we like to think that only the dead
are ghosts, and we've heard some
say there they were as if, clear as day,
yes, they were.

and my mama used to say she could
see her lost baby, the one she did and
the one that miscarried, the way
they would have grown up into
pretty girls like me--

and lord how she waited on
forgiveness like it was a thing
that visited but some **** just
ain't show up ever,
like people and fathers
and brothers when you need 'em

they all the ghosts that won't
visit, they got too much on
their minds, too much time
and you ain't the one they
hauntin.

i think i saw him riding by
earlier today--
with so much time we spend
staring out the windows
I was on a phone call with
a customer about overdrafts
and loans--
but you can...you can...call..call the...
every word following a little bike out
on the highway
Miss? call?
I'm so sorry, I say, laughing.  I was
elsewhere.

I was elsewhere.

I was thinking about it the other
day, how i've actively tried to
cut ties while tying knots,
how trust goes both ways
but is still a one way street
you need to go down--

that you can orphan yourself
in a crowd full of parents
seclude yourself in the
arms of someone who
can't stand to see you
cry--

it's all a bit silly the way
we hurt, how we run
how we find a place
like dogs-- miles away
from home, afraid to
be sick or weak
or changing most of all

it's all bizarre, really

everything is subject to the
thin denim wear like his
old loose levis, things
get old, i think, people
sometimes.

don't it  make you laugh
the way everything still
carries on, solidifies
into the past and
becomes stop motion
memories clicking by
in a hundred frames
i've been waiting for
that film to fade
but it's still got
that nice sepia
tone that I
like to keep
around.

I think too much about you--
in the morning; when i roll over
into the pillows stacked on the right
side of the bed where I no longer sleep
(but I will)

and at night, 'cause for a moment I
was using alcohol to lessen whatever
need be lessened but now I can't
stand the thought of forgetting that way,
or forgetting at all
so at night I open my blinds and
leave the door unlocked--praying
things will heal and that this will buff out
(and it will)

there are things that I don't even know
that i worried about, things i never
asked or thought to ask because they
cut too deep--i shouldn't have to ask
if i knew, but that's just the thing, isn't it?
we had never seen these sides of each other
whether they were the
worst or not, both terrifying and hurt
better out than in,
i'm not sure what he thinks of me now, but--

he doesn't answer and I realize that maybe that is the answer--
the, no, i'm not good enough anymore, not after all this.
so i woke up this morning and made my bed,
called my dad, washed the dishes, put up my hair
and
      continued
        

   on.

haven't seen my dad in almost
three months, so he came over
to talk about the weeds
and the dandelions
the lilacs that i haven't
planted and the creepers
tangling around the
fence posts,
he touches the leaves
softly like he does with
most things, circles the
yard and scuffs the gravel
with the heel of his boot
inspecting for the usual--

How've ya been? and I
nod because my dad hasn't
known a single thing 'bout
my life since I was 16

i'm getting a dog. I say, holding
my hands out from here to there,
half Shepard and somethin' else,

i still expect repercussions for doing
things on my own but he just smiles
and goes on about dog doors and
how i still don't have a gun in my house

branson was saying i should think about not
gettin' a  .22 and he pulled out
his glock for me to feel per the norm

where've you been?
around.
how's work? while i pull the slide back
and slip out of my sneakers
you know how you walk into a room
and they treat you different?

He's leaving now, his gun back in the holster
holds out his arms for a hug.

they don't like you much, huh?
no. and i laugh, to stop from cryin' and
mask the shake in my voice
it's alright, though, pays the bills and stuff.

i have no desire to tell him about the
things that have been happening lately
about Matt and the bars and the trip
to Walgreens for a two minute test
i want to ask him why he didn't
tell me more about boys and men
when I was little but that's a
silly question when I'm grown

we never tell each other love you
we just go, so he leaves,
his bikes packed in the bed
down 19th, truck grumbling
the way they all do.

