She stopped eating until she was nothing but right angles and sharp edges. It was if she couldn’t understand the math of the world she lived in, so she sought the neat geometry of the curve of her hollowed hips, the bend of her wishbone elbow, and the measurements of her rag doll ankles.

Wishbone Flower
profuse dainty blooms
makes  it through the summer's heat
the wishbone flower

"What does the wishbone tattoo signify?"
Depends who's asking.
If I like you it's because not all things that are broken are bad.

If I don't then it's because I needed more luck.

I’m choking on a fistfull of bones.                   There’s a skull
hidden deep in the back of my closet,
maybe in the abyss beneath my mattress,
maybe lodged somewhere behind my bookshelf,
that reads aloud all my past regrets
like bedtime stories.

I found the dried up teeth of my grandmother
on my vanity and used them like dice.
There’s a rib from my great aunt that I use
as a clothes hanger dangling on a hook in my bathroom.

When I was little the playset in my backyard
looked like tomorrow,
but weathered down and rusted, it looks
        like a mausoleum.  

There is a lock of hair on my bedside table that
is not mine, but hers, and I can’t help but
wonder if she wants it back.  Does she want it back?

There’s nine-year-old smoke in my lungs and
five-year-old iron around my heart.
There’s a wishbone branded to my liver
to signify the what if? and a
skull branded onto my chest to
signify the what is.

I learned not to trust so fully the first time I
nearly drown and how to be independent the
first time I learned to swim.
I used to want to be a “daddy’s girl” until I
realized what that meant.  The roses he gave me
for graduation went headfirst into the trash.

I have many things left unsaid.

1
I remember her body against me

She tells me she doesn't want to get hurt
That I will break her heart

You can break me like a wishbone
and keep the better half

Sharpen it like a prison shiv
and stab me with it if I do

2
She is the snow
I am a stove in a single room cabin

I have been cutting off parts of this home
and feeding them into my belly

There is sawdust
on the floor of my love

3
Most of this house is gone now
I am still a stove
she is still snow

We both think
this heat is a good idea

I keep burning

Call her iglu
Call her daring
Call me almost homeless

4
I have left the stove

I am a candle now

Slow burning

Call me always hot still

Call her always melting

The floor is always wet

5
I tried to trap the ocean
in a dresser drawer

But we were flooded roofless

I learned to hold my breath

She learned that warmth doesn't really change anything

There was the sun
and it heated her body

I bathed in the ocean
she made
a thin
near burnt candle

I sank down

Her heart was made of winning halves of wishbones
Sharpened like shivs

I did not go near them

I am not afraid of getting hurt
But I have always been taught
to respect the sea

I wasted my words
I wasted your ears
I wasted my time
learning all your likes and fears

I've wasted some sunrises
and
I've wasted some sunsets
and
If I could drink them
I'd get wasted
on my own regrets

I wasted your soft skin
you wasted my touch
but I guess to you
it doesn't matter too much

Because you're on
to the next one,
and I'm left right here
thinking thoughts full of sorrow
and sharing them with my beer

I wasted your glistening body
I wasted your ***
In my head I was wasted
about the future,
like a house with a yard
and just two pets.

I wasted your lips
you wasted your lies
but I don't wish you harm
or hope that
anyone in your family
dies

No, if I find a wishbone
this one thing I'll truly wish
that the next guy you ****
has something
very itchy
on his ****.

Talking to yourself in the mirror is more of a religious experience than getting on your knees and whimpering to the sky.

Today, 6:36 am, I got up and said "Good morning, Green Eyes, let's forget."

Getting home, 2:36, I wiped the blood from my front teeth and said "Good going *****, crying in class? What are you made of?" Sticks and stones, I thought. Sticks and stones.

A droning sound.

A year ago, you swallowed pills and opened your thighs, air crawling into places that air should never have the privilege (read: incredible misfortune) of touching, holding. I laid in bed, shined a laser pointer at my door for hours with "Goodbye Cruel World" on rickety repeat.

Goodbye cruel world, I'm leaving you today. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

A year ago, you took pictures of your snapped veins, wishbone fingers still gripping a razor, you smiling. I threw up.

Goodbye all you people.

