Darkness grins on the horizon
it looms and drags and coughs
I shudder and shutter my windows,
I board and splinter and nail and bruise and seal
and lock.
It's not quiet inside,
it storms in here too
it's acid rain,
it's sandstorm and blizzard
I'm igloo,
I'm fire,
I'm puddle
you echo and echo and echo
Won't you leave?
Why didn't you stay?
you echo and echo and echo
I scream and spill and slam and still -
in sudden silence
darkness seeps through
the gaps in the walls, then my pores
it's here, it's me
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine
you're gone and
so am I.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

nihilism is your Mecca;
apathy your temple
i abandoned religion to follow you.
i thought you were the north star
but as it turns out,
you were nothing but an airplane
bound to crash
with one passenger inside.
but death doesn't matter, does it?
nothing does, in the end.
i was the eye of your hurricane,
the ostensible object of your affection,
terrified to
venture beyond the tiny circumference
of peace.
you'd line your shoes with razors
just to prove you felt no pain.
you were untouchable, you told me;
you concerned yourself for nothing,
i worried for everything.
as it turns out,
your glass ceiling was fragile
and sent you tumbling to rock bottom
when it finally shattered.
you loved the thrill of the free fall,
but i was afraid of heights.
i wouldn't be there for your downfall
though you seemed to know you'd survive.
i was left with no faith
little hope
and more questions than i knew how to ask.
it's been years now,
and still i wonder
were you lying all along,
or just deluded?

Saturday morning
is an unseen sunrise
usurping my sleep; pain splayed
just behind my temple.
It’s
the dreaded goodbye
whispered by weekdays
filtering through the fabric of my shirt collar
like teardrops
and landing along with my gaze
on your nicest shoes.
As my eyes rise, my mind’s eye
is frantically memorizing all your lovely edges
duct-taping images of you to
every surface of my memory.
Saturday morning
hides in purple shadows circling my kneecaps
and hints at the giant, painful subtlety
of the unknown, sewn between my future and
yours.
Saturday morning
is clung like grass and dew,
early me and you
so spitefully aware
of every ticking second tacked on
to our ages.
And in the end,
Saturday morning
dies bittersweet on the tips
of our tongues; a
wordless assurance of
Sunday.

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

i discovered love
beneath wrapping paper,
presents crumbling in my fists
it was the rug ripped
from underneath my feet,
the taste of salt and metal
the chip in my tooth
so of course i fell for you,
your adrenaline and materialism
of course i can't forget you
how could skin forget its scars?
i don't care if you broke me
or if i was always broken, and
you just made me feel whole
for one perfect day.
i was blindly searching for love, but i
only saw you

I'll find her one day, years
from now
sketching wildflowers in a field
two states over from
where we met
and it will be the first
time that I realize I
truly lost her. I never knew her
to care about art, though I knew she would
paint houses with her generosity
until she’d given her whole world away.
She put everything she loved on
an altar and watched the smoke
swirling towards God
closed her eyes, inhaling
a promise that she would receive blessing
in return. So she did:
everything that happened
had to be divinely ordained
but me - I was not.
I was the earth she
was called to leave behind,
on her journey higher
and I watched her footsteps smudge
the lines drawn in the sand
and questioned how
you could ever tell someone they
weren't going to be happy
when every ounce of their being
believed they were.
The truth is,
I never found the answer
and I can still only
pray I'll ever
find her.

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.

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.

they say perfection
is nonexistent, but
i have learned
it is relative.

I wrote a poem that perfectly
captures the essence of being
in love with you,
and I'll never put pen to paper again
for fear of dirtying
everything pure and holy
you bestowed on that page.

doesn't hurt, not
always. Sometimes
it heals the cracks in your
ribs and eases you gently into sleep
for the first time in weeks.
Truth
is curious and ugly and forever half-hidden,
cowering uncomfortably behind
partial lies, obscured like
the sun rising behind the mountains.
It's seemingly more beautiful
when cloaked,
if only you don't look it in the eye
and let the darkness help to scatter
all its fuchsias and violets across the horizon.

and blood is shrieking in my cheeks
a concert of passion, ushering tears
the sudden pressure suffocates every
word trapped in my throat
and I desperately want to scream
at you
in hot pent-up pain
that if I didn't love you
with every ounce of myself,
I wouldn't care -
I wouldn't get angry
or speak before thinking
or cry into your shirtsleeves -
but I do care
enough that I can't hide
the mess you make of me.

