and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

1680

Sometimes with the Heart
Seldom with the Soul
Scarcer once with the Might
Few—love at all.

In a forest clearing deep in wood,

I spied the grace of doe and fawn

And stopped my track as I should,

To set my gate about face in song.

A blouse droops across my moonlit breast, scarred horizontally
one                                 two                           three
Stars disappear beyond eyelids; they’re too beautiful to view.

He unveils a balded below with vertical, light strokes from his knuckles.
one                                 two                           three
Flames freeze any hesitation floating upon my heart.

I twist to turn the opposite way, to create crooks in my spine, I bend
one                                two                            three
Pressure rises against my bladder, pounding in fervor.

Sterling silver scorches a line around my left index
                                                          engraved with a contrasting verse
“flee from youth
desire the pure”
         I moan
         and moan
             and moan

Rouge, threaded dragons intertwined with oriental cherries
stain a mockery of silk spread across an unsteady table.
The lady, dwarfed by the redwood counter,
has skin stretched taught across the bones of her temples
only to softly be drooped and draped around her jowls.
She caught both my eyes in the little dips of her palms
but wrinkles worked onto her face are focused on receipts
and she is obviously oblivious that her hands, veined with sickly blue,
had struck me so hard that my head is thudding numbly.
Her nails are narrow and naturally long,
set into the spotted skin of her delicate fingers,
pulling at a memory bathed in red by the Chinese lanterns
hanging over me, the couple near the kitchen and tiny Mrs Huang.
Her hands gesture to me after calling my order twice  
and I walk towards them to take the sterile, plastic packet
so that I can finally exit to the alley and spit into the gutter
a touch of an image much too familiar
to only belong to Mrs Huang.