If you could see us now,
huddled up
on this bathroom floor
like the wet towel in the corner,
a most-likely-used toilet brush
covered in
ash & hair
is the next closest thing
in arm's reach
to a real statement.

You want to know what it's about?
You do not
want to know what it's about.

To dunk those
pearly whiteheads
in oil and expect
a brighter shine
would just be silly.

Take the bedazzlings from
their feet
and what is left to judge
that which they do not
want to know?

As we’re lying down I breath in your scent, the scent of your cologne, your heavy musk.
It fills my lungs with each breath I take, like the way baked goods do when they come fresh out of the oven.
Together we feel each other’s skin.
I trace the outside lines of your soft yet firm muscle until I make my way up to your face; one that resembles mine.
One that has dark spots and whiteheads.
One that makes us so frustrated in our skin but we share that.
So I place my hand on this skin, the skin that resembles mine and caress it like it’s this perfect plum that I’m about to take a bite out of.
My eyes are locked with yours, as if we are looking right through them, right into our skulls.
Trying to read each other’s mind.
Ironically we are both thinking the same thing.
I pull in, you pull in, we pull in and take a deep juicy bite out of each other.
I feel your tongue and you feel mine as we taste the juices we give to each other.
Our hearts, they beat on a time that only loves sets.
A beat that feels so great, so great our hearts connect.
Our lips disconnect and we’re back to laying down.
Trying to catch our breath, we breathe in and breathe out, breathe in and breathe out.
Until the point where I’m breathing what you let out and I’m breathing recycled air.
That same air, the air of your musk or cologne, the air that feels like baked goods, when they come fresh out of the oven.
Our eyes connect back to each other, looking right into our skulls.
But this time we know what we’re thinking.

And we’re thinking “I love you”.

Amanda M Brown copyright ©️ 2019

i love my dandelion daydreams
that grow on unmarked graves

i love dancing with their
seedsprout whiteheads in a
river of me

i love to toy with my
dandelion (daydreams) and

pretend that each one
is the hand of a corpse
taking its final

(maggot rodden)
grip of fresh air.

She is organized in a way that is unfathomable,
An alluring contradiction with the eyes of a madwoman
On the body of a laid-back cat.
You try to ****** her but she is everywhere above you
And every night when you meet her
She already has you trapped inside with everyone else
who is propelled by her many solar systems.

You watch her when she appears dormant.
You can try to calculate her patterns,
But since you met her she has worn nine different faces,
And she dresses as too many species to name
Yet you may think she is tame.
This is true, she does less damage than she is capable of,
So test her limits but remember that
The universe has no edge.

She is curved and always expanding.
You can’t decide if she is too fat or just the right size
Because she is shapeless and swimming before your eyes.
Her stars are many but her constellations are uneventful.
She bursts her stars like whiteheads
And swallows herself up in the muddy, black potholes left behind.

Her galaxies overlap too much to be teased apart.
Each sun has its own ideas about gravity
And claims each others’ planets as their own.
This is not a harem though for she is not polyamorous.
Worse, they are tessellating love triangles.

Love for her is like politics only there is only one wing, one branch
And all parts are just a sum of her.
She couldn’t love you even if she wanted to.
There is already too much for her to maintain,
Too much to spread evenly across your small body
And too much for even God to see.

You’re not an astronomer, a telescope is a peep show to you
You lie in your hammock seeking instant gratification, all of her all at once.
Even if she were simply one of those stars
She wouldn’t travel light-years for you.

You think you know her, the brightest star above you,
The one you stare at thinking she is staring at you,
The one who flips her hair like the other girls you like,
Who all share the burden of giving you
The satisfaction of having something to flirt at,
Something glorious to form into feeble prey
With your small, shallow eyes, and which you use to glorify
Your own simple machine of a body.

