You kiss me the way
you set the sun:
Deliberately sinking me further
down, then leaving me
suspended just beneath you.

Your mouth smothers mine,
cushioning the sound of explosions.
Nails etch a language onto our skin
leaving raised lines of calligraphy
that we'll read in the morning with a smile.

And what do you do
when the world’s your oyster?
If only it were as light
and as pretty as the pearl,
I’d hold it up to the sun and praise its
ethereal form.
Or if it would open
as easy as a picture book,
I'd read every word and know just what to do.
Instead, I stand on its dirt
and wonder how I could ever
build a castle out of it.

Suddenly it’s broken.
My beloved
lies below my hands.
Aquamarine, amethyst and citrine.
My stones
now unstrung.
You were my ‘promise ring’
my ‘engagement jewelry’.
You gave it to me
and I promised to return to you
Santorini.

Then it shifts:
I am pleading
in your aquamarine waters.
“Forgive me”
Pleading to your citrine hills.
“I promise”
Pleading, pleading
while your amethyst moon watches,
because it is always watching.

Wind bends a weak branch.
Fresh leaves sing in harmony.
A lizard of the same color
slowly stretches his way from leaf to spine.
He stops to investigate a string
of silk from a spider's web
and I wonder how that tastes.
Lit up like a jack-o-lantern,
his glowing body
reveals organs and vessels
much like my own.
He makes his 30 foot ascent
above hot cement
just to sunbathe on a leaf.
What a life that is.

Moths float out from behind
an opened, warped door.
I push my face into your clothes,
hung heavy like pearls
in an antique shop.
Stale and familiar,
the scent follows me
like a lost little bee.
It buzzes even after I leave.

Hopscotch down the hallway
to find dead crickets
in the bathtub.
Scuffed wallpaper camouflages
a cobweb. Metallic vines
curve around bursts of petals.
I’m certain you chose this pattern,
but I don't know.

Memories are few.
I fill in the holes with honey
and arrowheads.
Indian feathers and
an old brooch.
Piles of pie.
Did you love to bake pie?

Games of bridge
on that old, scratched table top
with a musty deck of Bicycle cards.
Each deck a photo album
of your face.

Your raisined face.
I remember holding it in my hands.
“This aint a walk for old womans.”
And out the door I go.
Empty handed and independent.

Sun-bleached and fluttering,
a butterfly weaves around us.
“I wonder who that is?”
The sun bursts from Grandmother’s face.

By summer she had passed.
Everything was yellow, golden,
like pages from old hymnals.
Hazy sunlight passes through stained glass
and lands there on her face.
“Why are you crying? She’s right here.”

Cross-legged in the shade
of a spiraling cypress tree,
I say hello again.
Sunbeams pierce through
leaves and reflect off her
iridescent wings
and I know she’s at peace here in my palm.

The brevity of a butterfly.
The perfect vessel
for a wandering spirit.

It wasn’t my intention
to collect your love
and place it on a shelf.

The dust makes you sneeze,
and I’m sorry, I’ve just
been busy.

It takes a lot
for me to climb my step stool
to break up

the cobwebs that
have settled on you
and Paul and Chris and Jake.

There you are again,
you old, reincarnated love.
Showing up in new faces
and handing me a token
of your affliction:
your half-empty glass,
a leaf ripped from its limb,
your one-way ticket to a place
I won’t be.

Here we are again,
walking down the street
under wet trees and lit balconies
as if we’re falling in love.  
You try to convince me you’ll
stay this time,
but I see the itch in your skin
to leave as soon as you realize
I recognize you.

And I do.
You’re a fiery first-kiss.
A five-day affair. Maybe this time six.
A reality check.

Light beams and a car horn
shake me awake.
A squeeze around the waist
indicates you’re still lying
beside me in bed.
I preemptively wince in pain.
Any minute now.

You pass through that door
like anyone would,
but I know what your
“See you soon,” means.

