on razors

stop trying to tell me what this means,
let me
tell you: it's
release
(release?) yes, of blood, but more

pent-up energy that, left untouched,
will explode
the tears that will not come
what you attempt to drink away

this impetus begins in the mind
the cyclone of thoughts
that won't let go and so
you get frantic trying to kill it, i mean

wouldn't you do anything to make that hold
release?
to force the storm to be through?

anything will do
whatever makes you slip into a state of staring

the terrible desire to crawl out
from your skin, or,
failing that, let something escape
and not knowing how

blood, (tears, if you can make them)
the need to run like hell
need
like a drug, like any other escape
escape
yes, it is

i said it

so imagine, if you will
not how hard it might be
to work yourself up to do it -
put a knife to your skin and pull
and part

but instead
what might horrify you to the point
where bleeding is a desperate haven.

volatile

the trees are vomiting
pink
petals into the streets
nature's finest display
of flowery fertility
& i'm slouching along in my newly
baggy jeans, perversely pondering death
the dying confidence i have in myself,
the new kill of the trust
between us,
yes,
i tried hard for that
but won't work anymore.
this time i want
something to come from you.

scuffing through fallen blossoms
thinking wanting
to run
until i forget
you
but that won't do
i can blister my feet all i care to
but there is no forgetting this

i tried
sitting on the couch staring
through you like a window
as you asked
me why friendship wasn't enough
you said, stop it. don't
don't turn off.
stay
with me.

so i did
because you asked
and shrank within myself
to fit the way i feel
growing smaller
and foundering in my self-loathing,
i've
expended too much of myself
on you.
now i'm failing myself,
unable to run when i need to most
too ashamed to admit
my failures, &
angry enough to stick out your bullshit
but vulnerable enough
to tell a stranger, when she asks
me to call her,
that i will.
and i do.

it's NOT that i don't
want you.
but it's nice to feel,
even for a night,
that there are no ghosts.
and it'll be just me that she desires.

stripping

i get asked often,
by men
who've never tasted desperation on their lips
how
i do what i've done.
"i couldn't do it," they say, shaking
their heads,
and i'm thinking,
you have no idea what degradation is.
something more like humiliation: like
standing barefoot on the filthy floor of
the local convenience store,
barefoot because
beer from deposit cans
has soaked through
your shoes & socks, thirty minutes
into your shift,
while
dirty construction workers throw dusty money
onto your counter
as if you, not they,
are the one covered in grime.

degradation: reliving over and over
the moment
your lover says he's looking for something
better than you

standing swallowing bile,
palming
cash while thinking about $20,000
of student loans and that bachelor's degree
that really helped your career!!

i tell these men, they know nothing
of how humiliation is made.
they've never seen it.
here i own this stage.

i roar.

intensity

words scatter through my periphery
and i only grasp
one
at a time.

solitude.
longing.

when your lover wakes each morning,
contemplating whether or not
to keep you,
what can you say to that,
what do you do??

i spend my mornings lying awake, while
trying not to be -
curled into myself,
counting down days to destroy what is left
of this month, the last of this house.

waiting for the space that is ours
to disappear.

he does not touch me

naked in the bed, you
wrapped around me
you are further away than when i go back
to the city
and leave you behind

and i know what's running through your mind
like an endless marathon
whether to stay or go
what the hell you're to do
about me, and
where i fit in your picture

sometimes i wish you would let me go
but you say you're not ready yet.
yet.
as if
sooner or later you'll work up to it.

i want to build a life with you, but
hold my hammer loosely.
no sense
constructing something you may tear down
without warning.

darkness

even the sunshine
through the window is dingy
today, as though my brain sees
everything
through a thick cloud of pessimism.
i'm not trying to cultivate this lens
to focus the world within,
it comes unbidden
much like your dreams at night
when they snatch at your ankles
and you run
faster than you really can
but they never let go
and they always catch up.

life's too short

we spend too much time
on the unimportant things,
what will leave us,
in the end -
laughing times with friends
you'll never hear from
again
when they leave the city,
girls who want nothing
but your naked body
beneath your sheets.
we misplace the time
we should use with the friends
who will not leave our lives,
the time we should spend with family
and the types of lovers
who won't go
when the reality of life begins.

your priorities are an exercise in
error of judgment.
and i am sick of waiting for you
to decide
sickened by the fact that you
don't know what you want,
or who, or why
so if you don't feel
like coming over,
fine

but don't make me waste my time
waiting to see, if
this time
you'll be thinking of me
for once,
instead of being
so caught up in your own head
you lose sight
of everything

only years, love

i wonder -
how little
truly separates me
from the people
i have been?

the things we know only when sleeping

i ran through the sheets
of a portland thunderstorm
splashing through freezing puddles,
laughing at the crash of lightning
coinciding
with the city.

i was still warm from sleeping
in my lover's empty bed,
curled up and contemplating

"stay," he said
despite his weeklong absence,
with the half-hearted excuse of
watering his plants

i know well enough
it's not about tomatoes, or
a house that needs no sitting
this is about having someone

creating a home
to return to,
about sleeping solitary,
but not alone.

"you really love that, don't you." "yes, i do."

i'm breathing you in and you
are already inside

i don't know what this means, or
why

my mind slightly dizzy
tasting the scent of you

our heat melts the worries
our troubled heads tumble inside
like stones waiting
for polish

coping

now even the alcohol
will not dull me enough,
not even mixed with
the pills i use
to keep my mind to a dull roar.
the mixture just drugs me
to sleep, which is
torturous enough,
with dreams i do myself in
without having to drag up
your memory.
perhaps my sudden freeze
will splinter you
into fragments, too,
after i am done
cracking in two

you float to the surface
unbidden
and you are a ghost
that will not be set into its grave

compunction

profanity & inanity
all that seems to flow from me
when we speak
on the phone.
i'm by turns enraged
or just stunned,
sometimes trying to remember
what it was like
when we talked
without the compunction that
now separates us

sometimes when we
are both falling asleep
on opposite ends of the line
it's like being in
your arms
would be, if i
were a million miles
away from home

sagittarius

you were shocked, i could tell
as i snorted
some stranger's coke

off a long, dusty mirror.
i was staring into you
daring you to say
anything.

i watched that stupid girl
you wanted to fuck so badly
gaze at you like jesus or,
failing that,
a minor saint at least
watched as she inhaled the
drug she didn't really do,
except when trying to please you

she was already drunk.
i knew
it would make her sick, but
said nothing.
my mind was clear.

you were quickened,
quivering
with the insipid anticipation
that comes when you think you might
get your way,
but haven't yet

i wanted to hit you, but made do
with fucking your crush in the backseat while
you drove my car home,
thinking

fuck you.
just
fuck
you.


at that moment
i would have been happy
if i'd never seen you again
at all,

much less when you
crawled into our shared bed
ravenous with desire

i wished for the last year of my life
to disappear

it wasn't about the drugs, good
as it was to
deaden myself

i wanted to hurt you
as hard as i could.
i didn't care how.

