Thirty has curves the tongue
can’t navigate.
It echoes over and over in silent,
snow-covered gorges.
Thirty can hang if you let it take a nap first.
It won’t ever have money, but
it’s assumed it can pick up the check.
Thirty dances along every edge, and
doesn’t listen when it’s told
not to look down.
It smells like various cheap jar candles;
scents trailed with subtle “**** its”
and the smoke leaves notes
of pungent regret.
Thirty has an aftertaste of ****** innuendo and likes to whisper filth in a stranger’s ear
when no one can hear.
It doesn’t intend to put its happiness
in any hands but its own
(but does it anyway).
Thirty has guts but is too modest
to show off that armor.
It argues more freely and refuses
to lay at anyone’s feet.
Thirty knows the smell of snow
and relishes the scent
of fire’s smoke in its hair.
It can taste the deep kisses from yesterday
and never stops wondering
if they’ll come again.
Thirty finds a purpose in every day
but realizes that tomorrow
is not a promise made to anyone.
It feels unsettled and shortfallen,
but its cup runneth over.
It uses what it’s mama gave it
to stay warm at night.
Thirty is lonely with a full charge.
It finds poetry in palm lines and
pulls prose from the lies its told.
Thirty is the beginning you
never knew you needed.

So let’s begin.

One circle
says to another circle,
"Hey baby,
let's overlap."

They tell my generation
to stay hydrated,
after leading us on
an eighteen year journey
to a dry well.
No wonder we’re
dying off by the thousands—
a learned, unquenchable thirst
for something that doesn’t exist.

There was a phrase uttered by the voice on the other end of the phone that bee lined down my spine and made me gravity’s *****.

“He’s coming home on Monday.”

Then the clock began to tick, and its second hand stopped at the number twenty — the exact number of seconds it took me to realize what I had just been told. It’s the number of times I made him promise that he’d get himself on a plane back to the states after his course ended. It’s the number of feet between the shoreline and where tourists found his body, face down, on the beach. Twenty — the number of days he’s been dead.

It feels a lot longer than that, but grief makes you lose nearly all sense of time, among other things. All of those moments I spent with him before he left to get on that plane just seem like a series of fleeting flashes that I cannot tame. My apartment, his car, his bedroom, my bedroom, my hands, his hands, hot breath, his scent, my scent, touches that begged, pieces that fit, blood humming fast and warm, all made for several nights spent unexpectedly well. We were always great friends but undeniably better lovers. It was one aspect of our relationship we both tried, but failed miserably, to ignore. I wrestled with the fact that could remember it all in such clear detail, but now, it was something so far-fetched.

If you knew me and if you knew him, you easily recognized what was there.

I don’t believe too much in formalities — they’re nice, but not necessary. Words are great, but actions are exquisite — which is how I know that those months leading up to his departure were riddled with clues that we cared for and enjoyed one another as much as two people could. Neither of us liked to throw the word “love” around. The stakes just seemed too high when that happened. It wasn’t something we said out loud often, but it was understood and comfortably grounded. I will always believe that’s the best love you can hang on to — the kind that doesn’t have to be validated or proven or spoken. I tried to keep that thought at the front of my mind as I stood in the Wal-Mart checkout line with a pregnancy test in hand.

Women talk. So when I explained that broccoli had started to taste horrible to me and that I had truly lost my taste for beer and alcohol (all things that I enjoy), they cocked their heads in my direction like hungry hens waiting for the feed to drop. They wouldn’t ask me outright, but they ran down the checklist — late period? Sensitive gag reflex? Nausea? Lower back pain? Tender *******? Some of these things I did have, but see, I just lost one of the most important people in my life to the Pacific Ocean. Of course my body was going to respond to that stress in weird ways. I mean, let’s not jump to any conclusions, right? I couldn’t be pregnant. I wasn’t supposed to have a child yet. I was planning to teach abroad, see at least three other continents before I sunk my roots back into the good ol’ mid-Atlantic region and settle down with some poor, unsuspecting fellow.

The idea of it though — it being his child, our child — there was part of me that immediately softened to that idea and an even larger part of me that hoped for it.

As I waited for the customers in front of me to check out, I read the fine print on the box through its smudged security case. What can possibly be so hard about peeing on a stick? That thought stuck fast in my brain as I took aim and nailed my target like a champ in the bathroom the next morning. In the three minutes that followed, I thought this might be the easiest thing I would do all week. It was the easiest thing I had done all week, until those three minutes were up, and I read my results.

