On days like this,
I am more thank you
than apology.
More welcome party
than goodbye affair.

On days like this,
men can't shut my voice
into a casket.
No person can sift my heart
into a dustpan.

On days like this,
my voice is gospelled choir
a hopeful tune
My heart refuses to unsing
a joyous song.

On days like this,
I am phoenix
brushing cinder
off infant wings.
I am honey
to your honeysuckle.
I am bowing apex
off a tidal wave.
I am fresh picked book
opening up
to new hands.

On days like this,
I am no ocean
with finite shores.
I am skyline.
I am boundless
beginning.
I rewrite.
I renew.
I begin again.

1.
Forget the things that broke
you. The thousand times oceans
fragmented your sentiment
rock. Become grains of sand
and shards of turquoise glass
so no one can grab hold of your
entire landscape again.

2.
Remember all the good
you learned to ignore in
elementary school. Study.
Read. Decide. Become a
classroom desk. Seated.
Sentient. Cold.

3.
Remove your loud mouthed
vagabond expectations like
a malignant cancer. Being
a romantic drains the
muscles pulling your smile
and the possibility of Great
will only leave you trembling
in a pseudo-fabric hospital
gown that leaves your ***
hanging out.

4.
Do things you do not want
to do. Like selling your paint
supplies to pay for student loans.
Waking up early for a morning
jog. Planning your life out perfectly
and successfully. Pulling an all-
nighter to finish a research paper
on breastfeeding. Doing someone
else’s dishes. Becoming
someone else.

I read somewhere that there is a natural
process of renewing all the cells within
your body. That it takes something around
the time of seven years to substantially
be a new person. So I guess

                                             I’m waiting.

In seven years, I’ll see if my heart wants to
start up again without the scent of your
fabric expelling from each beat or to suddenly
enjoy the unremembered feeling of your skin warmed
close against mine or to experience the exhale of
I love you finally leaving my lungs for the very last time.

It leaves on a midnight search and seizure
to rehab in Arapahoe, Wyoming.
It leaves with grimy charcoal high top Converse
and a distasteful orange hunter-green flannel.
              Bloodshot eyed and strung out on residual
******* hidden in the inner brims of his precious nose,
It leaves fingers torn from the doorframe and without
saying a word to her for years.

It arrives a forgotten promise
clean-sobered with a rough pair of brimstone arms
and scarlett-feathered lips.
It arrives gently holding a wooden ring
dark carved in detox and an “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
              Apologizing thumbs nip tightly down the hem of her hips,
It arrives delicious and inviting like the scent of
fresh pasta on a hot alabaster plate.

It leaves, again,
high and full-bellied satisfied with the final use
of an old habit.
It leaves without a word of those whispered childhood
embraces on young October nights.
              Leather jacket in hand and Oxford shoes out the door,
It leaves — between the scent of
                                         laundried cotton and lavender sage candles —
It leaves
carrying in its dark pockets all her untreated, distasteful addictions too.


September 22, 2014 // 7:04 AM

I am afraid to be afraid too afraid
        to be still but still healing still
afraid to open all my heavy doors that
        he has seen too much unkempt skin
                 that I am afraid of him that we

are broken that he was always broken but we are nothing
         but bandaged apricots in the rotting August sun and he
is afraid we have too much or not enough time
         afraid of us afraid of me afraid to speak but he
                 breathes hot scorpion-kissed lullabies into

my neck into scarlet corners of my pituitary
         poisons all my wearied nerves I used to call him
master used to master our loose laundry I
        refused to fold used to master our loose smiles
                 in front of people I refused to fold for

I used to accept his virulent apologies after business trips
        I used to be afraid of him he used to be afraid
of my amphibian temper afraid of how I
        waxed and waned through tempestuous waters afraid
                that he was always drowning

I am afraid of the dark blue ghosts their red
        angry heat I am afraid to eat cartridged
bullets of my own words silver gunpowdered
        shrapnels if I eat them all lead like you would
seep into the insides of my abdomen

my insides are unreachable have a little
        too much sunshine to carry along when spring
arrives I am scared because the light
        comes in with brilliant blazing eyes
               and sees everything

                            October 8, 2014 7:04 AM

God created her to look lovely only in moonlight.
To only be beautiful in the most intimate moments.
Like when she shifts out of her tired clothes
and lies in her naked bed gently swaying to sleep.
When she shimmies around the hard corners of
her granite-topped kitchen,
cooking sweet broth and dancing to the music
she only plays alone.
When she sings
loudly
in her car.
Windows rolling down as
the wind tumbles through her hair.
She is unseen
and she is beautiful.
So profoundly beautiful
in her own time and measures
and this is her most exquisitely silent misfortune.

Sunday July 6, 2014 1:16 PM

I tried running.
Pressed my feet against those hopes I’ve always wanted.
But slipped right onto the crackled pavement
I used to call my dreams.

One day, I bought some Nikes.
The store told me that their shoes could
grip onto you tighter. That I could sprint across
your tired body and not forget to clean you
with my footsteps. I adored you.

The funny thing I soon found out was
buy and try all I want -
there is no such rise and recovery
from blindly face-planting on your familiar path
splattering your body
like sunday morning jelly on toast.