loneliness equals desperation

i would have given anything,
last night
for your recognition.

i needed you to touch me roughly,
erase her presence from my skin.
a fluke, her presence in my room, and i
with no reason not to let
her in.

but i was dreaming you, eyes
closed over her gentle fingers,
waiting
until i could hold you again
and lose
myself in the frenzy of our joining

but instead, i held you
as you slept, fury barely held back
over the time we don't have,
the reasons that keep me
driving back to my shell of a house
at two in the morning,
waiting out your obligations.

stifling the urge to cry
as i wrestle with my mind.
but it is not enough, no.
i need more.

i want you to bruise my body.
let me know i'm still here.

prolifery

the sidewalk sports proverbs in its cobblestones
tells me to go slow.

i do.
i keep wondering as i walk this path
each day,
how one could be slow
enough to turn to stone.
curl into
the cobble until my backbone
solidifies, hardens.
make my skin
go granite.
every day i pass in too
much of a hurry to read the stones
although they shout as i pass:
time is nothing to a stone. their
thoughts will remain, their silence
retained.

after i cried

i carefully licked
blood from the scratches you left
me off of my face

readings

i sat in the bookstore, listening
to Ursula Le Guin reminisce
lamenting
the lack of lost lovers' names

and i thought,
that's
why i write them,
each
a pebble in my stream

words unimportant in the memories of pressing skin,
but still
i want to name them
preserve the small part of myself
that chose: you.
you, and you, and you.

i told you

if sex was all
that was driving me,
i certainly had easier, and likely
better places to get it,
and people who would treat me
like a goddess
as well you know,
as well i know you
could easily find someone
unattached.
our remaining revolves
around more than mere chemistry,
pheromones, hormonal polarization.
my hormones have
other places to be,
and other beds i'm
invited into - pity
i can't get you
out of my head -
your claws sunk
too far in to pry loose

wanderlust

baby i want you
to hold my hands
they are cold.
they are waiting for you.
i want
you to tuck them into your pockets
and wait until i
melt into your heat.
please
come over here
i want to tell you
that you are beautiful.

losing

the utter rage
that once had me fisting walls
so hard my
metacarpals cracked
is so frozen now
i can't
even find it

carousel

i think in order
to settle your spinning mind
i should close my lips over your mouth
so we cannot speak

drawn to complication

i don't know if you realize
how much i appreciate
your hanging around until two
although you tried to leave
by midnight -
i relish the seconds
i am not alone
in this house's walls,
sitting bolt-upright in my bed
with every creak, which is strange
as i raised myself in
the noisiest old house i know,
so i ought to be immune
to the sounds of timber resettling
on its foundations.
i want you to know
i'm not quite so immune
to you as i let on,
but don't quite know how
to bring it up
so i just smile into your eyes
when you are here
and hope you can hear
what my brain is screaming -
how long before you will recognize
the desire in your eyes, or mine?
i am so drawn
to complication - to the thrum
and beat of a racing heart,
the patter of skittish hands
that i wish you would use
to cover my trembling ones,
and hold them
until i can stand
to let go

in praise of mouthy women

i did try, briefly
to quieten myself
for you,
give you a touch of stability
on my constantly shifting ground.
"your" chapter
is the end of the piece,
no matter how i look at it -
that kind of fierce desire died
in the small piece of sunlight
i gave it
hoping it might grow,
in your looming shade.
so now i brush
the dried twigs with my fingertips
and palm the leaves and crumple
them into powder.
the wanting
retracted
until all i need
is my breath steaming in the air
on the streets,
good shoes for rambling
because my mind will not sleep,
enough alcohol
to make me smile - my needs
have simplified,
back to the days before you
when all i wanted was a pack
of cloves and enough coffee
to drown my slumber in,
since i don't like
the way it snatches,
a razor hidden in my wallet
for comfort rather than need,
for bleeding is a conscious act
of mutilation now,
not an excuse for escape,
but a little self-hatred
peering through the walls of the room
i lock it into,
music on my headphones
so i can rock myself
to apathetic staring
when i am the only one
in the room

inefficacy

i wish i knew how to say what
it is i'm feeling,
but
words only make it so far
before tumbling like dominoes,
leaving fallen soldiers in their wake.

i'm beginning to mistrust words
as they twist and reveal themselves:
not what i meant to say.
not what
you think it means.

i don't
even know what i feel anymore,
except an obsessive need to release everything,
and no way i know how.

i want it physical. i want more
than shifty words on a page,
i
want to be able to touch my rage
and mold it
into a display
i want tangible things
i want
to explode silently i want you
to see.
i want you to fucking
see that i cannot write this for you.

it's not hard at work

the copier's pulse is steady
whirrr, ka-chunk. whirrr, ka-chunk.
the sound of plastic colliding,
rhythmic.
numbing. i could be
thinking about anything now
but i am
as brainless as my copying assignment
my stare is intent:
watch pages
flutter through their assembly line.
no, i won't think.
i will not
remind myself of you.
i take
my job's monotony and apply it:
in the morning i count the stones
as i walk, studying texture.
i focus
on minutinae, sink into the
relief of routine until i forget
to remember
why my brain
is shutting off.

depression distills you

all i want
is to be done with today,
to crawl home and
hide underneath the covers,
for there is nothing else worth doing
except masturbating my own
neuroses
and seeing if they'll
decide to stick around, this time
after the doing is over
and when drinking's the only thing
that lulls me to sleep anymore,
i know i might as well stop
sleeping, because at least
that's not toxic to my liver
only my mind
which i'm trying
to leave behind,
like an unwanted animal,
so it acts accordingly -
keeps staring with its
adorable eyes,
showing me the potential
good times
but it never follows through,
and only the truth will remain,
in the end -
the type
that pisses on the rug & then
cringes in
the corner, expecting a blow

observance

i wanted you to watch
my every move,
take it in hungrily,
as you do
and try to play it
off, as if your
concern somehow lies
within the saccharine
sentiments you spew;
am i okay, what in
my world is new

why do you care, and
what business is it
of yours,
the shape of my heart
and its unsteady beating,
the details of which
you relinquished
the rights to

i watch it snow
in my inner sanctuary
blanketing what is raw
with a sense of solitude,
and solace
in the masking
of what lies beneath
with something that obscures
my details
from your view.

verses

sometimes i think maybe poets
are the least useful of all
wordsmiths, although
a friend likens us
to gods
maybe, if gods have
the ability to scrutinize
the things they create, and see
the changes -
we do have a way of eviscerating
the matter.
but all my skill's as
useless as anything else
i've ever found,
for, lacking an
audience, we mean nothing

so i stabilize myself
against the wall
and try to remember
why i matter, why
what i say
makes any difference at all
and i wish
i could know it did.
what we all
wouldn't give,
to have that kind of certainty
that what we do
has impact

leaving

i just want to be done,
and i don't even
care how,
or what that means
running is the wrong word, or idea
but i feel a sense of urgency,
a need for motion in
whichever direction will get me
the furthest distance away, the fastest.
of course, there is nothing left
to hold, which is easier,
when cutting ties
to reappear somewhere
completely untouched,
and alone.
the type of pose that
is maintainable
when no one knows your name.
and i am
willing to go
waiting on one hinging factor
as to whether
leaving is worth
the hassle, or
if it is the only thing left
of worth.
my hands twitch
with ideas i do not finish,
half-broken thoughts
of a life elsewhere
and nobody i know
to watch my devolution.