You don't want to fall into a hole,
not with me anyways.
Too tight. Dark.

Fear not.
Our pieces don't fit in
any hole I know.

You'll fall in a hole
one day - your version of one -
because you really love her.

Holes aren't so bad.
Seeds fall into holes
and then flowers bloom.

Today you were like my hair,
wild and on a mission.
Tomorrow maybe you will be like my perfume,
spritz spritz spritz.
I am envious
even when you're ashy
and whirling in your catharsis.
You're beautiful when you're mad.
At dusk you are my favorite.
You bloom into fiery tulips and burnt hibiscus.
The sun falls
and takes with it your vividness.
The moon rises
and you fade into ghosts.

I dreamt that wax
sqeezed out from my ears
like toothpaste.
Dripped onto my feet
casting a mold.
Statuing my legs.
Zipping up my hips.
I dreamt my throat
was a metal pipe
running dry.
Vibrating echoes
cut short and
replaced with a dusty ellipsis.

Passively shrinking
inside a shell
that I'll never be
strong enough to crack.

How did this happen?
How did the thing we're made of
become the thing to **** us?

You broke your little girl.

You dropped her head
in a boiling ***
and the pressure
broke her skull.

Fished her out
and set her
in the sun to
dry and dry and dry.

Your neglectful hands
left her there to turn
the color of things
trapped between train tracks.

And now she exists.
You can hear her
but you don’t understand
what she’s screaming.

The problem with having one life
is having to choose
which life to live.

And the problem with soul mates
is having to choose
which one to love
and which to never meet.

There has to be a better way.

You could be a beekeeper on Mondays,
a violinist on Tuesdays,
a mother of three on Wednesdays,
and the greatest boxer since Ali on Thursdays.

On Fridays, your heart would belong to
the handsome attorney two doors down.
Saturday would come, and you’d fall into
the arms of your old Philosophy professor from university.

What would you choose to do
with all of your Sundays?

I look up through burning gleams
at an opened window.
The rippling curtains
wave to me,
begging my attention.

I hear stifled screams.

A woman closes the window.
The hazy curtains stand still and
separated.
The woman stands still and
separated.

A man passes
in and out of the newly paned frame
And then a child.
And then a fist.

The further we walked
the thicker the blonde grass grew.
Soon it was grabbing
at our legs.

We couldn’t carry on
a conversation anymore.
The surrounding landscape
swallowed any desire.  

“A huge human head, ahead.”

We approached a foothill
with the curve of a scalp
and a roaring view of a nectarine
sliding down behind the horizon.

We followed a drifting trail
overlooking the dam.
Dusk had turned the water
into pineapple juice.

A metal gate sprouting
from the ground
interrupted our silence.
“This might be too tall.”

I tried to climb
despite my fear of heights.
I wedged a foot between the bars
and reached as high as I could.

My strength broke.
It was too tall.

It’s open
but you don’t notice.

You land on me
everyday.

Flying through the room
like salt thrown over a shoulder.

Burrowing inside crevices of my skin.
Why are you sharpening yourself.

So much like a cigarette.
In and out.
Carriage between two lips.
A hand.
Two lips.
A hand.
A sticking smell.
Hanging ashes after
leaving itself behind.

A butterfly lands
on shoulder granting wishes.
Wished to butter fly.

All that is left
is an echoing in a vacant chest.
The silence of someone holding back.
A glowing, golden room
and softly strung strings
are not enough.
Your pretty words
and perfect apologies
are not enough.
A deserted, emptied bottle
once filled with stale fruit
waits on the counter.
You laugh at how it resembles our spirits.
I sit and smile
while the wax weeps in the corner.
My smile is fake.
So I run.

Wide, high,
and infinite with clarity.
Yet despite my tries,
the opposite of my mentality.
More than anything
I want to mirror the skies.
Just like the seas
full of their tides.
Full of their waves
and yellow eyes.
And in the end
the seas no lie.
And in the end
just like the sky.
And in the end
nothing of mine.