My friend is going through what I did, caring. Caring a lot. Caring into the school guidance department and caring into crying the whole day. Caring until she can't sleep. Caring until the morning to repeat the cycle. Caring, slowly bleeding out/dying/wishing you were God, same thing.

There's nothing you can say.

I feel bad, I feel bad that your wrist split open. I want to butterfly stitch it for you, hold you, brush your hair back, and back, and back.

To make me change my mind.

What's the point in killing yourself anyway? Right. So I'll do it for you.

*Goodbye.

I didn’t find any pennies on the ground
Or any horseshoe facing up
Or any four leaf clover
And I didn’t get the good half of the wishbone.
So why is it me
Why I am I the lucky one
Why do I get everything I ever ask for

There are people in this world who feel alone
Who have no home
People who hit rock bottom and there’s no way back up
People who know they are at the end
I wish that there was no such thing as less or more

Wish that there was no such thing as luck.

Because the karma says
They get what they deserve
But the thing is
Maybe they didn’t deserve it
Because maybe were wrong and the world
Is just a little unfair
Reality
Isn’t some piano piece of planned perfection
Maybe there are suppose to be holes
And mistakes
and *****-ups
Like there are suppose to be stars and serendipity
And sheer strokes of fortune

And I will run miles and miles
On a clear and cleaned sidewalk
That snakes in circles through suburbs
And they will trudge pavement with
Ruins and cracks and stains
On city streets littered with corruption

For the only fact
I’m not him
And he’s not me
And this is how it’s meant to be
Because we had no choice

Sometimes I believe there’s a book
With every thing in between your first and last breath planned.
So there’s some excuse.
So when unjust appears we say
There was nothing we could have done different.
That everything that happens in supposed.
That we were put on this earth with the timer set.


Because luck is just too unpredictable.

And I wish there was something to blame.

And I wish it was fair.

And I wish that every clover we pick had four leaves
And every wishbone and horseshoe holds some worth
And I wish that every time we are in need
We look down and there’s a penny
That brings us back to the right track

Because if this world was based on superstitious   thought
We would live in fear and in fortune and
Maybe some people would have a shot.

Peaches and cream,
That’s what you are to me
Flowers in a stream.
Red and gold sunsets
Just like in a dream.
Cotton candy days
That’s what I have with you
A honey scented haze.
Two people matched in
Ever after ways.

It sometimes seems we
Are floating on a cloud.
It makes someone like me
Want to shout out loud.
I am so lucky,
It makes me want to sing.
I am that wealthy
That I have everything.

Peaches and cream,
It’s like a fairy tale
Just the way it seems.
But I won’t wake up
As this is not a dream.
This is a moment
Like I once wished upon.
A busted wishbone
And all my sadness gone.

I want to
Break off both pieces
Of that wishbone.
And yet,
I want to keep them
In place together,
Still holding them;
Shaking along with you.

My wish
Has already been
Granted anyway;
I’m just greedy.
Enough to see
Where this surreal night
Takes us as we sway,
Lest we be killed
By the trembling masses
That crushes all our moments.

feel the teeth sink in,
rip word from bone,
crush heart and tear through skin.

put down the phone.

let the words sink in.
narrow down the voices in your head,
force yourself to feel alone.

don't let the pain show.

put pen to paper,
let your mind pour out,
from word to world.

inhale-
1 2 3 4

open the back door,
smell the dying plum blossoms.
take a few steps, or try to.

exhale-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

gaze up at the sky.
do the clouds still look red?
no, but that one looks like a wishbone.

keep walking.

smile at the single dad,
he could use it, you know it.
plus his nirvana t-shirt is pretty rad.

keep smiling.

falling leaves make little ripples,
in the puddles in the road gully.
overcast days always make for the best reflections.

-
this shouldn't need to be routine.

i woke up at four am
you had died approximately three hours before
i got chills and lay impossibly still
with wide eyes
there was something
all around me

i climbed cautiously
down to the bathroom
to smoke a cigarette
as if someone
was watching

i drank a lot
of water

now whenever i get chills
i think it is you
trying to touch me

today as i methodically
wiped down tables
a radio broadcast in the background
was having a deep
sunday night personal in-depth hour
on the talk show
and all this losing a loved one
and a piece of me
****
is really getting to me
because you're still here
aren't i breathing?

this feeling is not a wishbone
it breaks evenly
and we walked away
with half of each

Shooting stars and candles,
eyelashes and full moons;
it's not a bowl of lucky charms,
but wishes for us loons.