sinking, but not in

i will never forget
the look on your face
as you told me this -
such severe pain -

"i want to love someone else
the way you love me..."

and i?
i couldn't feel
a fucking thing

wondering what becomes

i push
pulling process from
the parts of myself
i'm loathe to hold a
mirror to,
for everyone's interested
in something that bleeds
out fresh
there's no end to the curiosity
about the sorrow we accrue like bric-a-brac
glass ornaments on a shelf,
where they slowly splinter and crack
with the temperature fluctuation.
the ink i'm leaking i'll
slowly etch into my skin
over the years,
documenting frantically
before it all fades
with time
& i'm push pulling from
others, now
pleading poems from people
just as damaged as i am,
wondering what becomes
of our creations when unleashed,
what we discover
and exploit in others
and our own fragile heads
how are we somehow more qualified
& inclined to mine our minds
for chunks that sparkle?
i can't define
but i know what lens we view
through - the 50 - 200 zoom,
getting close in view
while holding ourselves removed,
lest we get
too mired in life
to continue on alone

thickness

spiraling slowly down
blood
is thicker than water, and helixes
more quickly than
you'd imagine
dissemination is rarely what
you think it to be.
and after years
i finally have enough hair again
to cover my face
when i lean forward
long hair is good for hiding,
which is why i never quite
felt myself without it
the choppy locks i used to sculpt
in the mirror,
bemused at my
smaller, shrinking body,
the lack of hair to twist
between my fingers

it was a mohawk, once
and once was enough
as i stared at someone who
wasn't me in the mirror

now i just avoid
my gaze
and the face that's
so much thinner
as if the lack of smiling stained
permanently
into a loosely-clothed frame
that constantly surprises

flee

if i run fast enough,
you won't be able to catch up
and i'm ready, now
to go
i'm expecting you will stay
behind.

what hold must release, for you
to forget me,
and i,
you?

distance will do,
a lack of proximity
can temper most things
to a dull roar.

running to the next hole
i'll find to
crouch in,
waiting for the bombing
to lessen overhead
waiting
to gather enough distance,
and speed

so when i see you
in my trail of dust,
i'll have enough warning
to step off the path
i've beaten
into the pavement.

length

i'll never
be that tall, but
i'm working on it
squaring my shoulders against the wind
wishing for the strength to
straighten further,
steel my spine
against the strangers who stare,
the rest
who walk by as if i'm
invisible.
i stiffen silently
trying to steal some serenity
from those who slouch into their seats
as if there was nothing
to this world.
i am sick
of circling up, scrunching knees
to my chest and bending
towards my book as if i could make
the leap elsewhere
by mere proximity

so i practice my pose,
shoulders pressed back
against the cold, the backs
of bus seats,
straining
against my stressed muscles
to stand straighter
act a little taller

this isn't all about you

i hope you realize that,
when you're waking
there's more than the surface
buried within.
there are sure signs of surfacing.
asking me, terrified about
life and where it leads,
wanting an answer
i won't [be able to] give you.
you let fear
run rampant in you -
yet all your reasons fade
when we are two together,
the tether releases you,
that binds.
you are of my kind - too
wary of the good things
lest they fade, which
they will
if you persist in
turning away
trying to replace
something that still
snatches as you, something
that has a hold
which will not release.

just remember this

i'm sorry i awoke you at three
to hear me sobbing, i
don't do it generally -
i needed someone to hold on to.
it's been years since a person
like you has been near.
or was,
as you're having a blast
running away

picture a forest of trees,
i
in a clearing watching
as branches tear at your clothing
and impede your leaving
i, standing motionless
as if stillness
could camoflague me

picture blackberry brambles
on the paths you're
wading through, because
clear and easy trails
are the most terrifying -
no telling where
they lead.

the mask

though it's not
my general style
i'm applying it all this time -
not because of you,
but to protect myself
from you.
it's like finding a mask
the eyeliner used like
the Egyptians did - black ovals
to protect against
enchantment
mascara, color to cover
my pallor

it's the small bits of armor
we wear which
affect us the most.
and this does feel like a battle
for the upper hand,
no matter how unintentional
the warfare is.

i wish we could both stand
on the same side of the line,
each holding the other up
until we stand straight, alone.
but you will not accept the support
you push me aside
and blow in the breeze,
wobble, fall, stand,
wash, rinse, repeat.

i even lie to myself

once i promised myself
i'd never feel this way again
i shut off all the proper circuits.
i shored my back
against the cul-de-sac
but stepped away
in an act of blind faith,
towards you.
with newly open eyes
i survey
this scorched earth
i stand upon.

what we reap

there is a part of me, and it is
not so small
that think you richly deserve
what you have reaped.
it is no consolation, this
pathetic end,
two hurting lovers incapable
of soothing the pain.

this morning i dreamed
of your family, and
i do not wonder why
you turn away;
i am more curious
as to why
you'd ever think she
wouldn't run away
from you.
why didn't you see this end waiting
for you to fall
just hard enough?
my fate, i knew
ahead of time.
these things, this
is what breaks a life.
leaving over and over, running
until you find someone
who will flee
from you.
turn your habits into hot,
blistering ironies
that burn your heart.

THIS is what you've done
to all those you have left behind.

freezing

the cold is not
from the milk i drink but
this sudden chasm
which has its hold
on my body - i feel
dizzy & i tremble
& feel sick why
do you avert your gaze
so avidly? why will
you touch every person in the room
but me?
no i'm shaking with cold but
that doesn't have to do with temperature
it is cold
because you've taken back
your sweet and easy intimacy
you will not touch me.
not until we are alone -
and you turn to me
as if i can answer your questions

and the only answer i have
is to this question:

are you in love?

mourning

i cannot decide
whether to let
this feeling cascade
into me
or not
let it touch me
at all

resist

[it isn't worth it
either way]

to let go
be let go

[or
to never
have grasped
at all]

just fine

it is what i do not lift
to my lips
that will tell you the extent
of my despair
and loathing.
what i will not consume
the strange passion
for counting, and lying -
no, not hungry,
just ate a bit ago, really -
i'm fine

rubbing it in

a layer of salt on the wound
is all i'm going to get
from you
so i don't mind that you're
not calling to tell me
why i won't do.
it is a relief; my inferiority
i know all too well, can plot
the timeline
of my mind's rise and fall -
the freefloating panic
and empty inertia of apathy

i know more about my
being unfit
than you give me credit.
so pardon your fucking trouble,
dealing with me -
some lost, fucked-up self
pardon my thinking
this time would be worthwhile,
that i
might have deserved this;
i erred.

