Tastes like salty moonlight air, your shoulder beneath my chin,
Heart warmer than our skin under this cloudy lake
I won't tip you over if you won't push me away-
You're always unzipping the tent as I take all the covers
Your lips curve as the chain links painfully acquired
Less oily, smoothed down by Floridan heat and strawberries
My legs beneath the water slick as the wind in Vancouver,
Feet tangled in a fishing net, pushing me up to find a smile between rows of teeth
In countless countries we've marked each other, vandalized concrete sidewalks and people passing by.
But from this quiet town, taking in the mountain ranges, only one thing comes to mind-
It's lost in the sun peeking through, the flip of your kayak,
My rushed escape,
our I'll-get-you-back

Where are you going?
You've packed your cold heart up,
Got up early to warm the truck,
Well that sunny smile don't shine
So well in October

I miss you so—
I've been so sad, kept, unloving
Though you used to visit
So many eons ago
It's been empires rising
Sands shifting
My marble hands to flakes then dust
Worrying memoirs and records
You're a pious devil
Reading them
Laughing at our gardens, overgrown
Shaping the stars and commanding them
To burn

I miss Texas - My family fighting,
The smell of the hot concrete,
That full-bladed grass and the fire ants
The southern drawl and the heavy air-
Sticky and slow like molasses
Down where you nap through the heat of the day
And eat fried chicken, corn and mashed taters for dinner
Playing in sprinklers and
Patios made of tiny rocks,
Acorns and sunflowers and furniture
That weathered the great depression and WWII
The little creek, the metal slide in the middle of July,
Those mcDonalds toys one grandma collected
One grandpa bouncing me on his knee
The other taking me to the zoo
And great grandma playing scrabble,
Those baby pictures of my dad,
Back in a place where I would've culturally said "pa"
Sometimes I miss it all back in Texas,
Sometimes I say I'll never miss it,
Now that I see how grandma's a racist, family don't believe in LGBT,
In liberals, in me
But then I think I've lied
I just miss Texas from back when I was too young to notice,
And before everyone died.

The day I wear my blue dress-
My hair up in a braid.
Those dark blue heels on my feet,
And dark veil held by bridesmaid,

The day I step under the trellis,
To the altar surrounded by men,
The priest, and groomsmen,
That day, beneath the sun, well it's...

The day I'll cry, walking down a white carpet,
Blue sweetpea, forget-me-not, cornflower, in my grasp,
I'll stand before matching eyes, and of his heart
I will only hedge to ask

That he love me, in provision, in familial, in sickness,
In health,
For immer and for the poor side of wealth,
For all our days, and the rest...

That the day I'll be wed,
Not far after the day we'll have met,
I will finally let the one who loves me true,
Be the one where the words, will finally be said.
In the way only we can say "I do"

And use the term to bind you,
Though you are no lover of mine
Kindred, and companion, we each walk the streets
Longing for the nights that take us far away
Love, for the sake of love, for the sake of feeling loved
For no other reason, do I love you
I cannot gift you casual intimacy, nor friendly kisses,
As my best friends here gift me upon parting.
Though I admit that I love you, love you dearly,
Seeking not to question, but to love, to say that in this world,
There is at least someone whose love is not greedy,
Not dependent, and not a burden of sorrow.
That I may love you, and love you anyway, and love you still,
Though we may not meet again.
That is my love.

There is a day that will not come,
There is an hour I will not meet
There is a morning I shall not rise
There is a night I may transcend sleep
But there will never be a day I do not think of you
There will never be an hour I do not wish for another
There is not a morning I do not cherish for its dawn
There is not a night that will scare away my songs
Tomorrow. For all my tomorrows. Until there is a day,
When all my tomorrows end.

It's the soft, aching, tender moments
With the cold Seattle sun low in its grey winter sky
It's the washing machine humming and churning
It's ******* at the dregs of tea leaves in my mug
It's a culmination of harmless, yet empty, moments,
creating a yawning gap-
What should be, what will be,

Well, anything could happen before that.

What do you want out of life?
A good husband, or a wife?
Three kids and a trampoline,
Everything just the way it seems,
Want a fancy blender and a soccer van
A 9 to 5 working for the Man
In a suburb, keeping secrets behind closed doors,
Where everybody knows who you voted for
And the only exciting thing
Comes from an article read in a magazine
Say you wanna be white-picket-fenced
A comfy spot to live a life sentence
Spot of land and a wedding band
What do you want out of life?

