cicatrix

this is what they
do not tell you:

it doesn’t end when the scab closes,
and the skin heals.
scars
penetrate deep beneath the surface,
ache
when you press their newness,
itch
until you rake your fingernails
over the sensitive new tissue:

they do not tell you it can take years
for the tenderness to leave.

doctors will say: stop
cutting yourself, you
keloid
[scar visibly, raised, violently]

patiently waiting for your skin
to finally start to assimilate,
when the redness
starts to fade
– these
are the lessons you learn on your own
lessons you relearn,
every time,
as,
each time, you manage to forget
and the agony of healing
surprises you

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.