i do not need you
to tell me
because i sing it to myself
with every solitary step
on the concrete,
each song i sing
to myself,
a lullaby
voice cracking
on the walk home.

wanting

i don't know what
to say to you, i am lost
in this.
i need to cry it out
but i don't know how;
i have lost
the reaction.
& i know it's not
what it happening, it's that
i want someone to really need me
call me up at night
saying come over, just
come over. talk to me.
i'm steeping in country
misery music, & i keep waiting
for someone who will want
to figure me out & show
the heart of the matter
i keep waiting, but
the opportunity is hiding
amidst my confusion
& i can almost feel tears & i'm
wanting it so badly but
it's a long time coming
it's not coming
it's not coming
at all.

comprehending

i need to know you
in order to escape you,
or to stay
i can't continue with
only glimpses of you.
now i know you won't call
when i said
you would, partly
out of spite,
but mostly
you're afraid of needing me
as badly as you do - scared
of letting me into
the spaces in your life
that have no room
for lying,
which is hard to do
while telling yourself
you don't want
what you do,
that you don't need a center
to hold on to.

archiving it

i don't have to dig deep down
to find the center
of who i was, once
i wasn't so complex
composed of sneering anger
and most of all,
bubbling fear of life,
which now seems
more justified
than i would have given
the emotion credit due.
i fear more now,
knowing
what there is to lose.
i'd rather lose the chance
and make my peace
with solitude,
and silent walls
where books stand sentinel against
signs of life
and the only thing
that stirs
will be a bit of dust
raising itself in salute
as i walk past.

specificity

i am not quite sure why
but "homeless"
is a smell

quite specific, and in no way duplicable
not the stench of hard sweat, or
the utter lack of baths,
which is still different -

more of dirt, and unwashed
clothing
off someone who still tries
for cleanliness when it's possible -
the lived-in smell of a
claustrophobic winter, when it's
too cold to strip down
and become bare,
as well as you can try
to wash something in a park
bathroom when
you have nothing else to put on.

i've had friends who've smelled so,
unwashed hair
and the smell of earth,
oddly familiar
and comfortable

reasons

when we fuck
you stare
into me as though reaching
for my core.
you're not far. you are here. right now.
in me.
we move together, and fit
tightly. we meld. slow and
stop. begin again. slowly.
like... yes.
touch me here.
i want you to.
come.

it is this:
hands, palms, arms and legs interlaced
your head
fitted neatly beneath my chin.
we're magnetized
together; thigh to thigh,
stroke hair from the face.
our inability
to disengage.
you
hand me a paintbrush, tell me
to make art of my words,
laugh off my frustrated anger,

you do not ignore:
you pull me back to you
when i'm far away

and one day,
because i felt depressed,
you brought armfuls
of baby roses. 217.
i counted.
that's it. that care, that desire

felines

i should take
what i want from you,
pry it slowly from
your unresisting palm.
i should make your body
my playground.

we spent the morning in bed,
working out our kinks.
i said,
bite me til i bleed.
i wanted to feel your hold on me.

you look far away now,
living out your fears in your head
while i relax, my limbs buttery
your guilt
i won't take part in.

i will say: touch
me, lick me,
tear my clothes off,
let's slam into each other until
the world recedes.
you'll leave your worries behind,
and i
i will purr,
like a cat
with a mouse in its mouth,
tail hanging limply down
between the teeth.

my image on the negatives

downstairs on a mattress,
fucking
someone i barely knew
i was thinking of you

and the way you feel when
you crawl into my head
wishing it was you
inside me
feeling slightly guilty about being
far away from my body

but i've rarely been inside reality, recently.
your hands are the only touch
my body responds to.
i've made my move-on gestures,
left
your body behind,

but you are still inside my mind.
still curled around me like a cat.
now you creep closer on the couch,
wrap your limbs around me

you don't know how to deal with the
conundrum i provide,
so you don't
and change your body language
to fit the hourly mood

someday, i will find your cracks
and i will stand and knock,
knock
until you
build a gate
to let me through

so i tiptoe on your uneven ground
stubbing my toes against

gambling

you
will list a litany of reasons
it's not supposed to work

and i will think:
yes,
but in spite of this,
it's already working.

we fit into each other
you the sheath for my knife,
i the
pusher-and-puller of your boundaries.
i stretch you. you
calm me.
keep me still.

but you hold couch-side discussions still,
discoursing the fickle future,
and how the world changes
so easily.

i do not disagree.
but we parry back & forth, each time
repeating ourselves.

you say:
i am scared.

as also am i. but to concede defeat
to fear i find distasteful
i've always let those i loved
slip through my holes and leave.
i will not wait, this time,
so placidly.

i will say:
the only thing wrong
with us is your fear we may fail.

how sad, to never attempt
because you might not succeed.

i say:
chance it.

you say:
i don't know
if you're worth the risk.

dizziness

making friends with the strange realities
in my head again,
i'm jittery
staring off at nothing
and watching
my hands flutter like leaves on the trees.

waiting for the shaking to stop,
trying to ease off the dizzy spell
that threatens
to crash in and drown me in its wake.
and my tenuous grasp on this pen makes me wonder
what i'm really doing,
i mean
where am i in all this,
what am i doing
to my body,
how long
will i survive this?

i need sensation or sleep
or
a massage or
a good fuck
a long cry
or all of the above
and i need it
until i can make my body stop.

still.

force my heartbeat (or just my heart)
into its proper place
& metabolic rate.
i will not throw up: repeat
until you believe it, or fail.

watch the page waver beneath
your frenetic fingers,
and hope with all your might
that when the person who relieves you at work
finally comes in,
he won't find you on the floor,
head slumped between your knees.

and won't (no requiem for the wounded)

i don't want to say "itoldyouso,"
i'm not gloating
at such a high price.

i was hoping one of us,
at least,
could come out of our wreckage
smiling.
now, you lean on me
and i feel your heart pounding
under my fingers,
racing along with mine
and i
wouldn't wish this on a total stranger,
much less you.
there is nothing to do for it, we
may only pick up our pieces
and limp away, i
leaking my bloody tears and you
tearing a hole in the canvas
where your heart should be.
no, this makes me feel worse,
as if even
the slightest happiness this house
might have seen
has torn away
from your outstretched fingers

i fear our future
these holes in us both that
we haven't the skill to fix,
the ache
nothing can fill, fuel, forget.
forgive.

to my pathetic little uplifted hopeful self

i want to say,
what the fuck you were you doing
hanging a hundred stories in
the air?
don't you know even optimism
can die,
by falling so hard
that when you hit the pavement
they need to scrape up
with a shovel
what is left of you?

your wishful, smiling face
cannot alter the dangers
of suicidal behavior.