I'm writing into the disquiet night,
More words, words, words
Which you will never read

I told you I was hurt, bleeding on the inside
I told you I was lost, in the middle of my life

There's times I stayed alive for you
There's times I would've died for you
There's times it didn't matter at all

Will you help me find the right way up
Or let me take the wrong way down
Will you straighten me out
Or make me take the long way around
I took the low road in
I'll take the high road out
I'll do whatever it takes
To be the mistake you can't live without

Standing in the dark
I can see your shadow
You're the only light
That's breaking through the window

Well I'm not gonna give it away
Not gonna let it go, just to wake up someday gone! Gone!
The worst part is looking back
And knowing that I was wrong

I'll do whatever it takes
To be the mistake you can't live without

But its etiquette has not.
Then there's its religion, prevalent, instilled.
Farms tilled the way their grandfathers' tilled.
Castles in ruins, or castles renovated,
They want to preserve, or let themselves become jaded,
On the richer histories this country provides,
They create better legends to tell tourists, all lies
"Here's the old world", they cry.
And the economy, the people, the change,
They tie it all up until only a mock-up remains,

My ex deserved perfect
A man's wife kind of wife,
An honest, hard working life

He deserved a woman who could be kind,
Compassionate and intuitive with him,
Laugh with all his friends,

A wife who didn't question too much,
Made and cleaned up after lunch,
Someone just good enough in bed

Someone smart but not too well-read,
A wife who would follow where he led.
A woman that he would happily wed,

Is a perfect woman I could never be
(And I hope one day, that he can see
In someone what he once saw in me).

A perfect woman, is what he sought
And he deserves perfect,
But no one is perfect

So that's what he got.

I want to go where the lost stars went,
Where the sky is made of glitter, and the seas of gel,
And the earth is pliant and gold
I want to go where dreams are corporeal and silver tinged,
Where the men color their eyelashes, purple and blue,
And the beds are made of feathers and the juice of plum wine,
I want to go where no one is alone, and the music boxes play,
Such sweet melodies of old love, encompassing love,
And you can travel the world in just one day
I want to go where the greatest stories went,
Where they color their world with watercolor sunsets every night,
And the found owls and water rats cry to the moon, so close you could hold it
I want to go, oh I want to go.

The table is empty, the chairs are gone,
But I don't have the heart to see it end
I guess I'll have to mask my tears and pretend.

Keep me warm through the storm,
For it is calling to me
In my dreams, I'm aware, and I can't find the means
To be scared.
But the storm, you have seen,
Doesn't care, if I'm aware, when I'm awake
It will embrace me with nary a thought
To who I had been
When I was human.

This house has steadily been built by tears
From divorce and death and heartache throughout the years
It's curled up in the carpet, where an 11 year old dried her eyes
And in the depths of memories,
All the pain, the alcoholism and goodbyes
Now there's a woman who holds her own throughout the day,
Cries silent tears into the master bedroom walls at night
There's a boarder sobbing in the living room while her dog whines
And when I've cried my throat hoarse in the same room as all I've mourned,
I go outside to smoke and make it worse.

My heart is a ******* traitor

I’m the one I think you’re supposed to hate
Because I’m the she when you find a spot to lay all your jealousy
I’m the his of the past,  that’s poisoning your beginning, and,
I guess you don’t know this, but I’m your best friend.
I’m the whirlwind that picked him up, turned him on his head,
The ******* that soaked your hopes in an acrid frailty.
I am the first red-lipped ice queen to bite at his neck
I am the first to coax “I love you” out from the pit in his chest
And he won’t fall for you as easy
No he won’t ever look at you the same
Because his boyish fantasy was a slender girl with a lopsided grin,
Who started games with his mind, that he never did win.
And you might dust off the memories, try to enroot more for yourself
But picking off the scab of me will only make him sore
I’m so sorry that I hurt the one you love, that I stuck around
I’m deemed unworthy of redemption,
I will still, always, and forever, love him more
You can't take me down.

I know I’m trespassing. Is that why he’s here? I’m not smoking, or drinking, or skinny dipping. I could be doing drugs. But I’m not. I’m just trying to find my own peace of mind. What’s so wrong with that? The summer homes are long abandoned. There are no lights from boats on the lake. It’s too cold for anything to live around here. So what if you’re not supposed to be at the park this late? Dusk is a concept! My emotions are a racket.
                I said, what are you going to do? He said nothing. How about you.

                I think that’s why I’m sitting on the wet rocks. Craving a smoke and chewing my fingernails. I could be a lot of things. I could do a lot of things. I’m just not sure. I’m waiting on something that’s out of my hands. I’m waiting for the typewriter to end its round. The press to run. The stars to fall out of the sky, gathering in my ****** and coughing up dust. I’m waiting for this to become us.