I. son
i am my mother's boy
who knows which teflon pans
can take the abrasive green of
a scotch brite sponge
whose face was spared the
potent accutane but not
the persistent whiteheads

mamma, sage and skeptic
who tells me things like
"to bury a parent is an honor,
but to bury a child is a curse"
if such things are to believed,
mamma holds the esteem and
privilege of a queen because
she buried both parents before
she could finish her roaring 20s
but also because she planted her
roots firm and coaxed a flourishing
garden kingdom from the scorched
plains of her own fragile fig-heart

i am my father's son
who is enamored with knowing
my brain ever-hungry for knowledge
my father who phones colleagues on drives
when there is nothing to say
or listens to npr and old malayalam songs,
fuzzy and wailing, when the gap
between us feels too far to bridge

dada, whose hair-trigger temper
i am said to have inherited
only he seethes in stoic solemnity
and i decompose, curdle and sour into
bitter words i'm not sure i don't mean
dada who, if **** hit the fan and the
plane was going down, would strap
the elastics of oxygen masks behind
the ears of others before his own;
reckless selflessness in everything

dada says that in his eyes,
i am still the wrinkled, delicate
bundle of flesh he took home
on march 10th, 2005
mamma says i am the first child
she has ever held and the first child
she has ever loved

the tectonics of arguments:
convergence with dada
brings only the buckling of earth
the creation of new ridges until
we are separate continents
subsidence with mamma
where deceit leads to a sinking
and my rebellion is made into
magma once more, simmering
dormant beneath the surface

i say i love you to my parents
especially during these arguments
because god forbid their lives
are cut short and all that was
and all that will ever be was
punctuated simply, indefinitely,
with two terrible semicolons;
i want to live without regret
and celebrate them in my
remembrance

i say i love you
but it’s difficult to say
“i’m sorry”

ii. material love
i tell you that love is as material
as it is immaterial:

i tell you that love
is the sore corners of our mouths
marred and slit open by the plastic
of dime a dozen fruit-flavored freeze pops
cold and sticky on sun-ironed skin
the heat-ironed fuse bead memorial plaque
buried with dexter the dead pet fish
in the sloped backyard of my old house

foil wrapped over-toasted peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches clutched in the cold hands
of my family, seated in a dusty gold nissan minivan
at 6:30 in the morning, dressed in our sunday best
on the way to church in the bleak midwinter

i'm from
crumpled bounce dryer sheets
redolent with soapy softener
heady pine-sol wet on bathroom tiles

i'm from
knees skinned on bus stop pavement
kiss it better, dust it off
keloid trinkets of my childhood

i'm from the spice and burn of liquor
miniatures on my grandfather's breath
the scent of ഏത്തക്ക അപ്പം frying on the deck
turmeric-tinted oil clinging to paper towels

i'm from fiddling with shoelaces for an eternity
because my clumsy fingers didn't have the dexterity
to coax the bunny around the tree and into its den

i'm from mamma having us stuff loose change into
cardboard coin rolls weeks before christmas,
so that santa would have a down payment for
our presents, even when we lived paycheck to paycheck

i'm from smuggling aunt jemima syrup under the dining table
with the matte finish that raised the hairs on my arms when scratched
to sip in clandestine corn syrup paradise

i'm from mac n' cheese and hot dogs
marauchen chicken-flavored instant ramen
with ice cubes so as to not scald my
young and unseasoned tongue

i'm from learning to ride a bike in the
parking lot of the local middle school
while my parents camped out in the
trunk of our old toyota highlander
racing birds, squirrels, anything that
dared so much as to breathe with
a childish eagerness, ever-chasing
the boundless oblivion of sunset
the violent shaking of training wheels
setting the tempo to my mayhem

i'm from getting fitted for a bonded zirconium tooth
not long after flipping over the handlebars of a bike
long after taking the training wheels off
(maybe i forgot to keep my head out of the clouds
or perhaps the clouds out of my head)

i'm from sonic chili cheese anything
on thursday schoolnights,
and fistfuls of arby's curly fries clenched
between tiny fingers as we watched
planes take off from the trunk of our car,
flying,
     flying,
          flying,
yaw, pitch, roll like badminton birdies
eclipsing crayola-blue skies
like sly fireflies evading mason jar capture
zipping through sleepy nights

i am rooted with conviction
in pennsylvania piedmont
(rich, chalky with minerality)
and transient like lamplight fire
dancing on houston bayous
in a mid-spring's twilight

in the strokes of my father
tracing the കുരിശ് on my
forehead after a nightmare

i am from syllogism and shortcomings
a student of disappointment but
always a child of love