little self, you make me sick & now
you are hiding in the ranks
of my amazons
begging them
to protect you
with their arrows & shields.

try this:
hope all you like.
but next time,
take your own weapons.
buy your own armor.

breathing

sometimes it becomes
the hardest part
not physically, i mean
but the type of shock
that sets your head spinning until your chest
is on fire from lack
of oxygen.
what you hear
doesn't matter, the end result
is the same -
a racing heart skittering in sync
with your gasping,
the oxygen deficit
pounding in your skull.
blood
never hurt as much as this
razors never made so much
of an impact, not in a visceral sense -
a small cut never seized my entire body
and froze my senses, temples
pounding as your vision
goes black
and you sink,
to the refrain of
"hello, are you
okay, can you hear
me? can you
hear me?"

how to deal

i often wonder
if i couldn't stop screaming, how
you would handle it
because what i want
most
when i do
is to be muffled, crushed
against someone's chest
and held firm and still,
yes
until all of the chaos
subsides.

home calling

it's not so impersonal
as it appears
so many miles make familiar
voices easy to hear,
strangely
hard to let go of
once they've rooted, again
within you.
i still make my sweet tea
sugary enough to be a southerner.
here,
it's quiet, if cold
and the blankets on my couch match
the ones in my mother's closet

home is not
a location. it's a sense
of belonging.

who will watch

yeah,
it's sick, but she's really
getting the last laugh

we
are tied into knots desperately holding
our maimed friendship's wounds together
with bloody hands,
and our relationship's
remains, they are wheeling
morgue-bound.

so neither one of us gets
what we desire.
no

she's enjoying the reaping of this
in a half-guilty, fascinated
sort of manner,
the type of pose
you strike when you know nothing
of loss,
and stand
amidst the wreckage
untouched, saying,
"not me, not me, not me."

i feel sick

i don't exactly
know why
but somehow
it is you,
sweet, gentle
you
who has
made me feel
more unwanted,
more unattractive,
more useless
than anyone else
ever could.

gnashing

well, if both of us have torn parts
of ourselves out
with our teeth, then
at least we know
we don't make
an ill match.
it is no consolation,
though,
this along-side ache

full of heavy silence sighing through
our noses, our lips clamped
upon our treacherous tongues,
the
eerie
quiet
pacing through the house
until the endless rushing cycle of tormenting thoughts
stops.
halts.
begins to blur from your intoxicants [take your pick,
it's all numbness
in the end.]

we crash into ourselves and
pass through one another like ghosts.

S [elf] I [sh]

call my cutting selfish all
you like, it
will not alter your self-absorption

the way you want me to wear
a band-aid
to cover the scabs
your guilt can't stand to see,

not because it will help me heal.
i think
it's a clear way to see
what lies between us: you,
handing me a small bandage saying,
cover your wound.
be
happy, i cannot bear to watch
you cry.
i can hide
beneath flesh-
colored tape if you really want, but

it will not erase your involvement
in creating the melancholy
i wrap myself in
like a shawl.


UPDATE:
the picture of the painting this poem has also become:

the den

if i fall asleep on the couch
one more time,
i'll scream

so i occupy my time with obsessive
internet surfing
don't
know why they call it surfing
it's more
like being caught in
a riptide. you go
where it throws you.

sick of being not-tired
waiting for the clock to circle back
into hours that seem reasonable to more
than chronic insomniacs,
or just those
whose brains spiral into the void

he loves me not, he loves me not. he
loves me. [not.] she. they.

trying not to stare
into the mirror, as though
somewhere on my body is written
an answer my brain might accept,
or,
failing acceptance,
curl around
like a cat.
some nights
might be better, i might be able
to tell you
if i could remember with clarity
what blurs.

the act of breaking

i.

what supersedes
the act of breaking?
can you add insult?

glass knocked to the floor
tinkles into pieces that still fit
with glue. it does not alter the fact
that what you have left is
a facsimile.

you tell me
you are broken

and now i'm wondering if this can really harm me
i mean, you make me cry, but
i’ve been broken by better than you

say that glass was a window
if a window is broken
can thrashing the pieces to glittering dust
alter the effect of its breaking?
you can stomp the shards into a puddle and spit
in the residue
but
after glass is no longer
a window
it does not matter next
how it is split in two.





ii.

all last night i dreamed of her, as
i am sure you also dreamed

waking up every hour, or less, to
stare at the clock and wait
for night to be over.
you want me to hold you, but
you won’t hold me

and i have her face inside
my head, the girl you really
think could be “something,”
despite the fact that less than
a months’ worth of knowledge lives
between you.

and what
am i? you tell me
i am wanted i
am loved i am amazing i will find
another

am i so wanted, then, after all?

i refrain from the act of breaking
holding myself upright in a steely grasp
grinding fragments into something
that melds.
sometimes
i have fantasies of acting
as broken as you claim to be

but i’m applying the pressure until i stop
feeling anything at all, although
my body
bears the brunt
of my refusal.
this morning, brushing
my teeth
i vomited into the sink
nothing but blood came up
and i watched it swirl down
the drain, thinking
this is not reality.

this is not a life.





iii.

“i love you,” you say, dick-deep
inside of me
break-up sex,
you’re calling it, as if there
could be such a thing at the
end of a relationship you

never acknowledged.

i know
your heart
is tied in knots, but you don’t
understand what i see
beneath
the lies you keep telling me,

or why i am
holding on.
and i lie
three thousand miles away now,
alone in a strange bed
imagining
unknown situations you are
or aren’t going through,
jumping
at the sound of the heater
clicking
on and off
hurling what little i eat
and drinking wine i have no taste for.
you keep telling me i lose nothing
and perhaps
i lose nothing but you

but in the month you’ve been unable
to leave my bed, i have come
to understand the complications
of love.
lie all you want.


your body is still
next to me.





iv.

so abrupt
one day consoling, the next anger
touching your voice, barely restrained

it does not matter
whether you’ve had her in your bed,
i felt you draw away

i will not need to ask.

that morning i awoke from a
nightmare,
noting the incredible
ill-timing of dreaming true.
if it’s
all the same to you,
stop trying to console me
it is only appeasing you
and your slow letting-go.
no.
i
will not be comforted,
i do not want to,
will not
hide this from you

what a kindness
that would be, were i
to give it.





v.

it’s the tenuous peace we’ve erected that
i’m scared of shattering
terrified
not just of arguing or
the [almost] accepted worst-case

i’m more afraid of better
a little something unexpected

and i don’t have the resources
to bear another change, the violent flipping
of the hourglass back
& forth, before the
sand can go from one
direction
to the other.
my body’s
wound tight and twitching
awake into the night,
blinking
towards morning, and plane engines and uncertain reunions
at variable times
i am weary of watching my hands tremble
on my novel page

see, i’ve got this infinitesimal thing
clasped delicately
under my ribs and although
i told it to die, it turned to me and said
“Fuck you, Bitch”

it is this very last reserve of myself
i am bone-weary afraid
of breaking





vi.

