it's not as easy to imagine
your fingers as they used
to be, all these men have
had the same scars--

sometimes I see myself
here or there in a smaller body
from months ago, i wonder
about how i fell for you,
the night i was supposed to
go to Salida, up on Bellino
land before the drop off,
not leaving a single poem
out, because I wanted to be
heard and you heard

a grainy memory backlit
in your headlights, all just
crumpled tin cans and
riddled pigeon casings

i have never been good
             at
remembering the bad,
i have taken many deep
breaths, scraped and pulled
the threads from my steering
wheel, rubbed fingernail fissures
from my palms

i hope you come upon
true happiness, revelations
that clear barrel and hit the mark
i hope you find truth in all your anger
that one day you see me and
say
hello.

you once sent me a poem by
caitlyn siehl when you were
drunk
about storms and people--
the second thing you would
send to me in prose I could understand
as if you were the storm or
maybe I was but--
I will tell you why storms are named after
people.

Because I have left the safety of my house
to stand in a torrential downpour, pulled
my hair from countless braids just so the wind could feel
a bit of the salvo inside of me,
and when It rains I love to
let it in on secrets, soak my skin
till my perfume runs and I steam,

and the thunder only sets my
heart a'running, i'd hold a
stake beneath the lighting if
it meant I could capture
some of that spark

(         ) if storms are named after people
it is because they are beautiful--have you
ever seen a richer thing,  the clouds like silken
quilts, patches and oceanic framework crawling
above the mountains,
Jesus, they take the earth and throw it round,
crack icebergs in half without even trying
strike the soil and things still grow
if I am meant to be scared of a storm
then i am sorely lacking--

i have never not chased a dust devil,
the bigger the better I have faced
stood in the current and felt every inch a mile
mud splattered on my shins with grass stains
on my thighs where i have slid
across the moss and ran with
water, with the leaves torn from trees

why storms are named after people?
because they are remarkable
leave bruises like bite marks
deep and askew
that stay long after being left
if any place was weathered by
you i will return
because we have felt the rain--
every inch a mile,
running with the
wind beneath our
jackets, unafraid
of the way the
rain leaves us

I'm too caught up in
piano notes, a crescendo
that pulls my spirit out
I was told what he says
gives life to the logos
so I'm inclined to seek
the water and dive

i asked nick
what year he
felt was the most
wasted

and he said even
one step is a step
forward--

but there could be
no better embodiment
of anger, it is there every
morning telling me that
he is home that I am
a body, that i am a bad thing
it rides in the bed of
every dodge ram
and permeates every dream
where i hear trumpets echoing
in the mountains, in valleys i stood
with my father and
God's voice thundered from higher
from clouds like a ***** through the earth
heavy rainfall across miles
and miles of unsodden land
and we were crippled
into the dirt--

I asked nick
what year
he felt was
most wasted

and he said even'
one step

is a step


forward.

My face is
a common
misconception

I lost myself in march, in
the bar, in a tailspin that
looked like a two-step, like
a man, in myself at the edge
of the water with my toes
dug into the reef wondering
why the ocean seems so vast
because i've only ever swam in
ponds--

and I cut my lifelines because I
still believe that i won't find myself
in the arms of someone else, but I
still feel the pinch of every rock
and string that snaps, and I love
a boy who can't love me back
broke his heart and he's back
to his old plays, the ones
he executes on his own
and I can't run the ball
as fast as he can--
I've noticed the trend
the way I take a heart and knead
but men aren't things to bend and need

every turn I take is a 360, standing
where I was before, and I don't know
how to move, how to take the first step
how to have the faith in faith, how to believe
in the immaterial

We stood in my front door and he said
she's still in there, you wouldn't be
crying if she wasn't. the last sober
thing you said to me out of love
in a voice I won't forget because
you haven't used it since,
and If I ruin good things
then i ruin good things
and if I ruin good things
then I ruin good things

well i've had my toes dug
into the edge of the reef
and I guess I just needed
a good cry, the ol' one-two
to the gut, I've been tryin'
to be perfect for the sake
of everyone else's fairy tales
holdin' on to the tailgate of
your truck because you're
the first person to care
in a longwhile, that's a
longwhile, but you don't
care no more,
he don't, no more.

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.

Do you always
see the moon
as a whole?

i was half asleep on a kitchen counter
curled up around the steak knives and
soup ladles, threaded through thick duvets

when you came and tucked yourself into me
with your burlap jacket, but I let you under the
covers--and I distinctly remember pressing my fingers
under your shirt only to feel how deathly cold you were
as if you had just come from the outside, or had risen up
from the snow drifts, opened your ribcage and let the cold
seawater fill the cab

but you were whispering something, a secret I couldn't make out
an undiscovered motive, slight of hand, slight of breath
you were lieing and I was letting you in, letting you in
beneath the weapons, beneath my skin, into my body
and you reached in for a handful of grain but I was a
barrel of cords and twine

meshed and tamped, you found the soft damp earth where
I grow and we somehow managed to make it seem ok
make it seem ok
you're out there ok
crimped and furious
a mean cuss on your lips



touching still means too
much to        me

I love you but I
don't

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.

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.

(to be honest, I'm afraid
of your sister, (or
i could be mad) but I am
drawn away from things
(or people) that pull at
my skin and plant their
words that never bloom)