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 write my name on grocery receipts
and lose them the next day;
I whisper your name in my sleep,
and forget my dreams by sunrise.
We sit sunburnt on the lawn,
me watching the clouds melt,
pretending not to feel
your eyes on me.
I want to write you a song,
but the words don't make it
from my heart to my fingers.
The sticky notes you leave
on the fridge don't stick, they
slide underneath,
forgotten dust-collectors.
One day you'll remember them,
you'll read them to me and I'll cry,
because you wrote about me,
and I never wrote about you.

Our divine mandate
fell suddenly, fire from heaven
on a Tuesday afternoon
landing on our tongues,
so hot that it felt
cold.
We refused to believe
our roles were scripted,
but defiance did not make us gods,
it only
proved us illiterate.
We mounted a roller coaster,
knowing in the end we'd
taste dust and blood.
Our calling has
always been progress,
never regret -
and we are nothing if not
debutantes.

If we could truly feel love
perhaps we would rise with the dawn
like steam over the lake,
evaporating into the soul-shaken skyline.
Our questions would have
not answers, but more questions.
The flames that licked our lips would
fall on flowers and
they'd bloom.
We would plant gardens
sow them with our dreams,
and the seconds that sprouted would stretch
to last lifetimes.
We would see the world
in a drop of rain,
folded over in paradoxes and surreal truths.
If we could feel the vast expanse
of time and space
of pain and regret
and if we could love all the same,
it would not be romantic in the least:
romance is heartbreakingly unequal,
and if we could love,
we would love with billions of fragments of
broken hearts, sewn together,
perfectly imperfect,
spitefully ironic and
irrationally equal.

Blindly first he walked,
trampled saints with righteous soles.
Blinder still he fell, kissed dust
writhed beneath the gaze of God.
Weaker still, buckled his knees
like pride and war and dark and faint;
chaos spans his vision now.
His horse was night and wrong and run.
He had no eyes for outstretched hands.
Where is your righteousness now?
It steams with mine,
it is mist and overdue goodbye
it evaporates with myth and law.
Drought waits for monsoon,
famine waits for feast,
he waits for light.
Now it floods,
bread breaks,
scales fall from his eyes.
Now is sight and scab and scar.

I don’t yet know Love
but I know you
and that’s good enough.

You strip me down
to my trembling core,
and hold me still
fixed in your gaze
pinned beneath your thumb
your body begs me
to forget my creeping fears,
to forget that you see things
I don't even see in myself
I'm blinded by you
and your brazen assuredness.
You don't know Doubt like I do,
you don't lay with her at night
and let her ask you her incessant questions
until you can't remember
what you really look like
to anyone but her.
Sometimes she asks me
why you're here -
did I really think I had anything I could give you?
Her questions hang over my head
a dark cloud drooping, oversaturated with
the weight of the unknown
reminding me that it could burst
at any moment, and shatter me
it threatens to take the shape of my every mistake -
why did I do that in the first place?
what kind of person does that make me, then?
And I almost crave the downpour
just so I don't have to wonder anymore
what you think or how you feel or who I am to you
so you don't hold the power to crush me
with just the ghost of a word on your lips.
But that's not how the game is played
you can never know how it ends, of course
and I can only pray
not even to win, only that
I can make it to the finish before the game breaks me.

red zeroes,
circumscribed about
our sallow
wrists. yellowed
paper, we
circle our
mistakes and
fatal flaws
no erasers.
lemon eyes
pulp and
peel crammed
down our
throats. how
were we
to make
lemonade? four
american dollars
to our
names, it
means everything
it's worth
nothing. crowds
love the
tragic heroes,
but we
suffer our
own stories.

Your shirtsleeves are wet
with every word I wish I didn't say
and I look away, hoping that if
I don't see you, then you won't see
me.
But you stare,
and you do what I should,
thinking hard before you speak.
When you finally do,
I could cry all over again
because I still taste love on your lips
after I've ruined myself again and again
and again you show me
you are heaven on earth
as the dirt from which my soul was made
is flooded with the stardust in yours.