talking about your disjointed
painting, you said

“i feel this is like
the last month of my life – pieces
look pretty but the whole is
chaotic. yet
i must paint it how
it must be.”

well
i say to you – here’s what this month’s
been like
for me: angry

red and rent flesh on my arms
bisecting the clean lines
of parallel, occasionally weeping

and when they finally scab, i
take my fingernails
and time and time again
scratch the layers away

until they toughen
into tissue that will not alter

no matter how i worry them. they build
armor and remain
raised
scarlet in their anger screaming,

“no, you cannot
touch me. i am impervious
to you.”

go ahead

stare,
my skin
is thick enough to take it,
even thicker
in the places you're
viewing with that look
of indecision, trying to
figure out whether to
find meaning in my
skin's incoherence,
the bisection and incision,
the permanent things
we do that stay with us,
no matter how we try
to shake it off

so teach me

it would be, perhaps,
indelicate of me
to ask
if you want to fuck

but the curiosity's
eating in.

every time we meet,
a different reflection
glints from your corners.
i have seen the proper
classroom mask, the
wet&freezing ocean you,
sweating, breath in my ear hiking,
casually revealing you,
the
fireandnight side,
crashing beside me wildly through plants, and
brandishing an ear
of corn like a saber against
the darkness where our flashlights
do not penetrate.
it is
you, every time, whose
long fingers tap out
deliberately inconsequential invitations -
what next, where
to?
i
know what i find in you;
but
your kaleidoscope faces
do not give me the reasons
you show me
your patterns.

in which i realize

i find my priorities have changed.
i don't
want things to remain the same.
& i find you
in this time warp,
trying to squeeze into the mold
we both said we'd never fit in,
i watch you
& wonder where i would be,
had i not stuck
through the dull inanities of the south,
held my ground until my sense of self had
gelled
into what i want to be.
now i watch you and assume the area's
ironic smile, when i realize
that i assume about what you do, only
because i am right about you.
i miss
the easy rolling intimacy of
our earlier years, but know
the past can't be repeated.
i am trying to forge something new, the
push & pull of new scars stretching
into a place we may carve for ourselves,
that is,
if you are willing
to make me any room at all.

spontaneously

i'm obsessed with dancing in the kitchen,
i mean
i realize
it's not your average discerning factor
as to whether the one we fuck
is the one we love,
but still i'm
telling you, take my arms
and
fold them around you and step on
my toes
and off we go around
the kitchen in circles, my head whirling
from too much on-the-house
vodka.
kiss my shoulders i
don't care what music is playing, just

make me laugh
and let me
get dizzy on you

interpret

yesterday i stepped out
of myself for a few minutes, peering
curiously into
the life i'm leading, looking
for signs, or an explanation

floating over the encircling
arms of the one who shares my bed,
i said
something is all wrong
with this picture, i don't
know what it was; maybe
i was too high

but it all gets mixed up
into hoping
that when this is over we'll love
each other as much
as when we were
fucking

the pulling moon

i want to know
where it comes from:
our moisture that wicks into
our underwear, does it
spring forth
as a cave
bears its water on
its walls?
or
are we wet from
the womb's ceaseless sea,
the shifting tides?

today my thighs are still
damp from clenching you, last night,
into me

and i rub my own spunk between
my fingers, salty like the
ocean.
we are all
only
the legacy we leave behind,
if we
leave anything at all

like waves
who vomit shell, fish, and other
debris onto shores washed
by other waves,
who take
what has been given
and leave more in its stead.

"service with a smile"

how quickly
i remembered the dance
the pop-top, palm cash
into hand,
click-click ca-ching,
thank you, here's your change.
seven twenty-five.
whirling
a flimsy straw into the vortex
of someone's nightcap,
or their addiction,
the cigarettes and worn flannel
creep slowly
into my skin.
i cover my awkward,
cuckoo presence: drip
my accent out
in doses, the way it
springs through when i speak
to my family through the phone,
laugh louder at the jokes
from the chauvinists
as if
i, too, grew up in this
particular cultural poverty. here,
my teeth alone mark me as foreigner.
now, i'll practice again the art
of submerging all of me
that does not belong, and waiting
until i reach my car to gasp
for fresh air.

infection

i'm gasping
for breath and you moan alongside
me, push your sleeping head into
my neck like a cat
rubs the one
who feeds it. i don't know
how i caught your fickle feline fancy exactly
but i'd lay odds you're also
drawn by what you can't have.
miaow.
i'll pet you anyway, in my stilted
sort of manner.
if my pores
would just open and breathe
for me i'd join you
on that pillow and stop
rasping through my half-
closed throat but
every method tried
thus-far's a failure, and i have to admit
there's a certain satisfaction
to watching you sleep. there's magic,
somehow, in the still hours. the night
even sleeps, the dead leaves
catching catnaps on their branches
before tomorrow plummets them
to the pavement.
and over
and over i ask myself: what
keeps me? why
am i staying?

soaking

i'll watch as you slowly drift
closer to me
almost touching.
our arms wave in the current
of the water and hang limp,
and well-heated.
your voice
has taken on that confiding tone
i know so well in you,
and i'm warming a bit -

but my trust still oozes slowly
toward you, cringing away
as if expecting a blow.

nudity

sometimes i read
what i have written
years ago,
and it's like a ghost
shouting
from long ago
screaming,
~ please
do not leave me behind ~

it all gets mixed up

i want to say it, but
there's no ears to pick it up.
dear
anonymous: i wish
you were here.
i've been
thinking of writing letters to myself,
scribbles
of indecision
i etch into my memory.
mind-masturbation, a voice
answering my half-assed questions.

i'm too emotional about this,
i keep
thinking i should approach it rationally
but i'm not rational
i'm right out of my head, heart and convictions
while thinking i could just as soon
use the time alone
to talk myself out of what i'm feeling.
it's not real
it's not real
it can't be.
too much to be really happening.

my mind is tired of the racing and
it's no surprise to me,
really,
how much i've been drinking.

either way

i think i need to be left alone
in my private hole
to mull it all over.
i need
to let my private life back in.
i've lost a few parts
of myself on the trail from here
from the life i used to lead,
i missed a turn
somewhere, to end up where i am.
today
i wish i could be completely alone,
no human contact until i've figured out
how human i really am,
i want things
so impossible at this point i'm starting
to give up.
outside it's attempting
to rain, a few drops at a time.
i'm huddling above this book and my
bedcovers and i want to lock the door
i don't have,
to keep myself
inside long enough to figure this out.

burn it onto your retina

remember her face.
remember
rain falling so hard you shoved the window up
and let the water puddle on the
windowsill and the floor, holding
her in your arms.
remember.
or don't.
forgetting comes easy with anguish
make it a blank, black wall that
will not collapse no matter
how hard you'll pound on it later,
wanting back those years of your life.
forget.
remember
she wasn't everything you made her
out to be, a small dark
chaotic whirlwind swirling
around the memories
of who she was. of who you were.