walking to clink of a tambourine
i've got heavy chains but they ain't no thing
i've got no deep cuts but lots of ghosts
let's not compare traumas because
our boys have it worse

i'm not injured but i drag a lot of bodies
got a lot of bones in my trunk, no baggage
cause i lost it in departures but a hell of a carry-on

i've called myself a lot of terrible things in the past
few weeks thinkin' that might build him up
but i could keep doin that and be stripped
away, he's spent years callin' himself the bad guy
and i've spent it writing ***** in my journals
the hundred year flood seems to happen twice a decade
opening up
turning the corner
can't keep saving the blame for winter

i am chasing you down
an alley way, the slap of
my shoes echoing up the
shoots,

standing in front of your bike
your head tilted back, a toothpick
wobbling up and down between
your teeth, hold a blank
stare, jaw slowly working
i think i should slip between
your handlebars like a siren on a ship

speedwalking backwards-- stop, stop
in front of your door, head tucked
the railing catching a fall
and then wanting to
fold myself into
an origami butterfly
when you launched
off the couch and used
a voice no one has ever

I don't fully cry
until you mutter
jesus ******' christ
slip off the recliner
and hold me.

my mama used to tell
me I had something special
and I used to believe it with
every fiber of my being,

and when i was stretched
thin into highschool thinkin'
I was a sinner I still hefted
her words up on my
shoulders and plowed on
sure I could do no wrong--

you gotta off the weak limbs
**** out the poison, cut the
bad blood so I did and
realized that I'm no
special child, no bell
around my neck
nor gold in my veins
and I've always equated
worth to *** or how
well I can shake my hips

Strangest thing, enough
when I ain't no thing at all,
just a regular doe,
jane smith
baby blue
mint green
with a different
name.

in battle they tell you to push on
grab your gun and move forward, advance.  advance
in one way or another I have always
been told to stop doing the things
that make me, myself--
but for your sake I won't
bring them up, i will avoid
the work, the big words.

we let ourselves where emotions lead
follow willingly into fleeting thoughts,
run desperately where there are lights
where there is sound, where there are others
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Travel. Traverse. advance.

In battle they tell you onward
pick up your gun and fight, advance, advance
I have always lived up to expectation
until the last moment when i don't
when I have deteriorated into a
little girl, when I am the last straw,
the one that breaks your back (again)
but to bring this up is insufficient
because pretty words don't really
mean what I say or say what I mean,
right?

so our emotions take us where
they please, misguided and
utterly attracted to company
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Rove. Peregrination.

the key is
to walk into
walgreens like
you intended
to be there--
and joke with
the cashier while
she scans in that
little 11.99 box
put a smile on
and laugh with
her because
maybe she'll
think you've
been planning
for this.

when i was little my dad used to
call himself God, used to tell me
airplanes were bumblebees, told
me "bored" was just a plank of wood
so that was impossible--
never mumble, use an inside voice
but there's an outside voice, but
i never learned to speak with
conviction from him--

lately i've been calling my brothers
the weeds back there are taking over,
the spiders are everywhere,
god, zak, my heart is breaking
god, little sister I wish I was there, but
I'm not girly.

people used to tell me to howl at the moon
but i've always been afraid of my  own voice
always wanted to scream but replaced the urge
with a smile

be blameless and innocent? Lord, I've been trying
but you can't force what you ain't,
tryin' doesn't seem to be enough for you either
but i've come to find i don't know you as well as
i thought, so bear with me while
I am, while I am
tryin'

i don't want to go anywhere too fast
i'd prefer you know what my grass
stained feet look like or know the
way my shoulders roll into the
hot light.

Jarod was talking about how
it hit him two months later,
how the air suddenly left his
body and he woke up at 1:30 am
with the burning desire to drive to
Texas, so he did. Although, he didn't
tell us any of this in the week that his
chest was splitting open while he laughed
at our jokes and sipped on in-house americanos
that didn't soothe any breakage

i think it's time i start breathing--
this roof, i've shot a hundred holes
to accommodate the rain-fall,
i'm catching the run-off on purpose
chalk it up to sentimentality,
I have three yellow roses pressed
between pages of the first book i read to
him, conversation hearts from a superbowl
party, a pair of movie photos tucked away--

