We force ourselves to stand
Three feet apart
hips hug both sides of my stove
This is the only way we can exchange words
without clutching jaw
and drinking down
the longing on our tongues
without inhaling goose bumps
and locking fingers,
palms and tips--
our roots
twisting around an angular world
Our words might as well be our pores
touching and igniting into the night
They dance around our mouths and
tug at our stories
It is our pause that holds me,
Where silence steps in like a sister
Nodding and approving
of the way
we look at each other
like a night sky
bursting with bright
You are my light.

I was not ready for our encounter.
You caught me in the midst of
tending to my own crop
of seaweed,
Trying to farm a plant who thrives underwater
Hoping it would die above land,
along with the cobalt of my sorrow.
I tried to continue
to bury tear.
ash aching algae.
kiss goodby coral.
You took my hand and used your sleeve
to wipe my grieving sweat.
You asked me set down my sow
my sorrow
and put my farm to fire
Start anew
I feared the black rebirth
but you promised me
I would never have to cultivate solo
Ever again.
You reached for my fist
and finger by finger
the freedom of soil and seed emerged
There I stood
As I was always meant to be from birth
a mother
of nature
a snakeskin of anguish
a forever lover of
you.

I inhale the Perry in your lips
You turn me to liquid pink
Let my rainy eyes
Make you forget you ever experienced pain

Your skin is thousands of surfaces
First layer, a leafy carpet of green
I step softly  
I could not bare to
crumple any of your bursting life
The last, a bed of molten mystery
I beg to be burned

You hold me
like you will never be close enough
A python of pleasure
harder and harder you squeeze
Until all that I have bottled
Comes pouring out

Will you be able to wade in all this woman?
Or will you wave goodbye from the shore,
always wishing you could have
more.

God lurks under my bed
A devine monster
Spike backed and venomous
He mouths in my ear,
Lips like daggers to lobes
I beg for silence.
He whispers
Non-sweet nothings
about how Mary babied better
Her stain glass eyes scorch me
I burn like an infant bug under magnifying glass
Jezebel girl
You: feminine blasphemy
Why will you not let me save you?

Because
                                                        .Hallelujah.

I became a woman
My eyes peel back to black truth
You are father nightmare,  not a holy savior son
Break my bones with Psalms
I will mash them into soupy indescretions
This is not my purpose driven life, pastor
My breath is
To die unconsecrated
Cohen, keep my marrow
Turn my white into lyrical salvation
I beg my mother
my father
my brothers
Never let anyone save me
I am death and devil
But Jesus Christ, I am free.

Should I blame my father?
Is that who is at fault?
A man with a salty cobalt smile
A felon, turned male siren
Bringing every oak fortress
to her shipwrecking death
The wind, never able to drown out
Every sailor weeping, "How did we not know???"
If only we could remain children forever
blaming our parents and dissolving our sins from theirs
I want him to be in the court house
I want him to sign my name with a blue ink pen
I want him to paint midnight  on my eyelids
the way he did my mother's
I want to swallow every lump in my throat and purge it onto him
I hope he never washes the stains from his collar bone
Maybe then he could beat the yellow out of me
instead of her
Yellow
Blue
Black
The way the sun seems to set
But our generation of women have never been settled

How did I not know.

How did I not know.

That your smile would be my pearly gate to hell
That your ***** would produce my God--
The most gorgeous curly headed goddess to ever step foot on this planet
You will try to take her from me
I will never let you
You will try to stain her iris from blue to green
Her sapphire spirit will never be boxed by you
She will be the fortress that you cannot take down
Like a mine field
She will blow you up and I will collect the bones
You will starve me for years
I will fast even longer
I am her mother.