the coffee table hits right on the shins

my house is still unfamiliar enough
that i sometimes miss the last
step
going
down the
stairs,
landing
on the carpet all arms and knees,
just enough impact to get an
"oof"

but it reminds me
of how impermanent i have been
flicking around
waiting to take root somewhere.

i think i'm trying to root here, but
it's
off-putting, the newness of
it all, the jarring realization

that this is nowhere near home
nowhere near.
surroundings i know in the dark
are far from me now.

in this house i stumble
in every room, waiting
to learn it.
waiting
to be sure i won't be leaving
too soon for the knowledge
to matter.

it's novel

tonight my only friend
has 645 pages
a hefty hard cover,
and no way
to wipe off the tears i try
to will away.
i'm sure
my face is steely, but the
impassiveness doesn't matter
to my eyes, which follow,
stubbornly, their own course.

my own victory is to go outside
alone
and experience this silently,
staring at the stars and waiting
for the moon to be full enough
for my howl to seem merely
theatrical.

waiting for the world to
turn around again.

puzzle

yelling screaming
mulling
it over in my head
and now
your inability to name this
has become
my inability not to. this is not the person
i want to be.
leaning
into myself, hugging the bar until
i feel capable of walking away
without my head scrunched against
my shoulders.
i'm not dealing lately.

my hands twitch with aching desire.
instead, when i walk home
and crawl into your (my?) bed,
i'll try to dream,
and wonder
how i fit into this scene.
how i'll understand what i'm
supposed to do
with the pieces of you
you'll give me to fit together.

poetry

i'm trying to
submerge myself
in words, hoping
to drown in this art
until my words
detach and float

to the surface.
the stack
of poetry beside my bed is at least
shin-high, filled
with the words i'll pull
out of their context and rearrange
into my own patterns

until i can stack them against
the chaos outside.
sometimes
when i am alone,
i start to believe
the only reason i write
is the fault of quantum
mechanics.
i see
the page blank, and must
replace all those possibilities
with anything definable
to keep away the swirling

could-bes of what-ifs and try-mes and
what-the-fuck-is-this and what-
does-it-all-really-mean

who do you let in?

it's not you,
precisely, that i'm attempting
to drink from my mind.
it's the
implication of you.

our bodies fit neatly,
face to collarbone, hands curled around
our fingers, legs crooked
into the spaces
behind our knees.
it's the hand on mine subtly, in stores, your touch on
my side - the signs of a connection, but also
the hesitation you have
regarding me.
the nothing
[something] we are[n't].

the implications of this. i'm
getting mixed up
about [in] you.
and so i’m drinking liquor mixed
to get it down faster,
and
strawing it like oxygen
until my vision starts to sparkle.

sleepless

i remember this feeling
trying to sleep
in a sticky bed
gasping
at the heat between us.

our sheets ended up soaked
by our slumber. years later, i can
conjure up that smell:
unwashed girls,
tangy
and bittersweet.

i don't invest so much, anymore. if the
covers go clammy, i kick them away.
i'm thinking downstairs in the den
that love is only the illusion you make
for yourself,
to give hope something to lean on
as a crutch.

i notice you're a bit quick
to tell me
you love me now,
and now i'm quick
to shut up.
the kind of love i build bonfires for
is love that's not returned,
and i know it.

sometimes, we define ourselves
by who decides to leave us,
so now i’m busy learning to leave others, hoping
if i learn well enough,
i'll understand
why the ones who leave us
don't look back when they're out the door.

the edge of love or hate

i see all we wrote about
"LOVE"
the concept the raw
hamburger anger of it

crying until
you choked, and then,
the inability to
no matter how much you wanted it

the mess it made[makes]
of you and me
and i'm wondering why
we ever called it love at all

but then, a masochist loves her razorblade
we love the things that hurt the most
we love the most the hurt we inflict on ourselves

you are the poem i do not write

i eviscerate what you write
in hopes
of discerning slightly more about you.
we speak in glimpses and our
desolate silences.
we both know why
the other is sad, [or used to].
it's poisonous lately,
our unspoken understandings,
the whispers between the words we do not say.
i want to knock on your skull
to know [really know]
what [if] you are thinking,
if your mind
is as blank as your eyes
have become.
i see you everywhere
on the streets, a flash of blonde
becoming your face, your eyes, until
the spell breaks
and i see a
stranger.
never mind.
put it out of sight.
drink it down.
i'll remember things that mean
nothing to you anymore, or
let them fade into the obscurity
of my mind.
either way.
fight it down.
i keep rationalizing
with myself but it never
seems to change my mind.
i flip through our shared history
in your words, wanting to
remember.
or forget.
or change my mind.

parenthetically

i like the way you [i] (we) smell
tangled up in me [you] (ourselves)
hanging on with sticky fingers,
the pads of your [my] (our) fingertips
stuck together, intertwined.
this smells clear, like your
[my] (our) clean sweat and
your [my] (our) mouths(s) all over
me [you] (we) smell like me [you]
(each other)

i'm failing to qualify it
musk is too strong
sweat's too sweaty and we
don't reek of sex
it's not like that
it's the scent
of a pillow after someone has slept
and you pick it up
and it smells like someone
has loved this place, these
crumpled sheets, my [your]
(our) twisted body(ies)
your [my] (our) arms
akimbo
and sprawling

for good measure

i do not believe for a second
that you
do not fuck me [love me]
like you want to
worship my body, take me into you,
just a bit.
a little.
when you pull me
into your neck, bury in,
all i'm
thinking is,
i don't care what you (i) [we] say.
this is more than temporary.
this is more than fucking.

routine

i have the feeling
my body won't stop
shaking until i get a grasp
on where we're all going,
where it,
why it goes,
revolves into this roiling
festering mess we're in.
men
who use women for their simple visual
and women who wipe tears in the
back rooms
and pretend to live like
the party they appear to be,
watching
as men come in the door -
broke, broke, mark.
broke, broke, sucker.
chalk it on their foreheads,
reach into their wallets,
and don't
take your fist out
until you come up with something.
don't give up while there's still a wallet
in the building.
men who have exhausted
the world's resources so heavily
they now rely
on buying feminine time.
men
who want to confess their sad, pathetic
regrets and lives and jobs,
spew them into
my half-naked lap and i'm smiling,
nodding my head and thinking
i taste bile
in my throat.
talk all you want, just reach
into your wallet, pay me for it.
you realize, you
are nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
NOTHING more
than the denomination you place
into my upturned palm.

appeasement

today
i use my body
as a weapon, poised to strike
unless
appeased by money,
placate
the goddess with your bills,
i'll be nice enough -
if you pay me.
i'll show you the least important
part of me,
if you pay enough.
i'll smile
and i'll hide my truth behind my eyes.
fucking give me all you have,
because outside of
this tin world,
i would cheerfully kill you,
as soon as you'd give me the chance
to get close enough.