                I’m thinking I should have bought red lipstick. The summer I painted the Denver room with make-up. I’m thinking, I should have broken the board into half again, the day I got the news. I’m thinking I should have walked farther into the ocean the weekend they announced it terminal. I’m thinking I should have moved in with you. Now every empty doorway is another reminder of the space that used to be filled. And I’m too small to fit into the cracks in these walls. But for hell’s sake I’ve got to try. I don’t want to be that.

                I don’t want to be another “why?”

She was a girl who listened to music boxes and dreamed of ships, stars, old country lanes. A girl who kissed gin and twisted ponytails in and out while studying her pupils with the lightswitch up, down, up, just as erratically as with her hair as her teeth set on edge trying to think of unfathomable words. Melodies whose names simply did not exist no matter how she tried to pin them down and press them for perfume.

She didn’t belong to the recently cleaned room she called hers, the term home not resonating. The house in Canada, not home. The house in Duncanville, TX, not home. Not the estate in her favorite book, no house belonging to a friend, no dream limbo, no college. Tormented by the feeling there was something there, in her reach but slipping out like oil. It felt like having a long distance affair with someone who, through lack of proper documentation in any census, simply did not exist. The pained, intimate knowledge of the characters in her head, of the places she’d only researched. If she opened her eyes a little wider, turned her head to a shadow quicker, took a side road, they’d be there. She’d forget why she ever doubted, and then, accompanied by the slow setting relief that she belonged somewhere, she’d smile easy and drop the stitch in her forehead. Somehow she supposed it was the same for everyone.

Everyone must be incredibly lonely, she thought. Driving the slow, dingy roads home. The balance between dry painful eyes and the darkness folded around the coarse street lamps found comfort contingent on perception. The familiar 40-minute crawl from town to town to home was wearing her gentleness thin.

So she lifted the newly washed sheets and took one last gaze out at the street lamps and glass for the day. Her heart had no place in it.

I took the sea to brest
Kissed the waves and sipped
Sipped until my lungs waterlogged
In salty sea I dried them out
Plastered algae up and down my legs
Until they bled raw, raw and chafed
And withstood the grain of sand
Withstood the coals and fires of mercy,
Mercy be great upon me
But my lover, you reside nowhere on land
Weary among driftwood longing to crumble to dust
I prayed to the heavens and I prayed not to a God
For Lir is my only and let’s face it
No release comes thence like from your holy brow
In the folds of your wings and your flame
Determined, I waited, shackled into silence
By suffocation I am breathing barely moonglow
That rests heavy on my stomach overwritten by black night
As it is slowly eaten away by *****,
In your name
I was screaming, crying, praying your faith in me
For your ire and your judgement
And redemption from the world wherein I was lain.
You a poesy written in the blood of me
Choking the flow for which I begged you not to
And to hear me, gentle angel, gentle God
Gentle power of the heavens above
To claim me, for I have sacrificed.

It's been three years hasn't it?
But it's been five years now,
My life seems to be caught up in the past, and frequent inconsistency,
Oh I saw you in your robe, clutching your cover on the creaking steps,
Sleepy eyed and asking me to come to bed
And how you chased me, at a dead run, when I fled
You were standing with your girlfriend there,
In the parking lot,
I recognized your car and plate number
I bet you thought I'd forgot
Now it's so clear that I've got to move on,
My heart is aching, racing, for another dance,
So change the **** song
It can't be You Could Be Happy, Torn, or Jennifer
I can't be the past, your thought, yours
The winds are changing, I've read the cards and runes
They say I've got to be moving on from old wounds
I've cut open, sewn and sutured, now do you understand?
I'm a free spirit, gyp and matured, and even though
For once I don't have a plan!
It's exhilarating, my poems reiterated
I'll become the ****** and the feminist you always hated
So watch me go! And long for me at every turn
You'll finally learn what I am and all that you've lost,
Ha, I'll see my regrets come to instant completion

Listen to songs of what had been,
I know it's hard, you chose what happened
Waves crash down and close the gateway
When memories flood them wide open
Oh, come home to me, before I sail away

It's a dreary dawn you've settled down in
It's a misty town you call your medicine
Weather and women work your fingers to bone
You swear up and down this is all worth doing
Come home
Close up shop and rest your face in my arms

But you bar the door of your lonely hotel room
Rest easy in your misery and listen to men
Crooning on about love, of what could have been

Maybe you should have brought your raincoat

It is morning in early April. My spine’s a little sore.
My eyes, a little bruised. But so are yours.
We’ve spent all night staring out at the horizon, straining to see the sun.
But it will never come. Vacantly, my mind wanders, my hand rests atop yours.
There is a forever in the stillness, settled in the damp cling of my dress laced with dew.
Your brow is covered in sweat, sticking sweeps of currant-colored hair to your forehead,
Which is creased in frustration.
You’re getting fed up. Still, I am waiting.
Because when the daylight arrives, I will have to go.
I will uncreak my bent knees and step heel first into the muddy hillside,
And there, just across the field from my outstretched hand, you will be waiting.
With your pleased smile, and eyes glowing full as Ophir. We will stop wilting.
And you’ll say, you’ve been dreaming of me. You’ll say we’ll travel the world.
I will look behind me, where you were so weary just moments ago, and you’ll have dissapeared.
Yes! Will be my answer.
And the day will take us far from here.