It took a lot of convincing, but
after a few years she finally believed
that I was only staring because she was beautiful.

I'm alone this weekend
just me and the echo
of a plate breaking
on the ***** kitchen floor.
I wish you were here.
I spent the day sideways
wishing for your upside-downness,
how you'd peak at rock bottom.
I'm thinking of inviting you here
so you could take up enough space for
the both of us,
so my pain would no longer be
mine, it would
be you.
You'd ask me to
slow dance through
your field of landmines, because
only you
knew all the right steps
and I'd
trip one
so you could scream about
things you could never understand.
You'd feed me curses
and when I got thirsty
you wouldn't know how to be water
until I was
a grease fire.
But in the end,
I'm alone here because
the only person who loved to see
me hurt more than you
was me.

and suddenly we are two
acquaintances who don't know how
to have a conversation
walking four feet apart
back to where we had our first date.

A couple falling in love, first date,
another falling out, last fight.
Two boys playing chess,
a girl hungry, won't eat,
a reader, a writer,
an ocean full of thoughts,
and the rare listener.

The obsoletion of libraries
dangles ominously like
one big ice stalactite
just above his head.
He needs books, the real ones,
soft paper to clutch
between his fingers as he
searches for the right answers
to all the questions he
can't find,
the how-have-you-beens,
where-are-you-goings
and sometimes
what-is-your-name.
He can't keep track of the time
but he can categorize catechols and bird calls
and remember to be worried about
a greying Earth
and cling to its pole
letting it spin him round and round
until he gets too dizzy to distinguish
the letters from reality.
And he reads the fantasy novels alongside the
news, it
is all too entertaining to peer down
from his box seat
on the fear dripping from the ceiling
onto the audience.
Neither is scary to him -
fiction nor nonfiction,
not on their own, anyway -
but his blood pressure begins to rise
as he raises his eyes
to the stage
and watches them
obliterate one another.
And there he decides,
if libraries will die,
he will bear their sentence
he will fold himself into every page
and melt in between the lines of ink
and they will settle into dust
together.

if we are going to die
hand in hand,
then we'll be okay.

you're not going to ask me why
I'm
picking away the scab on
the back of my hand,
though you can see in my eyes how
it hurts
as they spill salt water into
my open wound
because nothing has changed
I still won't let myself get better

Eloise, I showed you my soul
you blinked and your mouth did not move
I wanted you to smile, Eloise,
I wanted you to shed a tear
despite your efforts to keep it in
I wanted you trembling in my arms
I wanted your salty cheek against mine
What did I lack, Eloise?
You hung the moon and
left me to burn on the sun.
You pinched my heart between your teeth
and kissed another's lips.
When lightning struck my empty veins,
your laugh was thunderously clear,
your smile like a lonely star,
burning as my universe dissipated into black.
Ruin me again, Eloise,
I’ll stand and melt in your acid rain,
your scathing apathy will puddle me
as it flows from your soul into mine.
Numb me, if you would, Eloise,
so I can be like you:
so my mouth does not move
and tears no more escape my eye.

I’m tiptoeing around
my tsunami,
the same one
that drowned you.
I dried that bouquet today and
cried for the day you gave it to me.
Forgive me, darling,
for all my tears that should not
have been yours.
I want you
but I’ll settle for words
that dance around your likeness
teasing to capture
the beautiful face
I crumpled.
It gets harder
every day
to tell myself
it’s not my fault.
I’m cowering
six feet under you,
trying to look away
and let you live.
I will shrink myself
every day,
if it means you blossom
and with dripping cheeks,
I will tell myself
I am watering your garden
from three hundred miles away.

in the night sky,
the way the crest of the moon seems to kiss
Venus; how you’d never know they were
miles apart.
I see us
in the morning fog,
the way the clouds brush the dewy
grass, how they don’t know they’re supposed to be
in the sky - or don’t care.
I see us
in old couples
pacing the beach after crowds trickle home,
filled with conversation,
still learning about each other after decades
together.
I see us
in the
air between my fingers,
always moving, always there.
I see us
in pairs of teardrops descending
imperfectly from my eyes,
falling together
hurting together
turning to mist and
returning to the sky.
I see us everywhere beautiful and chaotic and
tragic, and
I want it all.

