I could be your lover or nimble fingered arithmetician,
serve the rice cold and the soup too hot,
make the trope I’ve made my life into a
means to ruin others.

I could be his other. All similar shouldered
as we are, pressing up against each other,
because soft bodies and soft hearts alike
call to one another.

I’m a gardener and you don’t see me
pressing my thumb to walls, convincing
ivy to climb to me over toward the other
side. I am stone and soil.

I’m smiling too much at the cashier when
she makes a joke and it never occurs to me
that my heart should be something to
apologize for.

You can’t make me, take from me,
or chip away at whatever it is
you think I am: lameness and uselessness,
inability to click back onto the track.

I could be deserted. I could be
dessert, the strays can lap up my body
and I’ll lay here where you tossed me
until I disappear.

I could have been something other
than this settlement of lies and circles,
leech demanding its nectar, mottled
voice waiting waiting waiting.

I am joy and indecipherable name,
sticky on your tongue. I’m kept.
One day you will search for me
to no avail.

I read the steeple of Plath and
realize I am closer to thirty than 19.

Telling me I am now all-filled-out
here, personality and something
resembling a soul.
Like those characters you see in sitcoms.
A card carrying full-grown.

Real, live person! 50 more years
and maybe I can waltz into life
without insects eating at my back.

The grass never stays long enough to go brown.

She flew in from the grey and
All of the skin on her legs could not be
bought from me.
The voice that wrought a piece of me so
Crucial I thought all of the breathing before
it must have been labored and never this
free.

When our hair touched and fell together
the green stayed longer. Like someone
hired a caretaker who raked through the mounds
of myself there was left behind. What parts
kept the ground barren were gathered up and

I could see a new season.

Her hands write novels through the skin
of her palms. I am ink and graphite.
Covered with the smudges of her fingertips,
and the cant of her R’s and L’s.

I have lyrics lodged under my nails, and
a meandering thought pressed to the middle
of my back. Meaningless drunken messages
live on my shoulder-blades.

My knuckles and palms are unrecognizable.
They were held and smothered in chapters
and anthologies and I could never bring
myself to wash them of the marks.

Kissing is described as pliant
and warm.

I’ve never touched your mouth
but your softness has the same
glow. The same flow of
surprise and movement people
like to talk about.

I think if we pressed ourselves
under the same sheet and
shared the same air, then my heart
would settle

mouths slackening and tightening,
into pliable smiles. Tongues curling
over words and laughter.

Shotgunning one another’s voice
with the same virility some
lovers kiss with.

Your breastbone drum keeps me alive.
I’m not sure if I can make it out today
or tomorrow or yesterday.
You see, I try and when I try real hard
it’s like I’ve been cooked too long
and my clay just cracks.
In one full shudder, I shed my
whole body like a skin.

You send a message through the lines
“How are you today?”
My smile and shrug aren’t working for me right
so I try to breathe and say, “not okay”
without breaking you too.

I can’t write checks for the bills
or tug a sock on, or reach around for the blanket.
It’s too hard, I’m sad, I’m terrified.
My stomach hurts
and there are fists clenched up inside my thighs
and my chest that just won’t loosen up.
I can’t see past the seam of the pillowcase
two inches from my face.
I should mend it. It’s coming apart. Unraveling.

You give me a few words again
and I don’t feel lighter or fixed
because you can’t fix people.
We don’t come with system codes
or instructions for when we break
and lose our first-glance worth.

But I feel you like a concrete floor beneath
my palms or the old, pealing linoleum
in my bathroom.
It anchors me down, and I remember
to take a deep breath now and then.
It reminds me that I’m still here
and you’re still here
and that’s enough for now.

From the bruising
on your back
to the lines
decorating my
left radial nerve,
we keep count
of bad fortune
and tired breaths.