Freeze the moment, live the scene,
You look at me in our polaroid.
You're a drug, and baby I ain't clean,
Your jokes and smile, I can't avoid.

I love you in my navy blue sweater,
Just casually hanging off your shoulder.
Your messy hair, that's even better,
“Thank god” I say “I get to hold her.”

We go on a road trip, you make me laugh
I adore you whole- the love and the chaff.
I smile when you whisper, soft and slow,
Dear Juliet, I’m yours. - Forever Romeo.

The windows open, light on your face,
A sight that makes my heart race.
Those big brown eyes looking in mine,
How blessed am I - you're a miracle divine.

We dance in the kitchen, you make me laugh,
Is it too awkward to say you're my better half?
I smile when you sing with the radio,
Dear Juliet, I’m yours. - Forever Romeo.

I could think of no other purpose,
Love.
They sang throughout the night
while I was found, in the garden.
It would be simpler, he said, if they would just remember me, but
there were too many of them.

‘With a ‘well, well, well,
what have we here?’ I can enter any room
with confidence, hand on hip
[the Nurse called from within]

It reminded me of the idiots and ghouls
between myself and myself,
while I scratched like a cat.

What a piece of junk!
But I think that it will be enough.
The whole world was changing in those days while the haze reminds me of leaves,
and of you.

You are standing in a garden.

This is a poem for the anger
I keep coiled around my ribs
Because I was taught that anger is an absinthian poison
That will rise like bile in the throat and must be swallowed.
And I realize you may read this
And you may be angry
But I realize with each crunch of bone
I must give myself the space
To uncoil in this way.

I am angry
That you made me a captive reservoir
for the bitter droughts you refused to drink yourself.
You were iron-stomached after years of punches,
that I understood.
Open handed, I wanted to be the exception
But holy palmer’s kiss
Was still not enough to let me cross the threshold.
You are the locked room in the house that the children are forbidden
Only small glimpses between hinges
Of your fear poisoned self
Huddled in a corner, vomiting apologies.

I am angry
for believing I could have lain beside you
every night for the rest of my life
And not starved to death from loneliness.

I am angry
for ignoring how I dimmed each time I waited for you
to want me, to miss me, to think of me,
to ask me to come into your arms,
to find me fascinating, enchanting
to tell me you needed me;
to betray anything that proved I was more than convenience,
A drink that served itself on a silver platter,
Asking to be drunk.
If you only knew how luminous I could be
when loved well.


I am angry
That I still hope you will be waiting by my door after work
because you realized how you starved me
And now you’ve set a banqueting table, a banner over me is love
But I know you will never do this.
I know you cannot do this.
I am angry
that I miss only the space you left,
That I have not yet been able to close the gap
And walk away from your memory.

Green shoots,
little shocks of brilliance
from mouths so oft distracted
tis a wonder they’re not more malnourished

the courage to give an opinion
on long dead white kings of literature
who speak Christ knows what but it ain’t English
is, as they themselves may say, lit

my tired soul has read the lines so oft
I feel peppered for all this,
so finding out Romeo is now a simp,
has the hot blood stirring again

I am a poet,
I create my own wings
And weave a world,
While hurtling
towards the ground.

my life line moves across
your chest
your love line inches towards
my lower back
reading your palms
under the thin covers
summer air blows into our hair
permeating the smell
of grass and warm flowers

we embrace
the unknowable future crushed
between our palms.