I've been growing new lungs,
exercising the right to expand, i cannot
hold my breath for others, cannot decrease  and
hope for new foliage, shrink back and hope for
the steps to be taken, i cannot stop reading the
dictionary or using words  as if they aren't a
saving grace,

i can't deny the things i've done, the smoke i've
inhaled, the past month is set in stone, but I
can't close myself off like i've done before
I can't go back to hopin' someone will crack
me like a safe, venture to know the things I
want discovered, that's been done and proven

we've heard the sayings about Rome,
about walking before running,
was in such a hurry to be there
wherever there was,
but i've got to be here
I stopped documenting
and tried for experiencing
figured if it needed to be
remembered, it just
would.

so these new lungs need
good practice and I'll
breathe my best.

i haunt the things that
don't exist--the things
that could have been,
i've done it for as long
as i can remember,

valued memories beyond
the moment--so i can go back
to haunt them too,

sometimes it keeps me awake--
like my head is an engine and
my thoughts the spark that push the piston

people tell you to stop like its not something
you've lived with, a habit you can break with
21 tries, i'm not trying to let my mistakes run
my life but my conscience ain't for **** right now--

these ghosts we no longer haunt--
are they things we just forget?
I've never wanted to lie for
so long that it becomes  truth,
to sleep with someone else to
take away the pain, learn to
replace someone when the
going gets rough, I do not
want these half-assed remedies--
i may haunt memories but they
don't
haunt
me.

we like to compare scars
**** at eachothers bullet wounds
searching for the exit,
thinking ourselves doctors and holy men,

but we're only children with scapels
sharp wits for play things, asking
the other to lift their shirts, fold up their
skirts,
show us what we don't understand,
plagued by the notion of going it alone
faking it all the same,

have you heard that animals
come in more than one form,
not just covered in fur or lined
in scales, in shirts and jeans
they walk, talk and conjugate

have you heard that diseases
are more than just viruses, they
have names like thomas, luke, jeff,
scribbled in notebooks, sipped through
cocktail straws,

this is no friendly cherokee parable
spoken in elderflower and feathery
folklore,
the wolves are here and have always
been, you know they rarely come in ones,
curtailing escape, the abridged version of
all-them-who-called-wolf because we don't
cry wolf, we seek wolf.

speak wolf.
so surprised to have them at our throats
when we have been no angels--
neither devils
just another injured animal
trying to make peace.

i finally told him
I want to try.
with you.
I want to try, with you.
I want to be with you.
I want to be with you.
because it's been there
at the forefront of everything
Waiting to be said
okay. okay.  like a sigh--
I had been trying all night
From the moment he threatened
To drive away, standing insolently
In front of his headlights--
but he was quiet and
all i could do was smile
and say, but that's not
enough anymore, is it?
no, it's not.
but I know why it isn't,
and why this poem is
short with so very
few
words.
because decisions are
yes or no, but some yes'
are too
late and
some no's
follow in suit.

when mama left california--

when mama's leave with
their children, does a part
of him go with us,

I've spent a lot of time
looking for Leonard in
the kindred spirits of
other men,

men with bodies like the
damp forest, mulch and
peat moss,

what is a father and what is
a man, do they yell, do they
scream,  should he have when
she left, but

                 I was born a *******, left a *******
                  asking for someone to convince me
                  that girls like me can be whole--that
                  they don't need any help because i've
                  never had it anyway.

                  when mama left california, she said so.
                
                  don't need no help, she whispered.
                  don't need no help, I mimick.

The man at  the gas station
Regarded me suspiciously
When I asked if he was 24/7
im not loitering I just don't know
Where else to go
And he brings two milk crates from the
Back and stacks them in the corner
Between the case of donuts and
Oreos

Cautiously mops the tile and
Asks if I want something to drink--
I must look positively pathetic and demure
Dressed in all my flowers and points
Dusty jeans and soft black hair

Girls like me don't do this, I think.
If I am a girl like me, if this isn't what
Girls like that do, I wouldn't know
I've lost and found a lot of that lately
Off and on strong, on and on weak

trey is yelling at me from the backseat
but I've tuned him out, his tan hands
are chalky and skinny, I've stopped with
specifics, with millennial lingo, I tell him
if you don't
shut up I'll
pop you one

girls like me
i guess.