So break a wishbone if you must;
throw a penny in a well,
but know my dear that in the end,
a wish is but a shell.

You can blow the dandelion seeds,
and watch them float away,
but don't waste your time on wishes child;
go out and seize the day.

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much.

A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck
and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans.

A brain too much- a thought process that took flight
without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas
in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays
during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags
in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and
only just fitting in.

Any conversation was secondary to
the fuzzy way I could feel
my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain
and even before a sentence finished
Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and
seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut.

I was a heart too much.
Tears ran forceful and free for
so long. There was the heavy,
lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis
and lounged, languid for days- ******* any hope I could muster
out of tan hide until only leather shell remained.

Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery
triggered by the whole wide world-
a boy with a gun on the news,
a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty,
Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents,
and wondering if they ever actually knew love.

At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging.
At twelve years old I held tight to being less
At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting
as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones.

At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash,
every wishbone and 11:11
was devoted to smallness and simplicity
So certain that the less of me there was
the less I would have to bear from the world.

More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp
bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal.
I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among
the growing and gaining of peers-
to finally find quiet in a body that
was beginning to ripen in a shrill,
panicky way that would just not do.


More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath
and scrappy knuckles desperately begging
the arrangement of meat and bone I live in
to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen
into a place where I could catch my breath and
learn to tend.

Now, too many seasons and too many
mistakes later- I do wake up in
a smaller body. Twelve year old me is
beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs
stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that
coo and comment how darling I look in dresses.

Twelve year old me is quietly,
solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across
my paling curves after a good stretch on ground.
She even nods her head gleefully
to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music.

Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots
entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking
bones I show off like party tricks.
She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed
like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash.
She’s glad she managed it-
and anyway the price is worth the discomfort,
health in youth is mostly over-rated.

But I do wonder what greedy, vicious
twelve year old me would think if she knew
I am still, secretly, too much.

Could she muster any pride as she feels
my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits
and dark corner secrets I starved away?
Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl
between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones.
She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended
like a dark towering cumulous
waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall.

Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving.
Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode
and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings.
Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric.

So I grip tight;  sinking decalcified teeth
into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the
whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore.
I will attempt to fit my
hard won ideas into any and all variables.
I will drive myself crazy with inspiration
but never create a **** thing.

The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are
flexed horses. They gallop around
the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet
what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses.
I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days.
Except for the dresses.
I look good in the dresses.

There was a girl with jet black hair who introduced me to pain and called it ‘a good time’
Her smile looked like the light at the end of the tunnel, right before the train hits you.
I found myself touching things she used to touch, looking for echoes in her fingertips.
It only led me to shattered glass and abandoned halls.
I’d shout her name watching her absence sink into the corners of the wall.
Growing up the doors started slamming themselves to save my sister the trouble.
I started sweeping my heartache under the living room rug because she complained about the mess.
When I moved out, I should’ve let that pain in my closet on the second shelf. Instead I tucked it inside my chest, and tried to breathe around hurt.
My innocence was lost and there was no map that told me where to get it back.
I tried to elude anyone who could see past the painted on smile.
I wore a mask for so long that it became another layer of skin.
I disguised every tear as allergies and every cut a cat scratch.
My sense was persuaded by whoever’s aroma smelled most like security.
My discomfort was overlooked but still lingered in my subconscious.
I keep tracing my shadow but by now my silhouette is a statue.
And I wish I hadn’t flinched every time someone raised a hand, or wince every time I was touched.
I wish the night terrors didn’t push me to sleeping in the closet.
But it was all apart of the healing process.
I have an empty space where my wishbone should be.
There’s an emptiness in my chest but I learned to fill the spaces with more love and kindness.
My story remains etched in my heart with a copyright mark because nobody can take it away from me.
I’ve spent my whole life living in a cage, but now I’m finally free.
My journey’s ongoing, and the deep undercurrents of pain and grief are pulling me through the in between.
Now it’s been two years and the trauma I’ve held tight to has loosened like a tight balloon, it’s draped across my ribcage.
I press on the emotional bruises and the pain is dull and withering.
I came out kicking and screaming but I made it out alive.
Try to think of the healing that comes out of pain.