I learned, in that moment, that fate has a way of dealing us the hand that we need, without fail, every time. We simply get to choose how to play it.

“Man is not what he thinks he is…”*

When the vessel is breached,
all of its dark matter seeps from
its fresh fractures.
No longer the secure transport
for such highly valued secrets,
its worth now teeters on worthless.
Weathered from unwelcome silence
and worn from
a thousand whips of the tongue—
it rests empty but easy;
never again to be admired
for its heavily cloaked mysteries.
And with every drip from every crack,
it finds solace in all of these
parted shadows;
it finds meaning in
all of this strange new light.

*“…he is what he hides.”

See, you lit my wick.
I melt to drip. I change form.
No looking back now.

I don’t much care how “ridiculous” it sounds.
The Oreo Cookie is the perfect metaphor for life.
We’re born alone—cookie.
We die alone—cookie.
But no one can argue
that the sweet in-between
is the most cherished part
of this confection’s anatomy.

It’s your responsibility
to enjoy it while you can,
and lick
that ****
clean.

You’re asleep two inches to my left.
Two of the longest inches
I’ve ever measured with these eyes—
eyes that will not close or rest or fixate
on anything but those
inches that
never used to exist.

And when I finally do
look around the room,
suddenly all of the artwork on the walls
doesn’t seem like mine anymore
and my skin feels foreign—
so foreign.

It’s like I have all of the parts
to keep myself working,
but my instructions are all in Swedish,
and even these detailed diagrams can’t
get me there again.
Figure A looks nothing like it used to
and all of the screws are stripped,
useless, dooming any effort
to keep things together.

I want out of this room—
and what I feel writhing in my ribcage
is no longer something that’s keeping me alive
but this slimy Chest Burster
of conflicted alien emotion
that’s promising to break through my breast
at any moment
if I don’t close my eyes.

Guts…
guts everywhere…
and it won’t be pretty.

But I can’t settle my mind, and
I don’t want to wonder
what you could possibly be dreaming
like I did those thousand times before,
as my cracks continued
to silently branch off in new directions.

So I let him.
I keep my eyes open and I let him
burst through the surface.
The last thing I see is my own matter
flung onto that artwork on my walls,
and my last two hopes are
that my parents know
how much I love them
and that this hungry alien baby
bites off the only thing
you have going for you
with his
otherworldly
sharp set
of teeth.

Hungry fingers prowl.
My skin hums—so electric.
The poetry flows.

No cure for a ***** mind.
Ain't that a shame.

One phrase, thought-- but not spoken.
Offered unsafe passage past the lips.
Then I blink.
Suddenly, I'm standing, stripped,
naked, exposed and confused.
Screaming in a language
that isn't native to my audience.
Balled fists writhe in the air,
cool sweat drips
down the length of my spine.
Blank expressions paint
the faces of this grey panorama.
I find that one pair of eyes
and beg with my own, with their tears,
with ache, with a raw, beating heart.
They do not understand.
They will not understand.
I'll be up in flames before
my words are all translated.
My ashes kicked up in the wind.
The epitome of too late.

Hers is a light
begging to be refracted,
with a need to brighten
much more than one dark corner.
Hers is meant to break into
a thousand different directions;
colors for interpretation—
not solely admiration.
She will not dim
by the beam of anything brighter,
but absorb what she sees
to illuminate pathways
for travelers who seek her
as a source.

“You’re only human.”
That’s how they try to calm me
when I teem with green and
clench my teeth and fists—

because ******* I just want to be wanted that way.

But you’ll give me silence,
followed by stillness,
which leaves me no choice
but to unravel at your feet.

“What a beautiful piece of work,” you’ll say.
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” she’ll add.
You’ll smile and nod in agreement,
and she’ll take your arm.

That there? That’ll be a pretty picture—
one for the magazines or even
the silver screens.

Just please remember to tread lightly
when you bring your eyes forward,
and walk right over me.

I’m the smell on your skin
after you’ve felt the sun
for hours—
the ache in your belly
when you’ve laughed yourself
into a fit of warm tears—
the give of the lid
on a stubborn pickle jar—
the freedom felt
at one-hundred miles per hour.
I am all
of the subtle reminders
that life is beyond measure,
and that 'time' was just
a theory conjured up
by someone
who couldn’t stand
his own happiness.

