I find myself lost
when you move,
a drop flung
from your tear-soaked sleeve
to sizzle on the hearth.
I called my mother yesterday
to tell her I'm falling,
but not in love
just sinking in syrupy fascination
while you starve hollow farther
below.
I stir pity and romance
knowing we’re both lying purple
aching to feel love that doesn’t bruise
and I've been too scared to believe
it could be you.

Red midnight glares above my head
heating coals in my belly,
pushing tears from the corners of my
eyes.
Education, success, modernity
boil me - I scream to sleep cold.
Just outside the window rests
a faint outline,
the shape of my future.
A train shudders to a tired stop,
miles away
the driver
daydreams of going backwards
or getting off
I dream of today, now yesterday,
as I enter, sleepless, tomorrow: today.

You lost me, philosopher,
but did you read the poems?
You won’t, lest you remember
I reminded you again
your guilt is trickling down
like condensation on the fridge
onto the sticky note that says
remember to fix the fridge -
that’s a poem, isn’t it?
Or you philosophize it so;
I think you think
all my words to be poetry,
and I dangle, threaded
in your memory:
that’s why it grieves me such to
say, read the poems,
lose me not.

Only if she isn't the moon,
roped down from heaven,
if she doesn't keep time
for your symphonies with her step
if she leaves you as you were,
instead of fever-stricken, breathless, burning
if you forget her when she's gone
and remember how to sleep without her
then you should let her go.

Wear me tonight
in your front pocket,
pressed against your chest
like a dead flower
against fresh linen.
Pull me from Eden for purpose,
and when the sun strains against the horizon,
sew my shaking roots into soil
and forget you ever knew my name.

The space between
my stomach and happy is
red ugly hot.
I feel my heart beating there,
thumping and stabbing
that is why I press my lips together
at the dinner table
and don't touch my food.

I am empty song silence,
written without words
heavy drifting from the earth
pleasurable deterioration.
Crumble with me,
run quick on milky tabletops
sweep easy like the dust
between rug and solemn shine
fit where no one is
meant to be.
Flattened, minus one dimension
ground to fine lines and
humbled there:
rest is nothing when
time is not.
I long for nothing
when nothing is me
nothing nothing nothing
lines and zeroes
nothing.