you rise taller than my dreams,
grander than my hopes,
just short of reality
i don't know you, but i want you

mulberry street after dark
broken locks on the bridge
discarded heart-shaped locket
picnic blanket on the grass
you and i,
skipping rocks,
i think about how they
sink and settle,
destined to kiss
the murky lake's floor
you and i,
naming the stars
who are we
to think we know them?
to us, they are no farther than the moon
as finite as the glittering streetlights
less comforting, more enigmatic
we watch the sky ripple on the lake,
i wonder if we'll see a shooting star -
what are the odds?
maybe if there were a
meteor shower, we
could wish a hundred wishes
yet we'd never wish
for the same thing
soon the sun will rise, cloaking the stars,
you'll follow her, and
i'll follow the moon
perhaps i'll see you across the galaxy
and nod for rocks sleeping
'neath the lake at mulberry street

How does that make me feel?
It's complicated.
or maybe it isn't –
maybe it's outrageously simple,
like the condensation that becomes rain that becomes
a raincloud again:
I am all three and dangerously unaware,
trapped in a comatose fever dream
wishing you would pinch me and
disappear.
If I knew how the game was played,
I'd be so unbearably bored.
I spare myself the tedious details:
whether you're real or not—
whether I could ever wake up—
whether I care enough to try—
ignorance is bliss, honey,
and imagination is only everything they say
reality isn't.
The narration is a little confusing, my editors said,
the perspective is a little jumpy,
my thoughts dissipate before they can be
properly understood.
They can't tell whether the story is supposed to be a
tragedy, or perhaps
dramatic irony,
I don't reply because—
well, I'm unconscious, of course.
And busy—
I've got appointments all day; being ignorant and blissful
is quite involving.

When I was fourteen, I had
two feet of spectacularly boring *****
blond hair until
I cut off a foot and a half.
I used to reach for it
absentmindedly in the shower or
brushing my hair and
I cried today thinking
one day it will be your hand that I
reflexively reach for, only to
squeeze empty space.

Your mind is the bed
of an Elysian river
of thought
and when acid rain came, you
built dams to punish yourself
by keeping that toxic water
from ever
flowing out
to sea.
I may not know how
to break through your walls, but I’ll
sit on these banks
shedding a tear for each
polluted drop of rain
until, perhaps, one day my
Hope will
run your
waters pure.

i lay frozen
only able to move my eyes,
so they
remained fixed on you and
shed a tear
for the delineation of your beautiful silhouette
and their own shrouded myopia

the day after christmas i
took a walk in the woods at
dusk.
i felt a city of eyes
staring, none
of which i could see.
i walked among them,
an obstreperous visitor uninvited.
beneath the rustling wind in the trees,
i thought i heard the
pounding of drums.
perhaps it was the rhythm of nature.
it beckoned me to run,
so i
ran.
i ran not from death, but
toward life.
i did not plan to run,
but i
ran.
i ran until the end
of my path.
i watched the puffs of air
float languidly toward the
sky, and realized
this was not the end, simply
where the path stopped.

when i was little, i never
dreamed of being a seamstress
but here i am, threading together
fragments of people in poems
stitching his skin on another's face
sewing puppets of everyone i long to erase
and nailing them to the walls of my house
i specialize in calcifying the past
amplifying the voices of my vices
i dabble in cosmetics,
beautifying villains
making their faces a little easier to forgive
and so much harder to forget
to those who have scarred me,
i give the most coveted gift:
to live forever
the secret to immortality?
eternal, indefatigable words

Slow chimes move
like silk waves across your breath
smile yearning upward,
lifting me with it
I sail lucid and pale
wondering where reason got off.
You're the last key on the piano,
ringing softly, haloed:
redemption calls like you.
I only meant that
you blaze
like seven raging stars
you illuminate fast and holy,
trickle down your depth and widen
until everything is you.
I won't complain,
I'd cut off my tongue if you liked,
say yes til I lost my voice
even before you asked.
No, this pledge is not dangerous,
my worship not idolatrous, for you
are only ever safety and heaven
(or so I hope).

i took piano lessons when i was
five, until i was eight.
we moved states and
i just stopped.
but then a few years ago,
i met you and i
wished i remembered how to play
because you put a song in the back of my mind
and it's been playing ever since,
without your knowledge
or my consent.
sometimes it calms me
or animates my dreams,
and on occasions it's given me
headaches.
but it reminds me every day
of what i could have had,
what i long to pursue
and how
i wish i could play your song.

