe because I didn't like to be alone.)

If I wanted to be alone I would just go home.

I was on my way to a party
Dressed in heels and a crop top
When I entered the corner store
To purchase some snacks
And on my way to the cashier
A man standing in an aisle
Browsing through peanuts
Glanced up and stopped mid-search
When I clicked past him
And proceeded to uncomfortably stare

I walked into the gas station
Wearing dark wash jeans and a v-neck
With my best friend at 2 AM
When two drunken men stumbled in
And began eyeing us up and smirking
My friend leaned in to me and whispered,
     "I'm really scared."
Overhearing her, one man elbowed the other
And with a smile on his face taunted,
          "Oh no, we're scaring them."

I was at the laundry mat one night
Wearing shorts and a baggy shirt
When a middle aged man across the room
Kept gawking at me from over the washers
Uneasy, I went outside to smoke
To which he stood at the window
And kept a close eye on me
I called a friend and stayed on the phone
Because I was afraid to go back
And get my clothes alone

I stepped out of my vehicle
In my sweatpants and flipflops
To grab some cigarettes quick
When a white bearded man
Was already at my heels
"Hey, how're you honey?"
I quickly replied, "fine".
And hurried into the store
Without looking back

It seems like every time I leave the house
It doesn't matter what I'm wearing
It could be "provocative" or a burlap sack
I always end up feeling threatened
     Heartbeat in my ears
          Cold sweat on my back
So don't blame it on my outfit
Don't blame it on my actions
Because I'm not asking for it
I just want to be left alone

The coolest ****
Is found in all sorts of places
In the middle of nowhere
Don't know what pushed me to go there
At the bottom of a pile
Boy did that take me a while.
One color matches all
Wearing it from spring to fall
Dark and savvy round and round
Doesn’t even weigh a pound
The smaller the better I say
Though there more and more you have to pay
It feels like the extension of my body
With these you will never go faulty
Flat feet bring you closer down
Heel pain like biting hounds
What we have is a relationship
A strictly love hate regiment
It's not obsessive, recurring from the past
Small and simple is all I ask
Two, three colors it's too much
Add a pattern and I feel stuffed
Soft foam flat from all our travel
But we're proud of the mysteries we unravel
Top plastic makes us tangle tight
Sometimes you give my edges fight
I'd never trade you for the world
You’re my Flip Flops, You're my girl.

sideways rain
gloomy clouds
wind howling through the halls
I cant believe I wore sandals....

I can’t remember exactly where or how it started off but i found myself on a beach that was coast to a massive ocean, perhaps the Atlantic . I was with clare and some other people I didn’t know, but it felt like I did know them. We were all running away from someone who was particularly dangerous to us for some reason. I think there was a bar or club we ran out of to get away that was also on the beach shoreline. It was a cloudy day and we all ran into the water. I had no idea how we’d escape when suddenly there was a silver Volkswagen bug car just floating there stationed in the shallow water waiting for us. It had no wheels, just floated there like a boat, and there was no top on the car so it was like a convertible . We all jumped into the car in great haste and I asked, “how are we gonna drive this thing?!” (as it was, after all, a car in an ocean). Clare said “we just start it.” She turned the key to the ignition and it rumbled to life just as a normal car would, and to drive it we just used the gas pedal and steering wheel to drive it full speed across the waters surface. It drove very smoothly without faltering. We needed to make it very far away, like sail from wherever we were to a country in Europe, like France. So I then fell asleep for days on end in the car so I wouldn’t have to be waiting for us to reach land. Once I woke up it was sunny and we were in a country that resembled Florida. We got off the car and left it floating in the water and went into an old abandoned house to pack up things for our next voyage. It was old inside the house with wooden plank walls where the sun shone through it’s cracks into the room. There we met up with several others who were making getaways just like us all across the continent, we were all trying to escape something but just didn’t know what. We were all very tanned and very *****, we were covered with ruddy sand and dirt and our skin was bronze like we’d spent days out in a desert. I really missed my parents as they were unaware of me leaving so I wrote them an imaginary letter in my head hoping they’d somehow read it that way, and would understand where I was and why I was leaving. I was worried sick about them for some reason. then everyone left our cottage to board the car boat and I was left back because I was having trouble deciding what coloured flip flops I wanted to pack in my bag . Simona was yelling at me to hurry up and I was looking at red, blue black and brown flipflops all mismatched under a table. I grabbed the brown ones and took off. We somehow made it across more bodies of water and under seaside cliffs, hills and mountains as we sought a place of refuge from this thing we were running from in our starting land. Then we made it on land and found a house in a city, and inside the house resembled my uncles’ house in Tecumseh. We all went into the basement where FUD was having band practise but they had no instruments and were just talking to people. Terry was bidding goodbye to a slutty gf who couldn’t keep her jeans on without showing her crack to the whole house. I fell asleep on a couch in the basement on a really comfy pillow. I awoke and everyone was leaving and Tyler was running around the basement making bad jokes. This time my mom was in the basement and she was either wanting to come along on our escape or begging me to stop going anywhere. I felt really awful about it but I can’t remember if she came with us or not. Suddenly we were all gone from the house and I was climbing an immense system of buildings and steel planks they use to build things in big cities. If i fell i would surely plummet to my death, but i was climbing so agile and nimbly and fast it was not a concern to me at all. It was dusk and the sunset was painting dark blue and reds and pinks and yellows across the sky. I was climbing 500 feet up in the air and behind me was jasmine from Aladdin. We were chasing this Asian man from the Disney movie mulan, he was the secretary character, with a long moustache and kimono outfit. He was really evil to us I guess. He eventually reached a big peak in the building system and was laughing at us below when a huge metal cross was being lifted up and down and delivering a crushing bang to the exact position he was sitting on. He couldn’t go anywhere as the end of the structured thing hit his legs, then missed, then hit his toe, and finally crushed him and he fell all the way down to his death. I was awestruck and still hanging 500ft in the air on this skeleton of a building and the sun was setting, and then I woke up with this so vivid in my head I had to write it down cause it was so real to me.