Of course I cry into the hollow
space between my stomach and happy
there is little else I can do.
Don't pretend to understand how it aches when I breathe
you, who have trained your tongue to do
what it should
do not let it curse the smoke stuck to mine; I
know the contempt in your eyes better than I
know my own reflection.

Loosen your grip
around my heart:
my chest, now collapsing,
burns at your all-too-familiar touch.
Why do I unravel
into your arms again?
How do you fold me
into you, so deftly?
as if I had not perished here
a thousand times before?
as if I did not know,
despite your absolute claim on me,
that you would not
could not
ever be mine?
I wanted you,
not for true love,
I wanted to conquer you.
I was inspired by
fantasies of my independence
those dreams long awaited, now still
unperturbed in a *** from which
I cannot tear my eyes.
Morbid curiosity, or
fascination
masquerading as devotion
still tugs at my heart
with the warmth
and the force
of your touch.

Dramatic irony flowed freely
from all the poems I wrote
about how I didn't write poems about you
and wedged itself in the spaces
between my heartbeats.
And there you slept sweetly
warming my aching ribs and
getting drunk on my tears every night I
awoke weeping
for the miles between us,
and all the purported reasons I shouldn't love
you.
Now poetic justice tumbles forward
from desire into delight
it’s plastered to my skin
and it feels just like you.

Everything we once thought unique
settles guilt-riddled into
misshapen paw prints on the dusty
floor.
It shakes with the sound
of the television set,
blowing blithe static,
glowing black and
blooming into the everlasting
forgotten space between hello and good
bye.
It leaves me dehydrated, coughing, spurting
riotous air from the ugly gaps in my
teeth, barely
audible over the roar of nothing. It's goaded
by accidental location permissions, loaded
with deafening illusions of privacy
which hold fast to the hands
of individuality.
They tighten around my neck
and press against my stomach
and demand to be
always remembered, never noticed
like oxygen and
extinction.
So we will do nothing but obey;
rebellion is a luxury we
are too proud to know.

You skimmed my words and
smiled, almost
and you thanked me
as if I'd ever write for you.
I write for the ******* the phone every night
when she’s supposed to be sleeping,
so she knows she was never in love.
I write for the girl who lost sleep for
lovers who could not love,
so she remembers to love herself first
next time.
I write for the girl who thought
she knew it all,
so that she learns just how much she
doesn't know.
I write for the girl who’s learning that she can write,
the girl pouring her soul onto paper
in scribbles and corny metaphors.
I write for the girl who
wrote for the wrong people
so she can learn to write for herself.

In silence, my words are swelling
pressing against the sides of my skull,
dying to spill
from the corner of my mouth
or the ducts of my eyes.
But stuck to my palm
is your sideways glance,
rendering me listener
as you drink in my thoughts,
quelling my quiet anxieties
before I part my lips.
Of course, you’d never know this,
so I owe you an explanation
as to why
sometimes
I stare at my hands,
smiling,
and don’t speak.

Hope runs down your skin in waterfalls
begging for my hands
puddling on the floor and flooding
the air like light.
The first time it touched me,
it shocked me at
the small of my back,
tingling and spreading to my
mouth. It was the
electric taste of
Eden’s apple, the choice
that rewrote the future.
It knocked wind from our lungs
a half-breathed epiphany,
the blessed assurance of symmetry:
darling, everything exquisite comes in pairs.
You are everything I
spent years on my knees for,
praying with my fingers crossed.

