I wrote a poem that perfectly
captures the essence of being
in love with you,
and I'll never put pen to paper again
for fear of dirtying
everything pure and holy
you bestowed on that page.

The lights went out
with my pen mid-stroke,
and me
mid-page, mid-chapter, mid-book:
I had thousands
of words left to write
moments hoped for and
testimonies yet to be shaped.
At first I convinced myself
it was an error of chance,
that I could write a beautiful book
I could make a happy ending,
if only I had more time.
But I had already written
too many indelible words
and the tear-splattered pages
dried bitter and resentful
devoid of life and love
and begged of my fingertips
to leave them alone.

i sent my dreams
downRiver, into your open
mouth. and i stood there,
shell-shocked by the sight of
you,
wondering what it was like to really know
you.
i watched your eyes close,
as the sunset silhoutted your sweet curls.
i exhaled a silent prayer, and hoped
the wind would carry it into your lungs.
my heart pumped blood into
the River
my body did not know
how to swim. so i stood and watched
you,
drinking in the world, without
any idea that it was my
blood that tinged the water.
i wanted to tell you everything
i wanted to scream
i wanted to touch you
but you looked so peaceful,
floating like you were
born to defy gravity. i could not
disturb you and ever forgive myself.
so i knelt where i was,
letting the saltwater trickle from my
face to join the River,
as it took you far away from me.

look at me.
I’m wretchedly uninspired
mouth dry
tongue drab
you: droll
as ever, pelting
me with erasers
while I impatiently
demand paper,
peppering me
again
confetti sprinkles
this time.
They stick to me
sugary and sweet
just like you -
I fluster and flush
red. Colors
run down my skin
in a melty, childlike mess
you laugh
and I want to scream
for everything unclean.
Sprinkle sludge
inches closer
to the words I
haven’t yet written
I press my lips tighter
together until
I can’t hold it in
and I’m laughing too
surprising you
surprising me
infuriating me
distracting me
what was I doing again?

Of course I cry into the hollow
space between my stomach and happy
there is little else I can do.
Don't pretend to understand how it aches when I breathe
you, who have trained your tongue to do
what it should
do not let it curse the smoke stuck to mine; I
know the contempt in your eyes better than I
know my own reflection.

You are evil.
Did you know?
Or were you blessedly unaware
that you exceeded the limits
of Earth?
This is not heaven, honey
this is the closet
where saints run
to cry.
And you are here
which makes you
holy and broken
and a lover of mine.

pictures of you that i
stapled to my
pillow, so that
you're there when
i'm lonely or
tired,
so that you
sop up my sobs and
soak in my screams, you
are beneath my deepest dreams and my
nightmares, too

languidly glows in your cheeks,
just north of
the lip you split trying
to tell me you loved me without
saying you loved me.
Saturday morning
breaks burgundy behind
your head, silhouetting
every piece of heathered forgiveness
we earned without merit.
It rises and splatters
in my chest like laughter and it
shines from your eyes to
the edge of your jaw.
Saturday morning
solidifies sunrise in memory,
with its hallowed rays streaming
haloed from your long lashes. It’s
interlaced with the scent
of you,
suddenly flooding my shuddering lungs.
Saturday morning
swirls early in whispers like dew
steaming
toward balmy April ether.
It supersedes time as it
unwinds the hands on the clock,
flexing post-Friday and
stretching pre-Sunday.
Saturday morning is everything
delicate and divine
that is ever-coursing from
my soul to yours:
I love each Saturday morning
because I first loved you.

Saturday morning
is an unseen sunrise
usurping my sleep; pain splayed
just behind my temple.
It’s
the dreaded goodbye
whispered by weekdays
filtering through the fabric of my shirt collar
like teardrops
and landing along with my gaze
on your nicest shoes.
As my eyes rise, my mind’s eye
is frantically memorizing all your lovely edges
duct-taping images of you to
every surface of my memory.
Saturday morning
hides in purple shadows circling my kneecaps
and hints at the giant, painful subtlety
of the unknown, sewn between my future and
yours.
Saturday morning
is clung like grass and dew,
early me and you
so spitefully aware
of every ticking second tacked on
to our ages.
And in the end,
Saturday morning
dies bittersweet on the tips
of our tongues; a
wordless assurance of
Sunday.

i searched for you
in the shiny hopes and dreams
i'd buried deep beneath the ground
with my bare hands, i
dug them up
with my eyes closed, i
shaped something
that might look like you
it kept me good company, anyway
it was all i wanted
but you were not.
you burned through
my illusory image
so furiously intense
that for a split second
i was convinced
you were all i needed

when there is no one to speak to
i
scream at the stars
they don't understand but
they listen

