i remember the night you called me and told me you are in love with me

the terror and panic in one's voice when they find their soul bound to another never ceases to amaze me

and i miss you enough to make the whole world feel lonely;
echo dances above my mind in my
subconscious attempts at pulling you closer,
sooner
but she only sits on the best post and combs
through my hair with her soft + unforgiving fingers
she says "you're losing your way + Loneliness stole your line of sight. you're not a bad person for the way you tried to **** your sadness. you're helping yourself survive."
i am alone and i talk to the parts of things that
have been destroyed by love-
the picked flower forgotten
the child's toy that no longer sings
the city benches written on with black and red ink-
"would you do it again? let the fingers trace
with butane soaked tips, let the intimacy ignite
the flame, let the scars raise so terrifying and
pure.

would you do it again?"

yes.
always yes.

she stood outside the apartment
finger halfway up her nose
scratching with her free hand
a **** loosely encased
in patchy, ***** blue jeans
ratty sneakers with holes where
her toes and dignity poked through

usually a whiner, a brayer
a donkey among gently purring cats
calling down thunder and racket
like a motorcycle tearing circles through a lamp shop

today, of all days, she swayed

silently
in loose waltz time
to soft piano of a long-dead Frenchman
curling down from speakers
mounted in windows
across the street

her misshapen hips and flexing calf muscles
lifting her up in a rude en pointe
somehow made elegant
by a quiet ballad, a soothing moment
on a hot August morning
in Main Street
of the hinterlands.

2/12/2015

first a date, then a kiss
love songs are made of this
you’ll say I’m beautiful
I’ll love your smile

you’ll promise crazy things
I’ll dream of diamond rings
we can be innocent
just for a while

I used to think I couldn't go a day without your smile. Without telling you things and hearing your voice back.

Then, that day arrived and it was so **** hard but the next was harder. I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse, and I wasn't going to be okay for a very long time.

Because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug, whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile.

I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish I could tell you about my day. And in the morning, **when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheet, I begin to lose you all over again.

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,
Do now as I bid you, climb
The shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;
Wait at the top, attentive, like
A sentry or look-out. He will be home soon;
It behooves you to be
Generous. You have not been completely
Perfect either; with your troublesome body
You have done things you shouldn't
Discuss in poems. Therefore
Call out to him over the open water, over the bright
Water
With your dark song, with your grasping,
Unnatural song--passionate,
Like Maria Callas. Who
Wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite
Could you possibly fail to answer? Soon
He will return from wherever he goes in the
Meantime,
Suntanned from his time away, wanting
His grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,
You must shake the boughs of the tree
To get his attention,
But carefully, carefully, lest
His beautiful face be marred
By too many falling needles.