Everytime I caught
A glimpse of the rafters
I saw you leaning over
The matte black railings
With a red solo cup
Lanky arms folded
Staring down across
The floor,
But then it wasn't
Just you in the corner
You were in between every
stool, in your many forms
And I wondered if this
Is what it was--what it
Was when people say
They've seen a ghost
But you are so very
alive.

there was once a spider in
my bathroom who wove
a thin globe around itself
for who knows what reason--

I've felt it slide over me,
a thick film, it happens
the way something suddenly
becomes a scar, you're there
for every moment that it
is red and puckered but
one day you find that
your body has taken
aim and fixed itself.

i imagine this is how
people go blind, like
someone has etched filigree
over my lungs and now I
breathe a little easier--
but something has gone
missing, i've always seen
my thoughts as people
and she is no different,
swaddled and taken away

i don't think there is a word
for the process, just the faint
inclination that some things
never existed, or did in another
year, another place, i've always
found myself here,
healed over, maybe
the single tremolo
wavering over my
shoulders, wet out
of a monsoon
usually
box elder leaves
like schools of minnows
diving and plunging

me.

there.

quietly, in the mornings
with only your fingers
shades tilted in, the lapis
dawn that barely makes
it through, door ajar
studied, an open book quiz
unmentionables, spoken in
water drops
melted butter
shower steam
vanilla
milk
cinnamon.

before the sun
before breakfast
before the earth opens up like it does
take it with a grain of salt, with an ounce of optimism
the glass ain't even here, we have lakes
we have amber canopies, other hands that shield
lovers that reach for us mid-dream, us
they reach for us in sleep induced affection,
they may as well be reaching across continents
who knows how far away they dream,
fingers sliding across cello strings
they make beautiful music while
they are here, traveling limbos to find us
but we're here in the morning, in the quiet morning.



how to eat honeycomb.

we purge with ***
cut each other with
deserves and things
we know will hurt,

perform venesection
with our mouths, divide
and conquer with teeth
tear in instead of heal

wield our mistrust
because walls are dignified
no castle ever withstood a siege
without bloodletting.

we barricade ourselves
in because that is safe
but sometimes we need
to bleed, sometimes
I need to

bleed.

have all those anniversaries
saved in my phone, did saturday pass without regard?
and did you listen to merle to commemorate his death--

still in the habit of sharing the burden,
and it's all just a joke, i try to save
people from every possible pain
even in their absence

finally know why he had
a playlist called whiskey
'cause now I have one too

but if you care to know
I'm alright, still the same
me but the light still shines
in the kitchen and the dandelions
have taken over the yard,
planted lavender and spread
seeds out across Elm
the girls at work
asked why I keep the gold
things that are his
and all i could do was
pause and say
*'cause i'm drillin
for answers

I have always thought of home to be a place
have described myself within a myriad of
different protagonists, herbs and flaccid analogies
i have been birds nesting in rafters, wolves
and nothing more than a willowy spirit without a
body--

and i thought for a moment that people could be homes
too, the way you walk into hugs or are metaphorically
gathered, i watched him in the mirror sliding around
my waist, resting on my hips, smelling my hair, picking
me up to put in a vase, ridiculously pretty, you know that?

and it's not that I longed for more,  
that I have longed for where, for a here that
i am acutely aware of how i vacillate between empty
and overflowing, of my own thoughts, i have heard
you think too much and maybe I do-- maybe too much
of me lingers