All I wanted was to hold you. Follow your road
that refused to latch onto me like a dead leach.
Feed off of you like an infant on a mother’s breast.
Bloom like daffodils in your needed sunlight.

But there was no traction. My Nikes broke their promises
so I tore them off and tried walking
barefeet.
I stumbled.
Laid there.
Curling my fingers onto your fractured chest, I tried
holding on.
Sliding under my very fingertips, you refused me.

Or I refused you. Whatever it was
It doesn’t matter now.
There is just no traction.
So I let go. Maybe swimming is a safer bet.
No point in holding on anymore.

Thursday January 23, 2014  3:46 AM

I've noticed that there is a natural process of
shedding the residue of high school off
the insides of my skin.
It flakes away
achingly
slow in its time -
disintegrating  
like the silk chrysalis of a caterpillar's
bloom into a butterfly.

June 4, 2013 10:52 AM

Please splatter me onto the pavement
like
sunday morning jelly on toast.
I can examine each
single
blade of grass from this sweet high
but all I’m asking for is some **** sleep.

October 24, 2013 10:02 am

Scrambling across the tiled rooftop,
I avoided peering down.
The sight of charcoaled pavement
emerged as an unbecoming comrade to this city’s
easy skyline.

One cord. One hand.
A fear of falling in another
My attempt at a Sunday Night Football
twisted to the anticipation of
a roadside tackle from the opposite team below

The view from up here
was my only peace
A great inhale of chilled air
filling the bottom corners of my lungs
You are safe. You will not fall.
You are content and happy up here.

And that is what scared me the most.

The roof groaned at my passing weight
I stood at the brink of it all. Admiring
the city inside me
the metro, the lights, the busy buildings
It was filthy and a little unbecoming
but I was lucky. Nothing
was wrong.

Then I slipped off the edge of the rooftop.

Gripping at the pipes that rimmed the building,
the hooks of my fingers rioted for a savior.
Sprouting blood like fireworks on a holiday
I begged not to fall. The pipes wailed as
my legs reached further for the ground,
like a child stretching towards their mother’s arms
I cried at how simple it was -
To let go or to bring myself up
not knowing if my will could
get me up to the rooftop

I thought hard for us all - my only undoing -
Then I unclasped my broken fingers
and fell down onto the concrete.


November 7,  2013 3:59 pm
Revised: December 9, 2013 1:53

I.
When I was trying to move out to the city,
I felt, for the first time, the gentle nudge of
your damp snout at the tips of my fingers.
And when your small paws
fearfully clutched the palm of my hand,
you beheld me like a God
and I called your brown eyes
raisins.

II.
I am working on being my own man
who handles the bills, cooks his family dinner,
and, at the vet’s office, doesn’t crumble over phrases like
It’s time to put her to sleep.

III.
The truth is this:
Love is an organic thing,
It fruits and softens.


September 5, 2013 3:15 AM
Revised: December 9, 2013 1:57 pm

Once you drove up in your
1977 Mercedes,
I could feel the hurried pulsation of a weary heart
over the clattered groan of your engine.
Clambering into my seat, I folded in on myself,
too timid to fold into you instead.

Creamed leather seats on a rusted turquoise shell 
I look to the back, expecting some residue
of the last lipstick crush that you set fire to.
Instead, I found $1 books from the library
and your worn regalia that I would’ve stolen
and kept as filthy souvenirs.
A deep inhale of your burnout sheesha
that bobby pinned to tired marrow in my bones -

I would’ve taken you right then and there.

Instead, we played coy with the thin fabric of a relit friendship
and talked poetry and music over a ceramic bowl
of coconut chicken curry.

But all I romanced was a clustered cocktail
of my favorite things:

The drag of my curious fingertips
underneath your prickled jaw.
This fever building as I curl into your arms
and the corrupted graze of your hungry lips
in the groove of my neck.

Temptation at its finest.
Such promise between two starved pilgrims
But the descent down to the deep V between hips
is a sweet flame that
can easily burn you and leave pin pricked stains.
So its a good thing that I let you go.


October 17, 2013 4:38 PM

I.
I can feel the crush of her blueberry eyes
in the grip of your skin.
She stains
the sheets between our twister games,
that scuffle in your bed at night.
and I just can’t wash out
the echoes that she's left in your eyes
where I have turned  
invisible.

This is my goodbye.

II.
You once said, in the heat of your embrace,
that you wanted to hold me close
because I spoke like things
had more meaning than they really did.

But I am not written in braille,
you do not have to touch me to
know me.

III.
I cannot recall the day when I transformed from
your golden chrysanthemum to
the torn-up library book
that you gave and took back
as you pleased.

IV.
I hate the way you kiss
because your lips leave sticky-note
reminders
of the last people you left behind. I fear
my fate will be the same.

V.
The movement of your hips
rippling like waves between my sands
is
overwhelming. Just
stop.

VI.
I will never trust you.

VII.
I feel like a flower.
Standing silent against the heavy rain.
Releasing all my wearied petals in
the coming storm.

This is goodbye.

November 25, 2013 1:09 PM