Could I please
read you
before you write me?
I'm tired of being the first to care
and the last to know.
The world wraps
my heart around its fingers
like rings of red
and pushes its pain
in my mouth
and I'm coughing
and crying
and aching to
feel an ounce
of the love I've donated
to last causes and
apathetic souls.
Hear me, this time, please
look me in the eyes and
listen: see
how the thumbtacks tremble
trying to hold my skin
intact.
Please,
please, please
let me read you and find
you're a seamstress
you'll write me in cloth
and wrap me in words
take out each pin
and start again.

when i was little, i never
dreamed of being a seamstress
but here i am, threading together
fragments of people in poems
stitching his skin on another's face
sewing puppets of everyone i long to erase
and nailing them to the walls of my house
i specialize in calcifying the past
amplifying the voices of my vices
i dabble in cosmetics,
beautifying villains
making their faces a little easier to forgive
and so much harder to forget
to those who have scarred me,
i give the most coveted gift:
to live forever
the secret to immortality?
eternal, indefatigable words

i asked him
how he stood on the shore
of the ocean
and let the waves crash around him
(i was afraid i would be pulled under)

i asked him
why he always wore white
how those fabrics
seemed to shimmer with every color
and none at all
(i was afraid to stain my clothes)

i asked him
if those trailing tears on his cheeks
ever stung as they fell
(i was afraid to let them see my own)

i asked him
how he got
his big beautiful wings
how he soared so smoothly in the skies
(i was afraid of those herculean heights)

he told me there were times
he had inhaled the salty water
blood had stained his clothes
his tears had left scars in their wake
and he had flown too close to the sun

and when he spoke
every word fell on my skin
like a star from the heavens

and when he stood in front of me
i was no longer afraid
to touch
an angel

in the light,
the mirror was never as kind to me
as my mind's eye when
the shadows swept in
when my pupils expanded and the
blackness spidered in my veins
and i painted vines atop them
so the light might
smile on me again
instead it pierced my sordid skin
showing its squalid, shameful state
it broke my bones and tore my tongue
i scorned its heat
and stumbled into the cool, black night
to feel my nerves numb once again
to cover my new unholy scars
slapping self-indulgence to my skin
as it stung, i ignored my muscles and
continued to do what i do best —
run

I’ve got a habit of
splintering my mistakes
and strapping them to your bedroom ceiling
in self-pitiful stucco style,
where they glare at me
like waking nightmares and
strip me of the sainthood
with which you clothe me.
I fill our little boat
with my buckets of vice,
submerging us in overshared sob stories -
but somehow you are
breath, underwater, always
you are soap
washing my hands and
kissing my fingers
using yours to brush burning tears
from my cheeks.
Your forgiveness
glues my lips shut
as I desperately try to justify
my self-perception, leaving me with
no choice but to return
each precious favor.

she is soft.
so some will see her
and long to hold her in their hands
to skim her surface
others know
she is breakable
bendable
movable
malleable
some will see that she is soft and stretch her
until she silently screams
for sweet solitude again
so see her softness and
show her some sympathy

butterflies in a net
wings beating for resolution
but good art would never be so kind.
And that is
the great secret of it all -
we thread our magnificent tapestry using
strung-out pain
woven between our veins.
That is
why the artist's story is
a tragedy
why the crowds swarm the
gladiator stadium
and the boxing ring.

I dreamt of two trains running parallel.
They could see each other, hear each other, feel each other, but they could never get any closer or farther apart.
The tracks stretched on for miles and miles and miles with no change in direction in sight.
The trains run together side by side - together, yet lonely.
The trains can only hope that someday, the tracks might bring them closer together.

I like how you breathe in your sleep
it's different than when you're awake -
I know you won't notice if I open one eye
to watch your chest rising and falling
and admire the shadows the street lamps cast on your face.

i sink in the sound
of my thundering blood, rushing
in my ears, flushing
to my cheeks—why?
what simple words from your lips
were given power unparalleled
to command the blood in my veins?
they draw forth a cackle, unbidden
(a laugh?)
and i hardly have time to be mortified
amid a sea of elation.
my eyes and ears act with
wills of their own,
the former entranced by your lips,
the latter hanging on every word that floats
thence, to their patient wonderment.
i try on a knowledgeable smile,
not to betray my flustered state,
as if i am at all in control of myself around you.
i dare not attempt a sentence
(or mere coherence)—
for the present, i am content
to watch your lips and listen to their
simple words.

