What is it about the art of closed doors?
And all the reasons I just can't let them
be.

Like a deft breeze of defiance
that colors me stubborn, stupid
is just beyond every one,
always threatening
to blow them back open in
gusts of stinging fall if
I stare too long,
wondering
what could have been.

Willing away change that I
cannot accept,
I run around reckless,
slamming wide open doors,
anything new, that beckons quietly,
like I slammed them in
my mother's knowing face
when I was 13.
Crying myself ignorant
into a round, bare room.

There are days I'm not my own,
I think you're walking in my shoes.
I want them back.
I expect to see you in the mirror.
Every piece of the day is flecked
with salt and pepper you,
seasoning stale words of yours I
don't want the taste of
but can't forget,
that threaten to spill
from my mouth
unannounced.

I touch you slowly in my dreams.
Is it me or you?
You take a deep breath when my
hand finds you again
after all this time.
Like there's no one in the world who
knows those places.
A secret language of shadowed flesh.

I wake sweaty and
flushed with ***** dreams.

I must be you today.

I make a bowl of Dada oatmeal.

I don't read the newspaper. How often did we let those sit outside anyway? Pile up against the garage door like a savings account of stories of passing life. Why spend this day reading about last?

No, we'd crawl back in bed instead. I'd pull the sheets over our heads and we'd kiss in the dark.

Late! I'd watch you tie your tie and slick your hair.

Make you a coffee and write you a love letter on the paper cup.

"Any **** can roll up in a suit.."

Now, you're two thousand
miles away.
I listen to that song
lying on the floor of my
steaming shower.
Droplets gathering around
my *******,
my stomach rises and falls,
contracting sharply as I
hold my breath,
imagine it's you I'm
touching in secret
shadowed places and
I'm throbbing, begging for
your glorious epiphany,
like I'm always
pleading with you for
something.
I arch
my back and suddenly
find I have nothing
to dig your nails
(which are really mine!)
into.
Remember you're gone,
but still, aghast,
I can't shake you. I'm
you today, I know too well.

You don't
satisfy me but you won't
let me be.

Self-righteous and alone,
you always bit your nails anyway.

My fingers tangle and trip
over sloppy knitting
like a deer
learning to walk on crooked
pencil legs.
Like a song I don't quite
know the words to.
I move unsteadily,
uncertain, with short shaky breaths.
Remember when I taught my lungs
to breathe again in August?
After so many mistakes that
I didn't know how to
reconcile.
I wanted to die out back
of a hotel in Montana, dramatic
in the weeds and grasshoppers.
Needles fighting, I
spread a mess of mustard yarn
across my fingers like
I need a napkin.
Has anything changed?
Dropped stitches, weary knots leaving
gaping holes.
I think of how I ran away
from it all.
There are days I still look back.
But I look straight into the sky
as if demanding an explanation from
God himself.
I have to shade my eyes
sometimes,
seeing blinding brilliance
in the sun now.
I can't live any longer only
by the light it sheds
everywhere else.
No, in births of light and bursts
of truth and slow, overdue breaths
is a song I'm finally learning
the words to.
You will not defeat me.
I rip out my knots
and begin again.

Late nights in my apartment,
we were brand new.
You'd come snuggle in that
unbearably skinny
twin XL after your intramurals.
Squished up against the cool wall,
I lied on top of you
like I'd never loved anyone before
like
no one would
ever get that close.
The half haze bliss
of sleep and wake all ran together and
overcame me
until seamlessly, I woke in your arms.
The still swell of
your breath,
the dry salt smell of
our skin
eased me to life.
Perfect dreams melting tides
into perfect days.

And the nights you couldn't stay,
How we kissed for hours in a
dark kitchen, awestruck, lucky
with wobbly knees.
You had to hold me up
when I melted,
had to float home afterward when your feet
couldn't find solid ground.
You faithfully came to me in dreams
where I tried to reconcile
perfect love,
I groped around in the dark
for some explanation of it, unprecedented.
Threw out faith with
arms wide open
in your enamored promises.
Like your flowers, though,
they couldn't help it, they
faded to winter too
soon,
leaving ghosts in my kitchen
and mattresses a mile wide.
There are days still,
I wake, hungry and alive,
from dreams of
perfect love
and almost understand you.