Cloudy days make me
feel like I’d be better off
thinking and feeling with dispassion—
stripping all of those bright and buzzing inklings  
down to their logical black and white bones.
Colorless, I stare at what’s left of them—
dull pencil lines and some ***** eraser dust.
Nothing to build on, nothing to respond to.
There’s nothing left which stirs under my skin.
Now, just this empty notion someone put here.
I don’t like it or trust it.
I can’t make sense of it.
Only a familiar voice assuring me
“it’s better this way.”

No room for negative thought
when lungs swell
with salt air
and the sea stares
right back
with its millions
of glittery telling eyes.
Between smacks and crashes,
without a word
in its quiet calm,
it shows me just how small
my problems
truly are.

Funny thing about the cold,
it’s always sure to make us aware of when
our hands are empty.
Leaves us searching for
a warmth that doesn't want us back.

It gets to know us best when we’re undressed.
It tracks our naked bodies between
idle bed space and the holes in our sweaters.

We’re left no choice but to
pencil in the details
between the real and imaginary,
as it nips our ears with frigid whispers—
plants its frostbitten doubts
in the warmest corners of our minds.

The only traces it leaves behind
are a lonely shiver, a ghostly breath,
and the notion that we can never
solely keep ourselves warm.

The car’s not on but
your seatbelt is.
Going zero miles per hour,
you are guaranteed to hit
nothing.
You are guaranteed to see
nothing.
You are guaranteed to go
nowhere.
You’re in a safe place— at home,
without a single smudge on the exterior,
without a single story to tell,
without a single soul
waiting to hear what’s next.
Don’t worry.
I’ll wave as I drive by,
going 80 down some coastal highway,
filling up pages with every breath I take.

We pull ourselves tight
like the skin
of a drum head
so that when it hits us,
we do not break—

                                   we sing.

Oh conference calls,
I've named you something better:
“Haiku-Writing Hour.”

I have this feeling you speak the language
whispered only between raindrops,
and every morning
you tune the hum of the sun as
it dims the stars, pushing its way
out of the ocean—into the sky.
I have this feeling you handpick the color
of each October leaf,
and when fall has wandered away,
you proceed to pull the strings which
make the northern lights dance
the way that they do.

I just have this beautiful feeling.

Boy mentions chapped lips.
She's willing to share her own.
Hands need not apply.

Rolling symphonies of snores
keep me from a dream as I
conduct their crescendo with a smirk;
barely of a sliver of blanket
left to call my own;
goosebumps on my legs remind me
that this bed is full of things I love
who choose to be here too.
I am wide awake,
wrapped in hushed darkness;
like a freshly dipped photograph,
I develop best here too.

He dipped his fingertips in the birth bath—
mesmerized by the ripples he created.

"When we were kids," he said,
"I remember we'd try to see
how long we could hold our breath
under the water."

"It's funny, isn't it?" she asked.

"What is?"

"How we just try
to keep our heads
above it now."

I don't dig digits,
but all folks love 'em some pi(e).
Food math is the best.

You unbutton me,
one at a time, I'm released.
See my soul smile?

Hundreds of reasons
to smile today. Hundreds.
I'd like to be yours.

Guided by something heavier
than a final notice or a dollar sign.
It's a power, not for profit,
that's respected silently, without a like button.
It tangles my hair in the stars
as I dream of places that feel like home,
but never visited.
It whispers the names of people
that I know I've loved in another life.
The world is on fire, but
I close my eyes and hear its music.
It hums. I follow.
The world is on fire, but
I dance in its glow.

To be the object
of someone's fresh jealousy
seems so delicious.

Adulthood seems like
this constant battle to find
the silver lining.

Your fingers. My neck.
We decorate time like this,
with touch and trembles.

Six-feet between me and
forty-six vignettes of adventurous times.
The slick, shiny gloss used to put a sheen
on moments made for smiling.
Now, ancient beaches and haunting deserts,
where my footprints are planted,
are a dream I fight to remember
after the alarm sounds.
Aches for lost chances of overpriced
airport snacks
and shared glances with strangers
seem to slowly construct "fun's" obituary
on the bored corners of my mind.
But I wait, six-feet away,
to relive it all anyway.
Six-feet between me and some one-hour photos.
Six-feet between me and a graveyard of freedoms.

Out of wine.
So alone in my white girl pain.

Does it make you feel uneasy—
a young woman sitting alone
in a leather chair
by the elevators
with infinite thoughts
and not a single
shred of attention
for those who
walk by?