This is the story of smoke,
mirrors,
broken fourth walls,
and me.
I
used to play with fire and pretend
I was a goddess, like
I'd created it with my own
fingers.
I once set my carpet on fire
(that's not a metaphor),
and for one brilliant moment I
thought I might have
inadvertently burned down the house.
But I outgrew fire,
grew bored of ice,
and discovered the final frontier—
it was disappointingly tepid:
dull, a bit smoky
from ex-flames that scorched the carpet.
My once-raw lungs are now
jaded and fading.
What is left to grow tired of?
I don't care enough to find out.

i was lost at sea,
dying of thirst
and you were the saltwater.

i drank you up
like boiling water,
dribbling over
the corners of my mouth
you were everywhere at once,
heat spreading through
my every limb,
sparking my nerves
with your cheshire grin.
we did not know what love was
how could you teach me what you did not know?
how could you convince me
when you did not love your own mother
that you loved me?
you showed me what love was not:
love is not ownership
love is not adrenaline
love is not ***
i still don't know what love is.

Dark magic
black lace and
red lips.
I'm enchanted -
what was your name?
It falls off
your tongue like
caramel or tar
I'll drink it either way.
Saccharine sapphire
pulling me underwater,
showing me how to breathe
kohl pencil
feathered around your eyes
a punch to my stomach
I feel it in my toes.
The passion of the sun
cloaked in the moon
dangerously beautiful,
and I'm a connoisseur of hazard.

I've been circling the drain
for a while now,
screaming at you because
you look just like me.
when I get out I'll
try new things,
like papaya and cigarettes.
I won't like them but you
won't stop me anymore
I'll converse with the dead roses
on the vanity, ask them
if they knew they'd die,
from the moment they met your fingertips.
They won't say anything, because they're dead
and they're plants.
Maybe I'll become an anarchist;
I'll abandon that old idealism
of true joy and technology,
of solidarity and sovereignty
I'll try out lobotomy
and I won't wonder anymore
how you'd answer
those questions that rotted
in the back of my mind.
But before I do, I might
walk for a month,
day and night, all the way to
your house, only to find it inhabited
by someone new
and I'll be reminded that it might be time
for me to go,
and never come back.

i got a new pen for christmas
and i love it.
it glides over paper
like a cosmic match,
its perfectly pigmented partner.
but i have the same notebooks
and i write the same things
dreaming the same dreams
with a new pen in hand.
at least your name
will be just a little bit more beautiful
as i trace it once more,
tear out the paper,
crumple it up,
and start again.

i was once the well-worn book at your
bedside,
and then i was the last chapter
of the book you were afraid to
finish.
now i am a dusty journal,
hidden away with lock and key.
you do not know what to do with me.
i hold your memories
your secrets
your fear and your desire
if you did not want me
printed on the back of your mind,
you should not have filled me with your words
or stained my pages
with your touch.
you wrote these words, darling,
in fountain pen;
i cannot be erased.
you will not throw me out
you will not burn me
you will not rip my pages
you will never forget me.

limestone cherub
on the grass, by the
busy sidewalk
hiding her eyes
from the passersby
years ago, gentle eyes
wide with wonder
looked for a savior
in strangers rushing past
while summer brought her
the scorching sun
pavement sizzled at her tiny feet
she looked on, delivering her
silent invitation through the fall
while winter brought her
accusing tongues, spitting
frosty hatred
she shivered, longing for the arid days
wrapping her arms tight around her legs
learning to close her eyes,
so she would not hope
for a warm home
learning not to hope
that she could ever stop the
changing of the seasons

it's so hard to forget
the curve of your mouth
the words that you spoke
the way they gently passed through your lips
it's harder than remembering
the words i wrote down
scribbling furiously
trying to make sense
of a world
that never stops talking
the roar is nothing short of deafening,
yet i can still pick out
your voice
as i copy down the words
i wish you had said
instead of the ones you did
after all,
that's what writing is for
recording dreams
alternate versions of
reality
reflecting something prettier
than the naked eye could see
the words i wanted
would have sounded much prettier
on those lips of yours
but i look up from my dreamy scribbles
and remember
i am still awake

when there is no one to speak to
i
scream at the stars
they don't understand but
they listen

oh, that i could picture
your lineaments, soft
curves and angles
that i could conjecture eloquent
words, to color you
as blood colors my veins
would that i could hold you
between my fingers, as
ribs hold my lungs
that i could know you
like a brother
and love you
like the sunflower loves the sun;
bathing in the beauty
of magnificent mystery.
yet you are illicit,
despite these afflicting affections you elicit
you are proscribed by some
cosmic law.
i chase after you still,
though the universe binds my
hands and feet.
one day i'll reach you, darling,
i'll know you and love you and hold you
and we'll be outlaws together.

if love is a train,
i'm not getting on.
i'll lay in the tracks
eyes closed,
just to see if i'll die.
i know i'll wake
next to you,
so i don't really care
how i get there,
i just hope the train
is coming soon.

if hell is personal,
i will spend eternity
swimming in a burning lake
of missed opportunities
and souls i did not save

i thought
somewhere deep inside,
you were an artist
but the red paint on your hands
was always blood