In dreams I unzip and turn myself inside out
like a dress, fold my shoulders down and the mountains
reappear, i am all the grass of a former self, before the tides and winds and men, before my choices bent me back
and took a swiss army knife to whittle me away

i think i am longing to be clean
to be over to breathe and not feel the strings
the way my voice splits into a rank of pipes swelling into a hundred  voices and he only hears a few, i am many
longing to be one, he cannot twist the drawknob
because I am already filling the cathedral in the words of
Stravinsky, the
                                m onster never b r e a t h e s


and I feel like i never have
i am earnest to fill my lungs with air instead of water
join the present, but the Welsh knew me too well,
the portuguese, saudade and the Germans, sehnsucht
put a letter to the things that can only be described in paragraphs or tears or indeterminate intervals of time sitting on his bed while he showered, all the doors slammed, empty coffee cups,
clogged sinks, unswept floors, long drives,
shots of whiskey, withering glances held on tension and
te amo mouthed across the room--

we wonder, can we be reached?  wrought? touched.  found.
in our deepest hearts, wounded mysticism, an untapped sense of joy that can be lanced and spilled, I am wistful, anxiously waiting to be siphoned,

Hiraeth.

I realized why it was
you were whispering
that I'd be okay--that night
half awake when i felt your
cold fingers like a sobering
thought on my hips,

you said maybe I just get mean...apparently
but i can only remember you in
the things you said at night
the things said in the dark

you're gonna be okay
There it was. The night I was sick.
sleeping in the crook of your shoulder
like I have for the past four months, and
i started to cry because I'd never heard
that from someone like you,
You're gonna be okay, you've been telling me.
apart from all the bitter *******
and the things we've fought endlessly
about you were still
telling me
i am gonna
be okay.

and  i woke from a dream
from something more real
nothing but the smell of your
cologne *you're breathing funny,
breathe with me brooke, in and out.


that's right. in and out.

you're gonna be okay.

i'm not sure--
you once said
i touched you
like i was seein'
a  l  l  o  f   i  t
you'd prolly
say I didn't, now
the way things are--
i was tracin' my freckles
the other day wonderin'
the same thing 'bout myself
'cause it sounds silly but I
remember the texture of
his cuticles and the whiskers
around his lips
but will anyone have seen
me
that
way before gettin',
before losing, before
goin, before

before

I've always fallen in love in autumn
always to fall apart early spring--
call me deciduous, the abscission just happens,
I've considered my winter coats, my shields,
the neat places I've tucked myself away

were we to overwinter?
to hibernate until further notice?
the titles were frightening, impending and
ominous, each one a textbook on subjects
we had no knowledge of, dark leatherback novels
featuring versions of ourselves we never meant
to be or never knew we could --

wrapped in sleeping bags and white down duvets
best during the winter becase we were both
raging fires, flames licking at eachothers doors
stopping short of our naked toes, put out by the
here and there snow, but sometimes
we were embers, pulsing stones of coal
settling, wishing, waiting, kissing wounds
breathing secrets over bruises--

but migration comes suddenly,
i've been in and out dormant for years
a sputtering volcano rumbling and groaning--

were we to overwinter?
I lost the dream woke with a start,
the caldera gave way and sunk in
terrified I'd take you with,
but travelers don't pause for eruptions
or make their way through magma --

and volcanos don't plead
   for them to
       stay
       were we to    
                overwinter?

I've always talked so much
but by default i am so quiet
i've justified to the ends, desperately
craving a higher truth, an understanding
to be read like a book, like a definition,
strove to be transparent and faintly beautiful --

but i am like red lipstick, dark and
upendingly alive, made of fifteen different
blue pantones and a single swatch of yellow, you
can't explain colors as much as I can continue
to explain myself and

honesty, honestly, is sometimes better titled,
better left to a word, a note, a song or
nothing
   at all.

pinky promise

we've forgotten our mortality
our impulse to smile at *blooms
we've stared at childhood photographs
and wondered why we look so angry

the art of fault and denial are synonymous
we've stopped speaking in hopes that silence really does
speak volumes,
our bodies could fell, cracked down like oak and our voices
remain like cocoons, papery whispers swathed in duff,
still breathlessly prating, foolish and juvenile.

which goes to say-- our thoughts
far procede the vessel, would last beyond our
deaths and ancestry--

i once spoke about anger being passed down
through the blood of irishmen - who long held the
propensity to bar fight and brawl
long standing feuds poured from mouth to mouth
downriver, across the gap, occasionally skipping a generation
the woes of our fathers are dead languages that we keep--
tongues we deliver on our own

we lash out and are our mothers
or laugh and see our fathers
never quite our own until burgeoning, and not even that --
not all of us bloom, some of us violently tear away
break the root and toss ourselves among the rocks
wilted but brilliantly colored  
       desperate to
                   learn how to speak.