my feet had barely greeted california
when my face matched the new summer,
cheeks blooming uneven,
eyes green as moss
and every face i glared upon
avoided looking too long.

walking through my least favorite airport
chin high, silent and ugly and wet,
i grieved for myself, i pitied my future, and mourned my past.
something lodged in my throat screamed with more assurance
and clarity and confidence than i have ever known
"this is not where i belong!"

i cried for my feet no longer squishing silica on white beaches
old skin disappearing in tiny fish
or kissing rainforest mulch, under-dressed in flipflops
taunting flora and fauna and fate

i cried for my skin, abused and bronzed
exfoliated in world heritage parks, the first shower in days
and oiled from water crossings in a run-down four wheel drive
a beard of blemishes i didn't bother to hide.

i cried for my ears, robbed of every accent,
of the crashing waves and roar of waterfalls,
or the same six songs played in every club in cairns
and the pterodactyl screech of flying foxes.

i cried for my hair, for my hands, for my nose.
i cried for my mouth and my tongue and my legs.

mostly, i cried for the death of laughter that started in the
pit of my stomach and rose up like carbonation
to my chest and my lungs and my neck and burst
like floodwaters in dorrigo
the elation and exhilaration and euphoria of being alive
that spilled out of me in screams and shrieks
and bubbled and flushed and insisted
so fiercely so strongly so urgently
that to relent was not even a choice but a right

and then half a year later
i sat dully in a fluorescent corridor at my transfer terminal
feeling my heart retreat, defeated
dreading the long months ahead
promising nothing but drudgery and boredom
letting the tears drip onto my boarding pass
black ink lamenting, too
and not a single person approached
or spoke to me
until i asked to wash away the moment
with a diminutive bottle of ***
a mile from the surface.

It was the kind of day
to visit a fortune teller.

Your faint smile remains a mystery,
because you preserve yourself
more than anything.
You prophesy at will and turn wheels.
That is what you do best.
Candle wax dare not scald you.
Strings are woven long.

The day I cut my hair was a cool summer,
two weeks before my birthday.
I left town never to come back.
Your daughters laughed so hard
at the money you threw their way they
probably had spit coming out of their eyes.
That was what they wanted.
It was simple, clean.

The child is young,
he won't know the difference,
convinced yourself thus,
but young 'uns do. They know more
than you ever let on, and they remember,
not the glaring presents or permission to speak moments,
it's the little things, the lilt in your voice
the brush aside look, the pursed lips,
the endless drone of the television
and ipad volume turned up max.

Allow me to demonstrate.*
The sky before and after a thunderstorm is the same shade,
but the land changes,
and the air that breathes in it.
The slight rustle in the trees could mean anything.

Indian spirits once danced around the flames
summoning blessings and visions
that may never come.
Yet, in my dreams were two apples --
green and red, both eaten by worms.
They grew voracious in my hands.

I bathe in heated waters and scrub
lavender and chamomile.
The stew left in the pressure cooker was soft and fell apart,
little droplets of oil cling to me,
I am scented thus.

On a footbridge, I see
the once pristine ground muddied and stars
replaced by fireworks.
Couples hold hands
and smile for any reason.
Taxis come and go, foraging
the next big opportunity.

My flipflops are fine
but my feet are freezing.
I can order coffee
with what I have left
but don't.

You saved me on your desktop
A cyber purgatory every night
I see all your bits and all of your bytes
I'm tacked onto your back drop
Listening to all your lies and all your hiphop
Going through all your pictures, like the tinted frame of your sandy beach flipflops
And the guy you met at that party last night, the one that really hit it off

What am I to you?
Was I ever your addiction
Or was I just the drug that caused this confliction
Or was every word you spoke fiction

Why do I sing about you, you don't exist
You were just a figment of my imagination
Something I wrote, maybe it wasn't your novel at all
You were just someone I met, I never knew You were just part of the crowd
You were just one voice, I heard you, loud
They say you can only actually love a person once
Leaves my mind trailing through breakfast and lunch
With no decision by dinner, maybe a hunch
You were just someone I saw at night, you were my alcohol, you were my blood thinner

I'll never actually know you
You were my moonshine, and you were still
You didn't say anything, I spoke for you
I am god, I created you
You are the end of every line I write
You're the only one I see at night

No passport, no sunscreen
No travel plug or euros
No flipflops no shorts, just pockets of ammo
No loungers for Germans to throw there towels on
Just constant explosions and lead from their guns
One minute standing, next second gone..

This is what father spoke of the Somme
We came in our thousands and no package trip
We fell face first the moment we hit
Get off the beach the voices screamed!
Running head on into bullets and bombs
Bodies laid strewn dead on the wire.

Now I return, will be my last time
You just see sand and a holiday town
I see the ghosts of the friends I once knew
Their faces are clear the screams are as well
Remember them please, I beg don't forget
For they gave their all to stand here today.

walking down the alley
midday walk with my dog
Hey he says
nice day isn't it
he's a chicago native obviously
it's forty degrees
and he's in shorts, a T shirt
and flipflops
yes I say
wearing my gilet and heavy coat
it's nice with the sun out,
summer soon he says
and it'll be
too damm hot again