I'm losing to the wind; he knows
I need his wayward rushing gusts
and I love the way he puts
my hair in my mouth and
air in my chest.
His spirit gently roars,
tangling my words and
bringing me to my knees.
He carefully envelops
past, present, and future; a
tornado deftly encircling
everything I've ever known.
There’s something ethereal
in the way
gravity shies from his gale
and how he artfully folds rhythm
into my breaths.
I wish I could love him with
even an inch of the miles he
spans, but
until I learn to fly I’ll
lower my windows and
fill my lungs.

I won’t forget to
mention how I
hate your asymmetrical gait; it
offsets my lucent cynicism
and offers me seasoned lucidity
which I already told you I don’t want.
I’ll continue to make
my disjointed offhanded comments,
thank you,
much to the vexation
of my sharply shrinking social circles.
Advice has always been icing on
cake which I
scrape off with a knife and
use for shape-making on
the edge of my paper plate
as the other party goers
advise me not to play with my food, it’s
childish.
And rude.
And anyways, who doesn’t
like icing?

is windy, almost cold
littered with people,
watchers, walkers, guests in the house
of ocean.
“Don’t step on the sandcastle,”
a mother warns, as if
it will stand through the night, as if
the tide should listen to her.
“Look at all these shells, girls,”
a father smiles, as if
they did not tread on
the bones of those exiled
from their silent ecosystem.
The people stop and stare
at the waves, as if
they will change, as if
they will stop, as if
the sea is not staring back.
And at the edge, I
sit shivering, in awe
almost afraid to peer beneath
the rippled glass.

Why do we fall in love
with emptiness?
Why do we chase the void?
Somehow, nothing
is more comforting than something
sinking heavy in your stomach,
a reminder that
gravity binds us to the ground.
Maybe if we were filled with air,
we could float wherever we pleased,
refusing to relinquish control to the earth –
but something sits hidden away
in the nothing,
begging for more,
whispering that we will die if we don't
stuff ourselves up to our necks.
And we oblige; we
like the allure of weighty things
so we pack them in,
stretching our skin, and we
fall flat on our faces when
inevitably,
it becomes too much to stand.

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.

You've never been to Spain,
but I could have sworn you were there
on the beach in July,
giving me sunburns with your golden gaze.
I was driftwood, tossed by panic, unaware
of your silent anchor sinking patient beneath.
I told myself everything but the truth,
and felt your your tears ebb and flow
with the tide, until I
finally agreed to swim.

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.

waiting at the crosswalk
next to a man, but with
an air of being alone.
She stands proudly in her
body, her feet planted
stoically on the sidewalk
her lips are slightly parted
to blow a single silver ringlet
out of her face.
I wish I were her,
for even an instant,
instead of a car passenger
stuck staring out the window
at strangers she's known for
a lifetime.

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.

don't be the clock
who tries to run time

I sat by your porch and
watched the flowers I left
wistfully wilting with every
passing hour
of the time you couldn’t spare me
and it felt like tar
on my tongue
when I wanted to say I loved you
and instead swallowed
lumps
of snot and tears.

you can scream at the universe softly
to please, let it happen
just this once -
that you would get what you want
you can stomp on the ground
slam both feet into the Earth
and it won't move
you can try to tell the sun
just how badly it burns
but when it finally sets
your skin will be red and
peeling
you can try everything
and you will
but maybe some things are
unlearnable
and wishing never goes away
maybe you have bad luck
but you can never fix the world around you

I’m too in love, honey,
I can’t breathe when I see you
I’m flattened by you
and I stare at the sky
like I’m pavement
created by man
and screaming for more
than calloused tires.

and I was supine
on the couch, with thoughts
flattening my chest, usurping
oxygen from my open mouth.
I watched a muscle
twitch in my leg,
the image bent through the lens of
an unbroken tear
and wondered if my body
was even my own.
Of all the things I
must accept
that I cannot control,
my body will always
be the most difficult.

This is the tightrope we
are so privileged
to dance on, my dear
as we tarry on the line
between danger and grace.