Such symmetry,
Such perfection.
The perfect letter.
Y.
The wishbone.
Y.
The fork in the road.
Y.
Streams diverging from a river.
Y.
The question I ask over and over but get no answer.
Y.

I'm fileting this city from the inside out,
She swallowed me whole and this is my revenge,
Stripping her bare from dust and sandy pavement.

Her scaly city of skin drapes well across my shoulders,
And her meat reeks smoked flavor from burning angels
And slow cooked beaches left to simmer under towels.

I'm feasting on the sky as she looks innocently down,
Trails of stars glimmer elsewhere,
Hers are flashing siren calls of life, of life, of life tonight.

A slice of abandoned hotel seasoned salty with sea
Is a decedent ghost of last year's revelry,
Traded like yesterday's lunch in the barb wire schoolyard.

And I'm sorry, because I'm cracking her open and
I'm pouring out her slowly well-tempered marrow
Because all I wanted to find was a singular wishbone.

And between the two of us, if we're lucky,
We can desecrate another burial ground searching,
Searching for life in something that isn't yet dead.

I want to consume this world of yours,
Greedy eyes swallowing the moments of millions,
Digesting the only air you have to breathe.

I want to find a wishbone in her very soul,
Want to hold your hand in my own,
I want to take it, break it, and then make it mine.

I want to
       Take it.
            Break it.
                 And then
                       Make it mine.

Every wish I ever made
Every prayer I ever said

Every tear I ever shed
Every night, lonely in bed

Every candle I blew out
Every dream was about

Every coin in fountain thrown
Every grasp on every wishbone

Every ounce of magic's best
Came together to manifest

All the stars in the sky aligne
And made perfect you to be mine
Never were two souls better matched
Than you and I, once our love hatched
Almost an empty score of waiting and yearning
Was filled with humor, kindness, and learning

And every wish
Every prayer
Every tear
Has built the perfect man standing here
To cut through these strings
And open my wings
And let the rest of our lives truly begin

An ode to the letter y
A letter that holds a word
A fork in the road
A wishbone
The beginning of a question
The break of a tree
The arch of fingers signing I love you
Or rock on
An empty martini glass
An empty valley
One letter full of possibilities.

so that when you’re young
so that the sky is falling
so that you tell the moon goodnight
so that a moose can have a muffin
so that the giving tree
so that the hungry caterpillar can eat all the leaves and turn into a beautiful butterfly
so that brown bear, brown bear
so that the sidewalk ends
so that, will there be enough room? Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!
so that Corduroy can have a home
so that the little engine could
so that Harold could draw with the purple crayon
so that you can give a pig a pancake
so that wishbone
so that the rainbow fish learns to share
so that the cow jumps over the moon
so that you can go where the wild things are
so that your imagination soars
so that when you’re young
you read for your soul’s pleasure.

I'd love to take you apart, pull your string
Watch the ivy grow at the seam, watch the bubbles
While I hold you down underneath
Let warm water run over our cold bodies.

Run along, now, you're no longer needed here (Maybe someday soon)
Splitting the wishbone, guess who got the bigger half? (There's no room)
How does the solder taste when you go down? (Always new)
I always knew you would need to come back again (I always knew)

See how the roses fold into the sheets
Just like a ******* hole in your sleep
You got nothing to worry about
When everything is simplified, no one will walk out.

You got no right!
You got no right to
You got no right!
You got no right to me.
You got no right! (Infinite)
You got no right to (Misery)
You got no right! (Imminent)
You got no right to me! (Ecstasy)
You got no right! (Infinite) [Calculations melting quickly, time dilation, seconds stretching]
You got no right to (Misery) [Minds colliding, bodies soaking, atoms bonding, seconds stretching]
You got no right! (Imminent) [Always what we never wanted, never who we always needed]
You got no right to me! (Ecstasy) [Saturation of our nature, stars our shining in our language]

I'm done.
I'm going back home now.
Leave me alone.
I'm going back home now.
I'm going back home.

