Your bright, round almond
eyes and spider legs;
divine bones, lined up, perfect
for a tongue to run along.

I wrap myself in
your sweet scent; I smell my hands
to find sick comfort in
your absence.  

If those branches were to
once more entangle mine,
should I never let you go,
caressing with kisses,
telling you what a daydream you are.

I miss you.
(Today especially).
I still find myself thinking:
maybe I just need to leave,
go as far as my dread may take me,
but clearly, that will never change
my aching heart.

So I skip along alleyways,
twirl under city starlight,
stomp down the concrete,
dancing-- Just give me one moment.
Please, just let me have the isolation
that's trapping me.

I would give anything now
to scream without anyone hearing,
to die without anyone finding
the body, (to find anyone that cares,
truly, truly, truly).

Every day I grow closer
to stopping and asking
the next stranger I see,
"Can we pretend that you're my best friend tonight?"

Can we pretend that I never left?
That you never stopped caring for me?

I miss you always,
today especially.

I pedal until
there is no way to go faster
in the first gear.
  If there was a way for me to scream
  without you hearing,
  you never would have known.
  
In the dark,
I whisper words which
I'm not sure how to pronounce.
  I set the lamp light
  against the wall and admire
  the spinning of my shadow.

I've learned that happiness
is what I want
more than anything.

I've learned that God
does not have the time
to punish me.

Sometimes, I'm afraid,
I want my heart to break.

I am in love.

There's a stack of tapes in my head,
songs for the lost.

It is midnight.

I open the windows of my home;
I wait for the burglars to sneak in.

I have seen God’s hand
as a cloud bends from the sky, breath
as a fog fell in the highlands, fingers
splitting rock of the glen
for two knees to rise— mountains.

I have traipsed God’s spine;
stepped stones jutting from the hill of her back
dressed in heather, moss, and clover.
Down the winding path
at the bottom of a spring

I found God’s heart,
all of her love welled up in pools.
From the stream I pull
her love’s labor, now in my palm,
a polished stone to skip or to hold.

at night i rub my neck, chest, stomach
under hot water
i gain satisfaction as shreds
of skin collect at the surface of my body
and i am a snake
being reborn again and again
and again
but i will never be whole
because it never
stops.

my dreadful heart sings out
with an undying loneliness.
on these nights
i tell her,
"it will pass
as it always does."
what she remembers
is that it always returns.

When I try for rolling thunder,
it comes out a knock on the door.
I've stopped checking the mail--
I don't expect to hear
from you anymore.

(Love is pouring from my cracks and my seams.)

Did you hear that the continents are moving back together?
Do they regret the years spent apart?
(If I think too clearly of you,
I must draw myself closer
to squeeze out the aching.)

It is hard to let go
when there is nowhere new to grasp.

In December, I thought I heard the sound of crickets outside my window.

The street lights stutter as snow falls
beneath their mute flickering,
all my dreams or memories of lightning. I'm alone
with the aching crush of snow under my feet.

In February, I miss the sound of falling rain.

My heart falters at the hope of rolling thunder,
disappointed when turning out only to be the harsh wind.
Still– I close my eyes and allow myself to believe
that the storms arrived after all of my wishing.

The wind falls and all I see is
green and glimmering,
choirs of leaves always promising
to return all of the heartache I thought I’d forgotten.

June, you took
everything.

Yet it’s always you coming back to me.

Bugbitten and peeling, red skin,
wrinkled clothes stuffed in suitcases,
drinking from garden faucets and
running through your neighbor’s sprinklers.

A heat that cooks you from the inside,
leaves you all decay
lying beneath a lazy,
buzzing ceiling fan.

In the warm stillness
a ray of sun catches the dust
spinning, falling slowly.

Hopscotch. Doubledutch. Chalked pink fingers.

I wish I remembered more.
The dust as it falls in the darkness.
The dust just before it hits the ground.

Hazy desert skies,
forlorn orange, teal and starless,
every cloud in tangerine lines.

One earbud in your ear, the other in mine.

I think I’ve become the dust
caught spinning within a sunbeam.

Moths hitting against the window,
cicadas singing outside,
a reminder of the world still breathing in the darkness.

I will always think of those summers and think of you.