"Just Intermission. Be safe. Be kind."
Our sunset view for 18 months
My home is made up of windows
and I don't want anyone handing me a stone
There are exactly  3 crosses around me and a 20 foot lit up Mary holding a baby Jesus I see when I look out my southside window
I get an email stating that they will be birthing

He is a black and white photograph
A sweet sweater peeking above collarbone
He looks right at me
As if we know joy and pain in the same way
He steps out of still-frame
out of memory
He is alive
He raises his right palm and he asks me
if I would like to dance
I am no longer me
I am a child
I am my best friend
My sister
and I am also me,
A trinity
He smiles as he twirls all of us, as one
A record player needle
across vinyl
pulling tune and tone from bottom to top
across a kiddy sticky floor
What is this?!?!
We are annoyed to have our soles(souls)
Pulled down from heel
Take your shoes off
Now we are in sand
on Loon, rather than a high-school atrium
He stands at the end of the dock
Italian.Tall. Floating.
A superhero
He sweeps his cape over
the sun room
Like the moon
He whispers to me
"Remember the depths of intimacy,
Do not let yourself get in the way. Please remind my family."
And he looks at me, I am still sister, best friend, me
I pull my knees up to chest
As he leaves
he releases a belly laugh
about how he flushed the ****** down the septum tank
And how he would pay to hear Damien curse over the course of that.

You hold pink peaches
in the corner of your cheeks
Only in moments
where your words are withheld
I dig deep into your eyes
for the pit of your
passion
What a hypocrite I am--
shovel sways from root
I lay next to soil,
cradle grit and bruised apple
I am inner core,
mantle, lithosphere
the cliche words "I miss you"
orbiting around the sun
All different earths of myself
I hope when it rains
you don't find shelter
that your arms are the roof
I have waited my whole life

You deep sea dive inside the ocean of me
and man-make a continent sized drain,
positioned  
next to a family of oysters on my ocean floor
Mother, father, brother--you drain my whole life of pearls
A sea-leech who slithers secretly
into deeper waters
You do not belong here.
A cobalt vulture, snagging the empath of my soul
that mistakes air for kindness

My bed is only messed up by me,
Diagonally.
Sleep is an ambush
Soldiers gunning at my eyelids
They quiver while natural light
stuffs iris barrels with daisy
If only I could create my own field of weeds

Will man remain my enemy?

I dare a mustache to balk
at my bush
For there are no eyes
No kiss
No tooth
In my world
Declaring how a woman should be in her *****
I grip the shadows of every fold
Every eery layered mattress
held in nuptial tandem
Right side of the bed or left?

Stinging and menacing, they remind me
That I am stone
Only the most desolate sleep on me
No crack in the river? No mother?
I remain gray and bayside
Crack me open to find lavender clouds
drifting above sweaty skyline
An agate,
A gem of a woman
Treated like a skipping stone
That is me
I will become the ocean before that is my identity

My ******* are
raisins
faucets
grape bubble gum
chewed and twisted, masticated into purple milk
That resurrect into lactose layers regurgitated on the scoop of my neck where I used to sweep wrists over with the latest from Dior—
Now nape exudes a hint of expired Greek yogurt with a hint of sweet snot
Dior Dior, make something that isn’t swimming in alcohol
Or can I swim in alcohol?
Instead of bobbing above with engorged ****, ankle weights of an open gummed mouth
While I close mine and smile every time anyone asks me how it is to be a mother
Of course love her, open mouthed and all
So unapologetically in want
I envy the way she sprawls open
Screaming and ripping, demanding what she deserves
When do we learn to be hushed, silenced for what we hunger?
How I learn from you, sweet Audrey

Pang after pain
My heart sinks to my feet
Every morning
I wake up to maroon socks
A trail of crimson every where I step
I am reminded
I am not the robins fluttering outside my window
I am not my cozy cobalt couch
I am not my daughter
Freedom will always come with shame
To rest is to sink into blue veins
No one will wipe my nose
Only women will love me like I love her
Like I loved you
I hold onto feminine first aid
like ancient coral roots into a deep sapphire sandy floor
Please let me be the one to crush chested ***** on heel
Instead of you
You **** milky marrow from my bones
You lick your lips on vulnerable aorta
I wrap open nape with the tentacles of my ancestors,
You ******* vampire
I wipe alligator tears from my eyes
My back wrists are sponges, they were prepared for this moment.  
Every time I breathe I gulp up salt water
I fight
I refuse to drown
For her.
You hate that she needs me more
You crumble because you cannot eat me up
Full, I sit without you.

