There is something to be said about me loving women:
I did not love them gently. I had rage and
though their skin was smooth, their hearts could be as hard as
a man’s. Then, there are the men who I held when
mugs of green tea were only something we could burn our
tongues on, we would slide them together
and their wounded bodies slept on the other’s welts.

I have learned it is okay to be soft to those who can hurt me,
that there are hundreds of ways to love someone
that his hurt and her hurt is not always similar to mine.

I have relationships with and in watercolors.
The paints are conversations we could never bare having or
dishonesties swirling, permanent on some canvas –
picked up colors as wiry black hairs and straight auburn ones.
She folded my dress on the balcony but
a grey windstorm violently stole it. She made it happen.

I have learned that purity can hurt me, too,
the skipping stones that stub someone else’s toes and make
their feet taste like salt. The women I have loved
saw moonlight brighter than I ever would,
just so they could dim it themselves, like a dull knife.

When the soft bodies became too hard of hearts,
someone told me that I was going to love again soon
but it was not the same. I do not hit my pillow when my head
becomes insomniac, thinking of their faces.
I love men who are as fragile as tea leaves and taste so
sweet: their hurts feel just like I am vomiting my breakfast.

i took a bath in chemicals
making love in dark rooms
while polarized pictures
developed under naked wrists
our bodies
became film strips
projected on grainy screens
scratches
looping in on ourselves

i am church
poetry is church
sin is church
art is church
blood is church
lust is church
little girls selling lemonade is church
sundays are church
mondays, tuesdays, wednesdays, thursdays, fridays
saturdays too.
church isn't a place
it isn't anything
but everything
and god sees all

adolescence fit him like
hand me down sweaters
with missing buttons
he was always meant
to not fit
into it.
he watched
her graceless fingers
lace up the battered boots
that rose past her calves.
his eyes hugged the curves
her legs like snaking highways
in hot arizona summers
heat lightening
in his heart.
they all knew the sweaters wouldn't fit.
maybe he knew it too.
because the taste of her was
like holy water
and the child he never knew

i loathe every day i don't fit
between the notches in your spine
in the dip of your collarbones
or underneath your fingernails

there’s a boy with a black jacket and green eyes jumping into your car
and he asks you to buy him a cupcake so you do
and he hasn’t told you his name and you haven’t told him that you stole this car
he follows you home and crawls into your bed
he tells you what his name is but you think he’s lying

so you let him tuck up to your body and tighten his arms around your shoulders
when you wake up he’s still there and it’s still dark outside
so he takes your hands and pulls you outside
you drink something that makes you feel numb
and you still haven’t told him that you stole that car
and he hasn’t paid you back for the cupcake so you sit in silence

and then you go to bed again and he’s there
when you wake up there’s a warmth pressed on top of you and hair in your face
he’s still there and you’re still not sure what his real name is
he says he has to leave soon and his voice is weak
and well, you don’t want him to leave

so one day you wake up and it’s been snowing all night
and it’s freezing and he’s not there
it takes weeks and weeks and you wondered if you dreamed him up
and you want to know why he got in your car
and why you let him get close to you
you still can’t stop thinking even when the world’s asleep

but then its 3 am and you just got to sleep and something crashes through your window
so its him, and he’s soaking wet from the rainstorm outside
he crawls into your bed and you say ‘took your time’
and you can feel him smile into your neck and he whispers so only you can hear him
‘i went away but then i remember you and i came running back’