Eugene sits caddy corner
to the girl in the library.
He doodles in the margins of
library books,
and sips quiet rebellion.
Every so often, they make eye contact
for a split second,
and spill a hundred thoughts
across breathless space.
Eugene listens to her music,
loud enough in her little earbuds
to silence her thoughts.
He knows she's left-handed,
smells like coconut and sea salt,
and takes her coffee black,
but doesn't quite know her name.
Today she might be Jolie,
tomorrow Jasmine,
yesterday Genevieve.
They are just lonely enough
to never speak,
to starve on crumbs of
stolen glances and
shared songs.

The Moon crept into the sky
softly shone on the streets at night
peering over the horizon
waiting on the Sun.
She soaked in his light
felt his warmth from thousands of miles; 
reverently she reflected his rays.

Her glow was gentle
she waited at dawn and dusk
as he rose on the horizon
she ducked away.

There were other stars in the galaxy
but gravity kept her in orbit
her light was a whisper
his was a crowd cheering
she dared not inch closer
she knew she would burst into flame.

Each day they watched the same earth
she danced around it, hoping to catch his gaze
he kept his distance
as well he should.

Sometimes she watched shooting stars
and wished that she might join them
but falling is dangerous
and there was nowhere for her to land.

In silence, my words are swelling
pressing against the sides of my skull,
dying to spill
from the corner of my mouth
or the ducts of my eyes.
But stuck to my palm
is your sideways glance,
rendering me listener
as you drink in my thoughts,
quelling my quiet anxieties
before I part my lips.
Of course, you’d never know this,
so I owe you an explanation
as to why
sometimes
I stare at my hands,
smiling,
and don’t speak.

After you moved out
I cleaned my house
top to bottom
I rid it
of every little thing
you threw away
here.
I found pieces of myself
that now bear your name
etched deep
a permanent reminder
of you.

Some things I could not bring myself
to burn.
Those I locked away
up in my attic
invisible to my mind's eye
yet there nonetheless.

Now others walk through my house
wondering how lonely
I must be
but I have long needed
living space
for myself.

So as I sit here
just my thoughts and
me,
I cannot help but wonder
what did I leave
in your house?

you rise taller than my dreams,
grander than my hopes,
just short of reality
i don't know you, but i want you

i should have known
the day you drove the wrong way
on the interstate
to steer clear of your path
we did not have to be in love
for you to leave a hole in my heart

i had forgotten how to breathe, darling,
since i first laid eyes on you
until now
when finally
you look back at me
and you fill my lungs
and you circulate throughout my body
i couldn't rid myself of you if i tried
i gasp for you with every breath
all i can do is pray
that you will not be poisonous

I find myself lost
when you move,
a drop flung
from your tear-soaked sleeve
to sizzle on the hearth.
I called my mother yesterday
to tell her I'm falling,
but not in love
just sinking in syrupy fascination
while you starve hollow farther
below.
I stir pity and romance
knowing we’re both lying purple
aching to feel love that doesn’t bruise
and I've been too scared to believe
it could be you.

is windy, almost cold
littered with people,
watchers, walkers, guests in the house
of ocean.
“Don’t step on the sandcastle,”
a mother warns, as if
it will stand through the night, as if
the tide should listen to her.
“Look at all these shells, girls,”
a father smiles, as if
they did not tread on
the bones of those exiled
from their silent ecosystem.
The people stop and stare
at the waves, as if
they will change, as if
they will stop, as if
the sea is not staring back.
And at the edge, I
sit shivering, in awe
almost afraid to peer beneath
the rippled glass.

what for the shallow waters
that we called love?
the kiddie pools that
kept our tears salty?
we should have looked on
to bigger whirlpools and stormy seas
with welling gratitude
for our wading pools
instead, there we splashed
like children,
making believe
that our ships were sinking
that we were drowning
that we had to save each other
it was long overdue
when i stood up
stepped out
and dried myself off
a lifetime ago

you were the rising sun
creeping over my horizon,
filling my skies with dazzling bursts
of deep ambers and lavenders and crimsons
sending heat waves coursing through me
brushing the edges of my clouds
your silhouette imprinted on my eyelids
your shadow stuck to my feet
your taste scorched the roof of my mouth
i felt you in every inch of my skin
and i didn't mind at all

Blindly first he walked,
trampled saints with righteous soles.
Blinder still he fell, kissed dust
writhed beneath the gaze of God.
Weaker still, buckled his knees
like pride and war and dark and faint;
chaos spans his vision now.
His horse was night and wrong and run.
He had no eyes for outstretched hands.
Where is your righteousness now?
It steams with mine,
it is mist and overdue goodbye
it evaporates with myth and law.
Drought waits for monsoon,
famine waits for feast,
he waits for light.
Now it floods,
bread breaks,
scales fall from his eyes.
Now is sight and scab and scar.