I, a steal heroine
shielded  
by past sorrow
imprisoned by
cuffed misogyny  

Softened by you

Just. One. Palm. Holds. Face
All silver and sharpened divider
Erased
skin and tangled hair
no longer armored  
Every tear drenched pore
Effaced
I stand bare,
happily unbuckled with love

Pillars shudder at our words
Pointless,
they melt
Surrendering to
The noncompete
of your shoulders
They hold my daughter to the stars
Her head crowned in light
your hands stable small ankles
She is released too

Golden Gates moan
Great Walls invite
Cordially wait for RSVP's
Nets and hooks and barriers all succumb
to you and I
thriving as two and loving as one

We are
moon ocean currents
ancient stone arches
pink chalk on black hot asphalt
stained huckleberry fingers

We are more than love
We are the pulse
of our lives

I will never harden again

“How much do you love me.” She whispers as I wipe sandy uneven bangs off of sweaty forehead. “So much, mom. So much.” Her smile catches her ears. I rarely see her like this and every time it involves a surprise. No wonder, as an adult, I deeply yearn for the people I love to surprise me.
My unrealistic expectations of other people as an adult are to blame for the love my mother gave me as a child, and still to this day. No one can compete with the shock element of my mom.

“Go look on your bed!” she shrieks. I sprint to my quilted dusty rose second-hand comforter. There in the tufts I find the best item on earth as a 5th grade girl—A complete collection of lip-smackers, necklace with attachment for chaps-ticks included. Yes, there was Dr. Pepper. You bet your ***** there was bubble gum.  A complete delectable smorgasbord of balm delight. I definitely love her more after this. I forgive her for making me “set a good example for my brothers” the night before.

I rip plastic casing and pucker up for the first waxy stick pushed on pre-pubescent lip. Duh, I chose Dr. Pepper. Who doesn’t want to have their kiss taste like a fast-food refreshment? There she stands, the Farrah Fawcett, Sun-maid raisin queen look alike. My angel of a mother.

She watched as I threw myself on springy bed and layer flavor after flavor of Lipsmacker on lip and throw stick after stick up in the air like a lip connoisseur billionaire. She saw me rip the plastic wrappers with canines. She cringed and told me not to use my teeth, accepting it anyway with glory. That sparkle shows up in her eye and she knows I will be lining those lip balms up from my favorite to least favorite around the shoestring necklace included. She invites the true fact that I won’t sass her back for a month. I will do my homework tomorrow without asking and I will not hit my brother in the ***** before dinner. She knows. All hail Lipsmacker and all flavors. The ultimate collection lending me a heiress at recess. I am eternally beholden to her. I look up at her as she asks, “Do you like it?” I hug her calves and sigh, “I love it.”

I always believed
You would not let me fall.

It began April of last year

My limbs whipped through the air,
Tresses swirling, a day old tumbleweed
Blinding any access to holds

Still, I Lurched for

Your crooked smile
Your magician's hands
Your whiskey slurred "I love you's"
Your sweet tormented eyes

How could I still be shocked that none of it was rooted
None of you was planted
With your swinging knife blade you had slit all that could create
growth

I plunged
My heels digging into air

You threw me a rope of flames
A garland of grey
Wings of a sleepless angel
You reached for me but your arms were a shadow
A glazed eyed ghost
A haunting option of pseudo safety

Collapsed, finally free from gravity
Landing in another's arms.

Was I okay?
I searched among my bones and laughter
behind ribs and under the cracks of my smile
For anything damaged in the crash

There you were.
There you always are.
Within me, never around me.

like a fool in love without you
and still with you

I birthed a lotus  in rare form—
Ringlet petals,
orchid like dimples on gorged cheeks

Then one day I looked in the mirror and all I saw was mud
Dark grit under finger nails
A mom that double checks automatic payment notices and
“Goes to the bathroom” just to breathe into her ribs
I ache to be the garden.
I am the manure.
The pathetic reality tv show at midnight
I am the fiction book that I used to gobble up as I did nonfiction for thirty minutes
Digest to remind myself of the masters degree kind of woman
I used to be
The woman who used to be able to dialogue and synagogue and debate and have an adjective for everything
Here I am.
soil. and clam. and contrite.
With nothing but seeds in between my teeth

WEEDS.

A worship or a song or a conversation waiting to be watered.

These days all that grow are EOB’s, needy blue bubbles going unanswered: conversation flies that don’t flinch when you swat at them.
An empty canvas.

I slam the door just to feel my pulse again
I see him kiss her forehead with so much more love than he has for me
I see my heart breaking skin
I see myself as sludge.
Baby blooms
Daddy dances
Mother wilts.