Thursday night is game night but Hasbro
has never had this one right. Operation is not
a game for ages four and up–maybe four,
multiplied by four, add four, and up.
Surgical mask on, Cavity Sam prepped,
and tweezers waiting to the right of the operating table:

I like to start with the Adam's apple–
carve away any trace of my origins
and they will never figure out who I am
because, like my mother used to say to me,
who is Eve without a blameless man.

Then I move on to the butterflies in the stomach
flittering and fluttering for a home that feels far more familiar
but they cannot be caught, only drowned.

Naturally, the broken heart follows
but the problem with pulling that out is
the never-ending-silence,
white-noise-science, black-hole-giant,
You know, the absence that predates writer's block–

writer's cramp, sliding a pencil up your wrist like it's the
(best kept) secret IV of an author.
Is that the price of filling up your bread basket,
going  to bed full on recognition and reward
and maybe even a Pulitzer Prize?
Be careful not to trip up on your own ego
or you just might end up with a wrenched ankle
and water on the knee.

I still have to deal with the wishbone,
the split-in-two-gravestone,
the only-one-of-us-is-leaving-here-happy zone.

And finally, I have the spare ribs
but I just might leave those there
because we see what happened when God
bothered to remove those the last time.

My brother,

You are my brother. A man of bones and too many cigarette ashes lacing your lungs.

My brother,

We are a bond. One that got chewed up by the next door neighbors dog but is still his favorite toy.

My brother,

I am so sorry for the things I believe you can do.

My brother,

From the second she left I have been saving my water for the day you run dry.

My brother,

Drowning is not the cure.

My brother,

Distance can sometimes be the best thing for someone. It gives you perspective. And the further away something is the bigger you feel.

My brother,

Please, be my big brother. Be bigger as I go further.

My brother,

Let me crack your back. Stand up straight and look me in the eye. Wash this moment with the idea that we are water. Running through a valley of flash flood and we will overcome everything here.

My brother,

Take my hand. Let's snap this broken wishbone in half and make our own dreams come true. Let's become everything we thought we could be when we where five. Let's fight like tomorrow is waiting for us. Like mom, maybe like mom can hear us. Let's show her how much we truly love her.

My brother,

I know this is not easy. No one ever said it was. But pick up your bootstraps. I need you... My brother.

I was busy placing detonators under the MIRROR FUN HOUSE,
pitching
piveting
images of
itself for and by
itself,
when I heard over the rusting intercom
the main fuses were being turned off for a
routine check up and I would be
again left, as every one is, every night,
in the dark and
all the better.

The bombs in my pockets reminded me they were
awake and impatient or otherwise
alive;
otherwise, their life,
like mine,
wouldn’t growing steadily
shorter.
The ferris wheel in the
distance without my glasses
a slowly rotating
flower of blinks;
I wished I could hear
the pistons
the generator
understand whatever is making that
Big Wheel turn
but instead I sliced at the end of
the plastic ends of my explosives
to make them a little more
homely and different and
mine.

I looked up into the
rectangle framing my face
while behind me a
rectangle framed the back of my
head framing the front of my
face framing the back of my
head framing the front of
me.

I ran my fingers through
the wires petting them
something pretty then
wished I could hang this
night above my kitchen sink,
just above my rubber plants,
as good luck for
the future,
the wishbone of my
gratitude.

Instead I pushed some
dirt with my fingertips
purposefully without reason
then let the
wire follow me from my back
pocket,
leading the way
for the end like
I would lead a be-speckled French bulldog,
if ever I would give in and
purchase such a friend.

I walked some distance
I don’t dare guess and
laid my body against a
tree,
I hope an Oak tree,
the roots
coddling my thighs and I
can see my breathe in the
darkness and I thought of
the spinning, blinking
stars.

I took the detonator from
my boot and before I
pressed the
don’t press
red button
I glanced over my shoulder
wondering why
I should make it,
before,

presto,

everything shattered,
every light seared the sky in a final
collision with it’s end sister
in the falling dark
and every piece of my
face and body leap
from the ground with it,
flying into a place
the darkness seemed
much brighter
from
here
and
I
was
happy
someone
had
left
the
light
on
for
me.