I've heard that my body is a temple.

that disciples once traveled through, they used my ribs
as stairsteps and slept sound in the soft
ventricles of my heart, I've said I used to be soft
and this is mostly true, mostly lies,

you can lay a  f i e l d  o f  c o t t o n  
over  concrete  or cover  granite  in
s  i  l  k  but that does not change the
consititution of what lies underneath
and I have been cold
a bear trap constantly reset, I have been a wolf masquerading
as a girl, slick bricks of ice wrapped in wool

there has been hell in this holy city
and I have been raging through the rooms
scattering caltrops in the halls, wrapping widowers
in smoke, steaking kisses, slamming doors, wreaking
havoc where there need not have been--

Have you seen me? call the troops, have you seen me? fists clenched
temple burning. A chest full burning brambles, hot marble walls.
there is hell in the holy city.


hell.

perhaps the reason
I cannot be still is because
light so often shifts, falls
scattered through blinds
refracted in mirrors, slipping
and bursting, drifting across
wood like a great yawn
tipped and toppled over
crevasses, sliding under doors
you've seen the way it reaches
in blithe slices,

perhaps I have been snuffed
out, i have probably trimmed my
own wick, or thrown duvets across
myself, spilled into black coffee to mix
with devils, see how good I really am
but found that you only flare up before
smoldering,

i've spent more time drunk in the past
month than any of the time before my 21st
woken up to trace the rafters in his room
and count the letters of an O'Neal jersey hung
on his closet, memorized the stitches on twelve
longsleeve shirts and changed the calendar from
March to April on a drunk, half-alive hour.

this isn't me, I'm whispering into his shoulder blades.
I'm so lost, matt. I say, but he no longer answers.
he no longer has things to say, he no longer has
the right to comfort me, that's been stolen away.
I have stolen that away, I am a light but I am a thief
too forward and impatient, hearty and loyal but incredibly
disconnected,

and don't be a ***** about it he remarks, getting into his truck.
I wanted to tell him, hold me like you used to.
maybe I deserve these things he says, I hardly know

anymore.


I hardly know.

one of the few things
I remember is standing
at the corner of his garage
pleading please, stop.
while he laughed, circled
the pool table, breaking
the billiards into two pockets
close and tight, that wide
grin spread across his
face before sprinting
through his front door
hoping i'd be too drunk
to remember him spitting
*get yourself home on your own

have you ever seen the closed door and
wondered what you left behind?
seen the shadows shuffle and gingerly
brushed the doorknob--hoping to find it unlocked but
you can't pull people like books off of shelves,
once read, there is no revisitation, no speculation,
people are finite, with many chapters of their own but
often so very few in ours

but doors are not the end and neither are people,
some things that are tied are knotted with love
as clasps keep the thieves out--
if you haven't noticced, fences define the property
but never the individual,
the world is big and we are limited to
so very few things, being as small and of varying strengths--
however,

the horizon is not a line,
sometimes we see ourselves as the end
and perhaps we are with such a short reach
but that does not mean we will never see the rest
that does not mean that every door will be closed.

step 1: don't.

we all know words are alcoholic,
they can burn and they can treat,
I've gotten drunk on a moment, on a kiss
on the thin waist of a working man--

there's no use in wishing, on changing substances,
you can't domesticate a bear and tell her not to hunt
hope water will disinfect,
treat with pages out of a book, stitch cuts with sentences,
we all know words wound as much as they heal
try cauterizing with ink or
bandaging with i love you
you'll quickly learn that you are not a healer, you are a bartender,
you serve the vices, flip the switch, change the songs, pick up the drunks,

turn water in whiskey? turn whiskey into water.
help a man, hold him close, wake up and make love
clear a table, clear a mind, open a door,
leave the glass.