I'm trying to protect the little girl inside of me.
Protect her from reality.
Of losing skin and losing faith.
Of doing more than she can take.

Once I was a lark, you freed me from my cage
You brought me to the moonlight, I could breathe again
In your eyes I bathed in the moonlight,
In my eyes you did the same
In your love I was saved,
But was caged all the same

Where are you going at 2am?
Left a light on for someone who never came home
Kept alive the herbs in your pocket-
Tried to sit down, tried to walk it off
Your phone is dead when nobody's around
And the whole town is sleeping
I wonder where, you wonder, they've been?
Worrying over an empty bed and a low gas tank
Until 4am, then, I guess the world comes back around
And you lay to rest, all the answers you haven't found

hum, hum, heat, rain
Focus, contrast sight
Film roll, acidic soak
Low

The stars have watched my descent
My water-color tattoo of disdain
Grass withers around my feet,
I'm a mar on this world, like a stain
I took a pill to stop my head from bleeding,
I let the ocean pull me down
Tried to lose myself in pleasure and pain,
And I see nothing but dust, in the night sky,
I see nothing worth suffering
Nothing

I just want the world to believe again
I want the late greats to give way to the latest greats
I want the childhood simplicity of putting stickers on paper
I want to feel the water as I sink in deeper
I want to lounge on a hill without getting hayfever
I want technology to advance and drinking water to be readily available
I want the world to believe again
I just can't leave it like this

You slip from the bed,
Remove the gauze, pull on your long johns
Jumper and coat
And the sutures on my heart begin to itch
Grab your keys, head for the door
I'm running, but I don't know what I'm running for,
Hear the rumble of your truck's engine
Beating on the wood, the brass doorknob won't turn
Why do I know you're leaving?
Through the fogged up window I can see your exhaust
But it's not processing so I lay my head against the floor
Well it's 2am so don't give me a reason
Just wish I'd gotten there before
I just have to go back to our bedroom, just to be sure

You keep going. You cut your losses and believe in your dreams and keep trying, even if all you take are small steps. You keep going.
Because trying is valid and trying is monumental and trying is okay because trying means effort and trying can be doing or can be nothing but trying is still another step, another day, another breath, another sentence, another goal, another intention
When the depression and hallucinations and hyper sensitivity and drone and anxiety and disassociation and vices and losses and hurts and exhaustion flood and you just, can't, anymore, you must
You keep going.

So this is still my long refrain
The 1st day of the 2nd month,
I'll turn from the stars and seek Saturn again
And bite the poison lit to my tongue
I'm afraid the shadows are long, racoons quiet in the brush
You better run,
I've outlived all of us
Are you afraid of the sun? Are you still afraid of the sun?
Are you still choking yourself lightly to feel the pain
The women in this family are strong, all the men are dead and gone
I've seen streets die and forests rise once more
I'm not afraid to hide in the brush
My shadow's the biggest of all of us
I'll light it on fire, I'll bring out the light
Nobody's dying. At least not tonight.

My light shines from within, weather or wither
Though it seems to shine lighter when I am watched by others
Than when I alone am watching my candlelight flicker
Aching for the bonfire I was
When we were together.

Out of every pore I’m breathing
Out of every shattered pulse
I’m sorry that you’re cleansing
I can’t feel you here at all
There’s a hollow where I’m mending
All the rafters you’ve torn down
There’s an ache of which
I’m grieving
But my lips don’t make a sound

Lost in the waves again. Goodbye for now.

I met a lover lied. I told him all my lullabies.
But the silence in my heart drove him mad.
Drove him mad.
He said I’m screaming.
Like a little bowl
Echoing off the essence of a hollow soul

Bathwater turns cold,
On a scorched July eve
I'm dreaming of another night,
Wading into the sea
Of planting daffodils and pulling weeds,
And wondering if you ever missed me

I live my life in constant fear of finding out,
That all the adventures worth-while
Are done
That there is nothing left to discover,
Nothing wild,
And there will be too many rules guarding,
Those which remain.