The doctor called today
to inform me that I have a
critical case of you:
tears hang heavy in my heart always.
but I never cry,
I never sleep
but dreams dance in my consciousness always.
In the night
I shiver as the dark settles in my lungs
in the morning
I am blinded by the light.
I shattered all the mirrors in the house
in a rage, because
I cannot agree with them.
I have taken to self-medicating,
reading tales of me, in an alternate reality
where I have love and tranquility and a little sanity,
and no you.
But my symptoms are worsening
every day with you,
and twice as much
every day without.
The diagnosis knows one antidote,
a terribly plaintive remedy.
All this is to say,
I think I need your help.

we do not watch
the sunrise because
we wonder if that beautiful, burning star
will ever reach its pinnacle
we watch the sunrise
for the ever-shifting hues
we dare not watch the sun itself
a futile pursuit, as our eyes
could not follow it
and our minds are familiar
with its well-traveled path
and fate has lifted the sun
up to its peak
every day, since the dawn of time
and destiny will bring it back down
below the horizon
every day
until the dusk of eternity

deep midnights in the jungle
the air thick with our thoughts
we twist and tangle vines
between us, binding
bone to bone
we drink the dew drops
from the leaves and
weave their stems around our fingers
our swarthy skin, stained with soil
the kiss of nature on your thumb when it
brushes my cheek
we press our bodies
into the trunks of the towering trees
and taste the bark between our teeth
this is our labyrinth, and i
long to get lost with you

I.
here we are again,
this lake and me
and the dazzling sky,
which is nice to look at
while I bloodlessly tread icy water.
A clear spring night here
leaves your cheeks sunkissed
and blazes like the sun itself
fractured
into a hundred million blinding particles.
So it’s to there I lift my eyes,
away from my blue-tinged limbs,
to pour illusions of warmth into the
empty space that formed
when the lake robbed the feeling from each nerve.

II.
now you press me to the edge
of the lake
you’ve flattened me, I’m
a shadow at your feet
kissing the ground you stand on.
You dangle my breath in front of me,
letting it crystalize under
your preternatural gaze
and the fragments cast rays
that scatter me and send me
skyward, to the stars.

my words are smattered across the page
filling every blank space
a lengthy missive,
all to tell you
the words i couldn't speak
all to tell you
why i walked with you
so many times
why i sat in the grass
bug bitten, sweat ridden
i can tell you
it surely wasn't for anyone else
all to tell you
the songs that make me think of you
songs i’d play in my car
and pretend i didn't know
that you knew them too
all to ask you
why you stayed up talking to me
until 2am
and now we barely speak at all
all to ask you
what changed
because i'm getting quite good
at pretending
pretending i don't care what you do
pretending i don't want to walk with you
pretending your words don't affect me
pretending these words aren't for you
yet, here i am, writing these words
and i will put it in an envelope
carefully seal it
stamp it
and throw it in the fire

i know that soon
you'll be gone
out of sight
but i will still see you
between the lines of my favorite book
hear you
in the songs of my favorite cd
taste you
in the sugar in my coffee every morning

darling, you'll be
the space between the stars
and the dips of the moon
you'll be the crashing wave
that keeps knocking me off my feet
and the salt in the tears on my cheek
so forgive me if i do not say goodbye --
i'll be seeing you again

The obsoletion of libraries
dangles ominously like
one big ice stalactite
just above his head.
He needs books, the real ones,
soft paper to clutch
between his fingers as he
searches for the right answers
to all the questions he
can't find,
the how-have-you-beens,
where-are-you-goings
and sometimes
what-is-your-name.
He can't keep track of the time
but he can categorize catechols and bird calls
and remember to be worried about
a greying Earth
and cling to its pole
letting it spin him round and round
until he gets too dizzy to distinguish
the letters from reality.
And he reads the fantasy novels alongside the
news, it
is all too entertaining to peer down
from his box seat
on the fear dripping from the ceiling
onto the audience.
Neither is scary to him -
fiction nor nonfiction,
not on their own, anyway -
but his blood pressure begins to rise
as he raises his eyes
to the stage
and watches them
obliterate one another.
And there he decides,
if libraries will die,
he will bear their sentence
he will fold himself into every page
and melt in between the lines of ink
and they will settle into dust
together.