if at once i began
the moment i was conceived--
when my mother told me she hear a bell-
a distinct ringing to communicate
the woman i should become

the road was paved before
i had the chance to choose, was i
wounded before the war,
did i travel here on a fearful prayer?

finding myself has been a echo location
at sea, sifting slivers in sand,
i thought I was a puzzle
but that is too friendly an analogy,
i am broken in a truly remarkable way
both a fine dust and momumental landscapes
risen and

           sunk.

unring the bell it it were spoken to soon,
make me whole before they bring me to ruin,
i'd rather be shattered if it meant I could heal,
don't take me back,
take me here,
take me hear.

you'd think i'd take corners a little slower
rub rouge across my cheeks with less vigor
i've exhausted my efforts with others because
they don't know a thing

they ask questions but I'm tired of tellin'
enough people have known me and
i'm done chasin'. i've run these bones
as far as they'll go and rubbed away
the worst parts with salt and a firm word

enough people have known, enough people
have seen, I gave myself after all that mad ****
talkin', didn't feel as bad as I thought I would
with mother's shadow off in the kitchen,
kept tellin you to go slower
i still don't know
i still don't
i still
were we both there?
drove myself into a 6 minute
mile the other day runnin'
from speculations, 'cause
I feel like i gave you something
huge, some part of me i'll never
get back and i guess
that's my fault too.

you speak of places as if they were
gifts, objects as if they had souls,
regarded them defensively
when I am there without you
like their permanence only
touched you--
but I have shared rooms,
empty spaces, i have stripped
the shutters from my soul
and cut open scars to show
you where I've been, maybe
i have a lack of material things
to present in lieu of everything that
has happened, maybe my wounds
were the sacred things I shared
and I won't close them off
from you as if you don't
deserve to know, because
you showed me that
you do.

I once asked him what it was like--
when  making love made sense
when it left you in a glow and
not like it had me, in coils of
skin and apple scented oil
sobbing on a mattress in Chelan--

I can't help but ask as a precautionary measure,
I'm sure, the way people ask was it good for you too?
did it mean anything? were you making love or having ***?
he says that's what breakups are. Not talking, letting go.
forging a bridge and then leaving it to decay,
I'll just become bitter with that long sideways glance
I've stopped memorizing his face because it's been sad
for a month,
i asked myself
if i traded a friendship
for a kiss at a cabin and
i wonder if he feels the same
because he let me in before
the promise of my body
and the sight of me as
a friend is too much
to handle.

**** near lost
it all tryin' to be
perfect, upped
my tolerance for
whiskey and now
I just use it when
i'm trying to think
about anything but
you, but i'll be dancin'
with some guy named
Mike and all i can see
is your face reflected
in the windows of
an Antlers hotel
'cause i think that
was the last morning
we were okay.

but lookin' back on it,
i kinda ruined it with a
kiss, we started fighting
when I started fallin' thinking
we needed to be more
but then you said you
loved me and
it wasn't just
me
anymore.

either way--
if there's no use crying
over spilled milk i've
been crying for weeks and
that milk's done and gone
you're spittin venom
and i'm soaking it
up with a dish rag
hopin' it'll turn to
water.

I've always held the propensity for
unbridled curiosity, i'd have thought
that was obvious--
how many questions have I asked you
in such a short time?
and I saw the things she said about you
and broke into a dozen white-hot pieces
against your skin, probably sunk through
your spine and landed in the bed of your truck
burned a hole through the casing and smoldered
into the dirt--
I didn't quite understand the hurt, I guess,
but i imagined your name leaving her lips
like a scowl, so few syllables wrapped in
an unwarranted viciousness, there is still so much
i don't understand, so many things I want to ask but--

your name could never be so wrong
if only defamed by such a girl
and I realized I couldn't make
that better as soon as you
said I'd dug up the past
but matthew I just want
you to know that

you're too beautiful for these things
too good for these people,
i've seen your heart, you
can lie, you can lie, you can
lie, you could never speak to
me again but i'd still know
the truth--
tougher than the rest
come out swingin'
bare your teeth
hold your breath
you're still
softer than them.