It is too much
and never enough
I seek you in Bukowski rants
I let his refrain boil over me
and scald me
the same way I let your apathy light me
on summer nights
my skin, already crisp from the afternoon sun

and how many pathetic lyrics
of
must I French kiss
until I no longer see your curled cigarette lips?
and worst of all
my dreams
You are standing right there
a cigarette bit between your curled lips
I can almost hold your face in my hand
Only to awake to
my arms squeezed tight around core
When I dream of you
Why do I always wake up cradling myself
gripping the you in me

You find out
It gurgles to the surface
bubbles,
pops
You wipe your eyes
of the residue of my ghosts
The later it gets
Every face of pain begins to show
a haunting felowship

I succumb
roll around in graves of
vampire
monster
men
soils of  a strangled me

Flesh and all,
you pull me out of shallow ground
Resurrect and remind me
of the before

I sigh in your ear
Thank you,
my dear
I forgot about the her
Who is so near

Grief is a burly man
He has been shoveling manure since he was ten
His shoulders carry the **** of the world
His nostrils smell earth's fertilizer as rose
Even when we are plugging our noses and declaring offensive
Not me, though
I will sit next to him and braid **** in his hair, and then mine
I will be tempted to have him put wildflower petals on lumps of excrement
Am I a lady clothed in rose

He is an old soul
Who adds years to my life
When his smile crinkles to his cheeks
My core becomes the first time I went too high on a swing
He is the most original person I have ever met and still a novelty
I love to see his soft cotton t shirt whip around core
When his board slices through people and places and time
When I give him a hard time or “get on his case,” as he would say
I can always tell he’s holding back a smile
He secretly loves the untamed in me
It is a warm hug
He kisses like he wants to vacation on my lips
Set up umbrella and sand chairs
I drink him in like I want to swallow the ocean and become his antigravity
He does not have to comb his hair or wear fancy jeans
He is organic beauty
I love how he hugs me into a slow dance
And turns my body into his favorite song
He sleeps like he is a different part in a play every night
Monkey. Tin man. Zombie
His eyes are a time lapsed sky
And his hands are clouds that I can always make out to be a bunny or a dragon or the all of me
He is always worried they are not bright white enough
When they always are.
My cat adores him
We both break down around animals
We turn to mush and comedy
When he cries the mountains and the carpet crumble around me
I yearn to be his fortune cookie
Break me open,
You will find that everything will be and is okay
When he looks at me he really looks at me When I talk to him I become a novel he cannot put down
Ferociously flipping pages
Not ever wanting to get to the end
He is not aware of how  rare he is
Like his old man loafers that he pairs with gym shorts
I cannot tell if he is as truly free
As he seems to be
He is multiple ages at the same time
A wild little boy growling and gritting his teeth
A teen sneaking tequila  
A senior making the bed for me  
He is a gorgeous lover
I hold my breath sometimes when he puts his hands on the pads of my heels
His skin is salt and milky smooth skipping stones
I beg them to bounce and eventually sink into the blue of all of me
When he is tangled in my sheets and resting his head on my shoulder and eating in the morning with me
I often imagine the two of us
Untainted by life and society
Color is calm with him
And noise is melody
What would it be
If I was a different person
And so was he?
I, a mother sweeping up wreckage, rebuilding my own captain and ship
Him, a salmon swimming upstream
Pink and powerful

The Chronicle carries a Spokane story unreported

I claim fame as a first resident
Two apartments

304
603

A Chelsea hotel
Blank canvases whiskered and primed
9 months of feminine devine
one pivotal girl
Her and I
shattered misogyny
from ceiling to wall windows
a flammable mother daughter force
soaking and smiling
in the gritty face of  Spokane
2 floors below us we found our landing
a relationship meant for cinema
Single mothers
laugh and snarl and bear down
skipping hibernation
dark humored and vinyl loving
wiping our kids' noses
and our own
All the while flying above it all
two moons among a jilted sky
Always asking ourselves "why?"

The Chronicles continue..