I slept with your silhouette stapled
to my eyelids again,
and woke up without you
again.
I cry thinking of
how the morning light would
skitter and fragment colors across your prismic skin.
Next to me on the couch,
you fracture my thoughts before
they reach my lips -
"I love you-"
All that escapes.
It's time to go, you tell me.
Wait, please - I try to say -
but instead
"I love you-"
again
and you go,
leave only your imprint on the pillow
again.

Memory is not acquainted with the beginning
nor imagination with the end
of the race.
I remember how it used to feel
sprinting, endorphins surging,
nerves singing, scorning pain,
the thrill of being ahead,
never mind the
unending stretch of runners in front of me,
never mind that
nobody knows where we finish
our guide is precedence
only.
Once I felt good,
thinking only of my pride,
how good it felt to be fast
how good it felt to be moving forward
and sometimes, when I pause for an instant,
and glance behind me I
see a face or two
far in the distance,
we were once running together -
but never mind. The more I
run, the better I'm getting
my feet are lightning, thumping
quicker than my heartbeat
outrunning my lungs
almost ripping me apart.
I remember how it used to feel,
when my mind, my heart, my body moved in sync
when it once listened to me,
and did what I said
but never mind. I will just do
what I've only ever done
because it's all I can do.

you put something ungodly
deep in my chest and
i loved it far more
than i ever loved you

he warmed her edges until she
caught flame,
so she might burn bright like
him.
he splintered her spine and
peeled words back from pages,
flung them to the wind.
now the pavement is wet with
the shreds of her,
flushing away the last vestiges
of who she was.
she was once a book
with his name written in red
in every chapter.
each of the stories shared,
cautionary tales
thrown on the ground and
trampled under careless foot —
but all at once,
in a furious storm, he
tore himself away,
and even she cannot make sense
of what is left behind.

I'm losing to the wind; he knows
I need his wayward rushing gusts
and I love the way he puts
my hair in my mouth and
air in my chest.
His spirit gently roars,
tangling my words and
bringing me to my knees.
He carefully envelops
past, present, and future; a
tornado deftly encircling
everything I've ever known.
There’s something ethereal
in the way
gravity shies from his gale
and how he artfully folds rhythm
into my breaths.
I wish I could love him with
even an inch of the miles he
spans, but
until I learn to fly I’ll
lower my windows and
fill my lungs.

drooping
over the balcony,
just me and a snide breeze
mocking any pretense I
once held that
life was anything
but a self-checkout line.
So get on with it,
keep stealing
from the big men and
higher ups
now that I know
I'll always only end up
on top
like a wet towel over the railing
stiffening slowly,
indifferently,
uncontrollably.
Here on the thirteenth floor
my fate is
an ironic harbinger
of an ending we'll all share -
of an eternal love -
or an infinite numbness -
or ubiquitous unimportance
whatever it is we share
that they tried to leave
up here with me.
No,
the irony is -
they left me,
but they carry my fate.
It doesn't matter where they are
or I -
we are all the same.

I say,
hoping it’s too quiet for you to hear,
but you do
and with one hand,
you press your finger to my lips,
and with the other, you
give me everything I
do not have the words to
ask for.

Happy makes its tracks
searing, one hundred and twelve degrees
shower streams to skin
and from the corners of
my eyes to my jaw.
It gathers in droplets atop the
jaded pink tiles
that droop along my bathroom walls.
It condenses in distance
between us and words,
and splashes from my cheeks
to kiss the floor.
It bounces off my bedroom wall,
echoing,
slurred like dying art -
it hits me, head on,
brings me to my knees and
burns the carpet below.
You make me so happy, darling:
I'd never lie about that.

One-sided glass keeps your eyes from mine
hides half-remembered words from another day.
every excuse I've made to cover myself
never feels like your touch should.
Selfish desires burn the ground beneath my feet
but your footsteps echo in another room
where the blood doesn't pound in your veins,
where the glass shows you yourself.
And maybe my fists could shatter that glass,
but I don't want to face
the look in your eyes
the red on my knuckles
my nerves screaming
my breath coming short
when you take up all the air in the room.
No, I'm staying over here
calling it biding my time,
watching sand rush through the hourglass,
trying to compensate for the days I spend
pretending that you can see me,
staring at the smudges my hands have left on the glass.
Yes, I'm staying over here
while they tell me I'm wasting my time
waiting for you to remember
those half-forgotten words from another day.