what better day than today--

I can't sleep and I can't
stand the daisy bushes at dusk with their
orange glaring eyes glaring
at my fingers turned robot joints back when
they used to--

feel differently
and I

swear I
haven't changed so much and to
prove it I'm trying to dig the eternity out of
algae green and deep walnut irises stranger
and stranger with spoon shovels made of
shallow questions and polite interest without
getting so bored or
wishing I was--

what better day than today to die

I've tied the limbs of my
spirits and monsters alike into knots and
dizzied them in labyrinths of my own muddied judgment
paved with crushed clocks and compass needles and
they are all so far gone, I am
untethered--

even far from my dear music and poetry--

my soul is already split like colored mosaic glass, each of
a thousand fragments not just belonging but
borne out of some piece of art that will long outlive me, so
anyone that minded could
easily piece me back together in death

how I wish that death were the end,
the end, and not a passing over into
some other unknown rumored to outlast everything,
what more terrifying than that and if
I believed there were a true end I might have sought it
much sooner--

what is left for me to do but
papier-mache my body with my old poetry like a
sarcophagus absorbing the things I
trusted to hold me so much closer

oh Lord my God I am afraid of my own consciousness and the things outside of time

I want a love so deep my soul is sinking
smelling of rose petals and earthy rainforest steam all the way down
memories laced with ecstasy, glowing, every touch like careening into stellar orbit

death is such a burden on us and yet what a freedom
the surreality of losing her physical existence, we don’t have to worry about her anymore, suddenly, she no longer has things to carry in pocketbooks, released of everything she was bound by,
all money all mouths all paper documents and licenses, tracking her, timing her, no more

and there is nothing quite like the completeness of death, its totality and permeating vastness to make me want to fall in love in the same way, untethered, rippling like a stone thrown into dark water,
clouded, something like a rainforest,
pitter patter echoing and fog and tangles of leaves overhead shrouding me from the prying eyes of my God

even beaten down and with broken wings I still bleed,
she still bleeds, my soul--
we have been at odds, and though I imagine us
as swordfighters on sunstricken bluffs in the countryside
she has never laid a hand on me,
only whispered half-recalled memories through tears,
of the hyacinths in chicago in april sprouting like fireworks overnight,
and how I had begged nature to turn my veins to roots so I could
feel it,

of late nights watching the high hat lights twinkle in the tiny apartment windows across the street, and how I had cried imagining the intersection of our lives that are each entire worlds on their own, colliding and orbiting like stars,

of fireflies in august in grade school, of hammocking in my yellow converse by the lake to people-watch, of concave train windows and sticky red seats, of my limerence-born tears darkening the tissue-paper-blue bathroom tile at home in connecticut, of wind of music of snow of rain, my God I have been

a prisoner

I have been snuffing out candles for years, sprinting around
cathedrals with blackened fingertips only for the flames to light
again

and I have grown tired of running

even if there is no love for me in this lifetime,
I can no longer stand the sight of her bloodied and curled up
against the walls of my mind,
with covered mouth and hands bound behind her back,
despite everything still seeping poetry

they have the same bird in texas,
the ones that sound like chalk in the driveway in the
late evenings in september,
like reading nancy drew from the public library on wooden porch benches,
like orange light on the counter from the kitchen window,
belgian block curbs and watching airplanes roar over
the sunken sun

instead it is me driving home to no one from work in clothes that look nothing like my father's but still remind me of his car pulling into our driveway in yorktown at 6pm in september,
cutting bell peppers and tomatoes in the kitchen the way my mother used to over the sound of air conditioning and oil popping,
and the smell of dinner when I let the steam from the shower flood the high hats in my tiny kitchen is nothing like it used to be but smells exactly like hers

and the birds that followed me to texas are in the trees outside my window in the late evenings in september,
hailing a different sinking sun and the end of days
that feel much shorter than they used to

in any life i would have still loved you
i am sure
and love itself would be jealous of the way that i love you
with desperate fervor and with fear
only of our own mortality
only of the ephemeral rivers and mountain ranges that could erupt in our way while we are alive
and of the time we may lose
but in every lifetime
when we are taken by whatever will take us away, wherever and whenever we reawaken  
in every lifetime i choose you

she is just like her father
my mother says to our family, her friends, the people she sits next to on the train
it is often an insult to
my stubborn head,
filled with logic gates constantly firing
and cursed with a sharp tongue—
my body,
with more fight boiling in her than all the enemies i’ll make in my life will ever take out of me,
and more soul-fire than she can keep contained within her,
burning, burning, and unafraid
to fill her lungs with the smoke of her passions,
to light aflame years at the end of her life and sculpt the embers and ashes into things she knows will live longer than her body.

i am just like my father
and he like his
and if you knew who they are you would prefer that i be borne of any other bloodline

i am my fathers daughter
i know the power of my integrity,
there is nothing scarier to you than a woman who cannot be bought,
who knows when she is right and will sacrifice everything,
set herself on fire and burn herself into a martyr for the good, the right, the true, things that are bigger than she is,
things some of you have never understood, will never understand, and you will dismiss me, think i am crazy.
even still i know my life has cosmic importance
even still i know that i am a threat to everything you are

i am my fathers daughter
i am my fathers daughter