I’ve got a habit of
splintering my mistakes
and strapping them to your bedroom ceiling
in self-pitiful stucco style,
where they glare at me
like waking nightmares and
strip me of the sainthood
with which you clothe me.
I fill our little boat
with my buckets of vice,
submerging us in overshared sob stories -
but somehow you are
breath, underwater, always
you are soap
washing my hands and
kissing my fingers
using yours to brush burning tears
from my cheeks.
Your forgiveness
glues my lips shut
as I desperately try to justify
my self-perception, leaving me with
no choice but to return
each precious favor.

You're dangling again, darling;
existentialism isn't your color
flush bright and laugh skywards
finish your homework and fall in love.
You rise with blithe baroquism,
I can see it in the faint
shadows beneath your eyes
as you rush windward into past.

It's alright to love the program, honey,
but if you're over-cautious
you might turn too perfect.
Just don't while I'm alive, please,
for I love the curls in your words
and the feathers in your walk.

Be me when you don't want to,
and be you when you forget what it's like.
Just remember me around the edges,
paint me in the corner below your signature
and remember my kisses goodnight.

Your gaze clings to me as if I were
the last line of your favorite novel or
the first star in the night sky.
Your voice has the cadence of prayer
as you unravel my past to make
a tapestry of my future.
It's all I can do to cry tears of honey,
and pour gratitude over
you like I could ever deserve
all the things you give me.

The elixir of life
is the stuff of self:
we are spit and ocean
minuscule, innumerable, pellucid
drops dangling dangerously
from windowpane and eyelash
anticipating the inevitable;
the fall
dying to dry
when the sun shines scarlet.
We are nothing more than products of the sky
earthbound, plummeting, wishing
we were suspended in the clouds
gathered just beneath heaven,
hoping to float higher than destiny
someday.

forbidden feels so good
until it burns your lungs
some lies taste like honey
until they burn your throat
some people burn, beautiful and bright
until it hurts to look any more
invincibility is the worst kind of vulnerability
invincibility makes the gazelle
to lie down at the feet of the lion
trust can be found the easy way
or the hard way
the hard way, a
well-worn path
lit by warm, smiling faces
paved with promises
leading to destruction
i thought i could subdue that wretched monster,
fate
in the end, i suppose i have you to thank
for proving me wrong

Midday is almost dark; the
ashen sky holds its breath
rain buzzes between cloud and sun
leaves drift, blurred,
in slow frames through molasses space
to kiss the sidewalk with
thundering authority.
Between the daisies, lightning sprouts and splits,
spitting stripped splinters into heaven
then pausing, fingers frozen, posed –
a portrait of aloof elegance.
Midday is blinding, deafening,
nature's cinematic masterpiece:
terrifying, thrilling, and everything but numbing.

I'd love to
create something beautiful
from my pain,
but it's not a skill you can learn.
I wish I knew how
to do anything but
cling to you when I'm hurting,
desperately hoping you
will lift me up
but every time, you fall
with me, and then we're
slamming into concrete
again
and I think to myself,
it's really rock bottom
this time
and it's my fault
again
and you don't know
how to help
again
and the only thing
I can think to do
this time
is let go of your hand,
watch you drift away
and lay here
alone.

my words are smattered across the page
filling every blank space
a lengthy missive,
all to tell you
the words i couldn't speak
all to tell you
why i walked with you
so many times
why i sat in the grass
bug bitten, sweat ridden
i can tell you
it surely wasn't for anyone else
all to tell you
the songs that make me think of you
songs i’d play in my car
and pretend i didn't know
that you knew them too
all to ask you
why you stayed up talking to me
until 2am
and now we barely speak at all
all to ask you
what changed
because i'm getting quite good
at pretending
pretending i don't care what you do
pretending i don't want to walk with you
pretending your words don't affect me
pretending these words aren't for you
yet, here i am, writing these words
and i will put it in an envelope
carefully seal it
stamp it
and throw it in the fire