nervous in the drizzle

it's raining, really raining
(as far as oregon goes, anyway)
and i'm thinking even
my tears aren't falling as hard,
for once.
hard enough to
wash my goddamn windshield,
take the bug splatters into
the beyond.
my eyes
are so blurry the rain's
not even impacting, and
i think if i see that strip club
one more time this week i'll explode.
the same highway into the same
smoky hole where people think
they can buy my body
with the money they hold.
can they touch me, fuck me,
offer the pretty girl
a life vest, give me anything,
is it
better than nothing?
tell me,
is prostitution worth your time?
is your fingers brushing my twat
worth the forty dollars you throw at me
as if i'm a whore on the street?

you know, for all i use it
my education was a $20,000 WASTE

i'm telling you
it takes more, these days
than a drive to succeed,
it takes selling
your soul or your body or your skills,
who cares which?
whether it's shit wages or no insurance
or no money for food
or a stranger running
his fingers over your crotch

nothing is worth this,
nothing can give me back the respect i had for myself,
back when my body wasn't someone's commodity
and i don't
just mean naked,
i mean AT ALL,
like i'm nothing without
a job without a neat fucking category
to stick me in.

at this point i'm
welcoming the crying rain.
i'm wanting the skies to weep
even remotely
as hard as i do
i'm waving all my talent above my head
and thinking it'll be a fucking miracle
if anyone cares at all.
if anything
i could possibly do as a "profession"
can make up for this prostitution
of humanity,
as if some simple phrase
or job title
can give me back times
when i wasn't judged
by how much wealth i could amass
for my employers.

swimming backwards through it

i'm too high
to still be awake, but
my brain's flying around
my bedroom light, making
scorching sounds.

so late it's early
and i'm learning
ways to keep myself awake
while trying to fall asleep.

nights like this
it's almost painful to have
someone sleep beside you.
they twitch and toss
and gape their mouths
and you go on doing
what you do, wishing
you could look that peaceful
on a pillow.

dear book...

i hate to admit it....

but i'm scared of you. the amount of effort i'll make
to satisfy these blank, ravenous pages.

i'm feeling transitory lately. hope
the feeling is fleeting - writing in
eraseable thoughts, i think, is
a sign of my changeable mind.
it's not that i want to disappear,
but i'd like to make sure
i'm capable of change.
never static, always bending
(just a little)
[don't stop
evolving into yourself]

in[valid]

today i feel impermanent
and mostly see-through
camped on the couch
or the bed i do not own,
clutching my mug of tea
and a blanket
i do own, i keep thinking how
i pay my rent just like you, but
this still feels like your place i'm
intruding upon

and i scald my tongue on my tea
and think about eating food i don't
have the appetite for,
curled under my covers
like an [in]valid
in[valid], not
sick enough to count,
not well enough to
shrug off
your oblivious insensitivity

it's days like this
where i want my body to be
less substantial
to match the way i feel -
a little translucent,
turned sideways so you can't quite catch
a good glimpse
of me

the same old refrain en français

je t'aime
halfway between
lie and truth, between
what i say i want, and the
reality
of the situation.
un peu...
beaucoup...
passionnement...
pas du tout.

pas du tout.

it's true

distance will
distill
you, from your parents, old
friends, things you were
supposed to do,
thousands of miles can
change you.

do not presume what you find
is the only " you" you can be. or that this new product
is "you" at all, don't think
you're not trying on new faces, this far
from home. it's so much easier
to hide behind your masks
when no one can distinguish them
from reality.

book now firmly planted
in my bag again,
i pull it out now
when my fingers get itchy.
i am slowly walking back
to myself.
my brain has
turned back on,
retrieved my desires.
at night, i wonder about
unused words, lines
that need to insert themselves,
details not yet plugged into a page.
sometimes, i am afraid
of the sudden outpour,
the reveal of the underbelly,
naked pink secrets.
remember
when i displayed my secrets
in blood on my arms,
wrote them in capital letters
on the page?
these days it's safer
to play my cards close to the vest.
they are plastered to my chest.
i do not assume,
anymore, that those
who read my words
will let them remain
in hiding.
small matters.

those words i let escape
into light,
i pin,
wriggling,
against the black backdrop
of internet
anonymity.

burn out

i've decided not
to go to sleep until
my jaw stops clenching,
an exercise to see
if i can wake up
without aching.
you look so calm when you sleep,
legs slanted toward me,
reclining into your pillow
as if in the throne
of sleep.
looks like a lovely place;
wish i was there.

it's hard to hold
someone already sleeping,
set into
their unconscious patterns,
limbs leadened
into slumber.
i try, but always,
in spite of the warmth of you,
feel
like an impostor.
maybe tomorrow night, we will fall
together, all tangledup
in one another,
and i won't feel like a voyeur,
when i'm lying
next to you.

weakness

i imagine it to be pink-red raw
like rug burn on your knees
where all the skin is scraped away
and the flesh left swells, as if
compensating.
that kind of tender. that
way of laying a large, gaping
hole like that down,
one i've kept a festering lid on
tight for these eight years now
and now i'm open, waiting by
my wound
for you to come by, cover it,
help me heal
i don't know
what i expect from you.
i only know what i fear.
i fear
opening this, at all.
but these days,
i fear more
the blinding wall i built
around myself so tightly
that nothing
could get through.
not anger, guilt, or the agony
she put me through
nothing
could have broken that shield
down.
not even you.

when you leave

you won't be knifing me
with it
too self-possessed, and
kind. you'd be the type
to cry more
than i would. i save
the bawling, for later
when i think no one
can hear.
no, you have no knife in this scene,
the owner of the blade is me -
turning it over and over
in my fingers, walking along
its razor-sharp edge
with my mind, trying
to spot its flaw.
sometimes
i watch you while
i fumble around my
sharp metal,
collecting
"paper"cuts.
i'm planning
and preparing. i'm not a fool,
this one's easy
to spot coming.
you'll fade away,
and, alone,
i'll peruse my body
for the best place
to stick that blade.

havoc

she sits straight up in bed,
never got to lying, back stiff
and aching.
her stomach twists,
and wrenches
quarter-sized pieces of flesh
from her insides.

soon she will need to walk downstairs, staggering
to the bathroom to crouch
over the toilet and watch
the slow hemorrhage of chunks,
staining the water ghastly pink,
a waterfall
of red stains
on the white porcelain sides.

it wasn't a baby now,
hadn't ever been, wasn't even
a concept
until the bleeding came,
in the middle
of the cycle, all wrong.

her lover watches her body eject
the foreign material,
something that never was, and
tries to argue:
must be side-effects from her new birth control,
anything
but the reality of the word miscarriage,
which must, by nature,
imply first
the fact of pregnancy.
the fact that his gentle, sinuous body
has wreaked violence upon hers.
he sleeps beside her rigid form, right hand
curled around her ankle.
the ache shifts, lowers.
she breathes slowly, and,
untangling his hand, steps one foot
toward the staircase.