A farm sink
Mid century modern bar stools
An oversized satirical monkey piece of art
I bought at an auction financing a blind goat
These items were all there
They all sigh
remembering when I held my breath for too long

I survived suffocation from grief
The women in my life suited up
Battled tank into biting coral
handed me their bubbling piece
I decide on oxygen over hydrogen
White over reef
These walls carried me.
Abuse tried to tell me a different story
"Notice to Vacate" was a friend of mine
603 was my muscle
She gave my daughter and I glory

A vampire tried to merchant our space
in many forms
Little did he know, we only thrive in light
I can be proud to say
I left my glorious gargoyles on my own
as soon as I knew I could protect myself
and my story.

I tuck her in at moonlight
Curl onto ground next opened up crib
an end of day ceremony
I hold tiny hand.
My heart sings to mossy dreamland goddess in silence
She often has mercy on me
Tonight
She. answers.
My daughter's long lashes flutter in closure
A soft sigh
Tug of a tuft
brush of a nose with special blanket

She whispers back
"Sweet dreams, mommy."

My days of damage and dread and adulthood are nothing
It will never mean anything.
It does not mean anything.
It means nothing.
Nada.

Her slumber breath
Makes me a saint
I worship
her fingernails. the ceiling. the womb

I beg my brain to
re-write the day in permanent marker
Only to counter the days I have existed  
in a trance
stumbling through streets
seeking anyone who can dry erase
The utter demand of existence

How can I as one woman possess
So much love and sanctity
All the while reigning in resistance.

Lights lulled
Minutes and lifetimes and adjectives go pale
like the way the winter clouds rob the sunrise
Everything peeping on existence except that  
hungry inhale of yours
The second ****** enters inner cheek
I have only one focus--
lining each gulp
with all of the white nutrients
I've collected during the day
like grey oysters shoved into sandy pockets
greedily suckled
with such force and
I pray to every God that ever existed
that she finds pearls
capable of brimming her tiny tummy
with rare antibodies and satiates and
prism beauty that denies any kind of hunger
that could exist in (hopefully a slumbering) 2 month old

If I swallow my heart whole
Will aorta pulse as it twists through esophagus?
Down Small Intestine,
Down to Large Intestine too?
If it does not
and my heart was not all I believed it to be
Attest for me.
Tell them how I would hold my breath underwater
and dive down to the quiet of the ocean.
How I would trace my finger along  
a grainy gold carpet
Mapping out thousands of
Portraits.
Portraits my heart will never. stop. digesting. of. you.
For anyone who asks
In this desperate life about you, unlucky lover
Who ends up with me.
How the story ends with I end up purging back

Men show up
In my realm
My dreams
in the eve's apple of my voice
lovers. husbands. boyfriends. transactions. Jesus.
Over and over again
I attempt to respond with words
I can only outstretch hand
They are
Surprised by the strength behind my shake
Queens birth every King
Ancestral diamonds vanished into dust
They try to reign.
matriarchs ascend.
Dance.
Demand.
Please. please. please. can you hear me?

"I am woman hear me roar"

at the front line (as I do everything else)
When I said "roar" it meant
Feast. Bite. Bury.
IMPLORE.

Being your mom is
a sanctuary of stagnant
a Whirlwind Wonder Woman promise
I will never break

Your life echoes
strands of beads on a lake
connected unbearable lights of life
I softly dive in deep,
dare not rupture the reflection
Nothing would exist on my water without you, moon

Before you, my land was rich.
full of watercolor classes. Belaying up dumb mountains
unplanned every days. unapologetic free time. greasy backpacking travel.  fleeting lovers. autonomous breathing. degenerative friends. fake smoking cigarettes and sipping shot glasses of cafe in fancy European cities with my cool brothers.

I now have my ocean and my land
My skin is drenched in water and color
Your tears. Your bath time. Your painting masterpieces.
Your temporary tattoos sink into pigment
Sweet hazel eyes swallow me up
I hold your erratic curls and tame them with gumption only a mother could
Your songs are over and over and over again
all I hear are the ripples. the tide. mother child manatees.

Please never let this be temporary

Every day is unplanned dreams you share
a butterfly? a sigh? a reef?
I breathe when I lay you down right next to me
the way I did when I used to fake inhale exhale
along Parisian cityscapes
It is a bit different now
all premised with stuffies

Inhale--please let her never be touched by cruel humanity
Exhale--protect this sweet purity

This love is tangential
Mud turned to clay
Love exasperated by play.
A sophisticated love doting on
my beautiful feral

I now know I do not know a thing and I never will.