Each one giving for the other.

But then we were giving too much
From a place we didn't have to give from
From dry wells we fed each other our earth
When what the other needed was sunshine and water

But we hid together beneath the earth
Building little tunnels between our wells
Digging out the earth underneath
Forming a wide chasm between our wells
Earth cleared out by our most ancient thoughts

Our network of tunnels
Each giving consent to our nightmarish coping
Easily excavating thousands of avenues
A complex and beautiful city grid
An Atlantis a la toxic-lovers-just-learning-to-love-well built in the earth and clay at the bottom of these wells becoming one
Sweeping breaths pouring more and more illness through our tunnels

Our relationship built of the mutual chemical compounds in the poison cups we drank each day and then began to feed to each other.

We needed therapy and instead we held each other on the shower floor wailing and surviving by filling each other up with the others' insides, then dumping that new cocktail back into the other, over and over and over again. For a few moments balancing our sloshing insides between our mouths.

Each one giving for the other.

I am learning to be free
I am learning to stop giving into the feeling that I am being watched
I am learning to lose myself in the present
I am learning to stop trying so hard to be anything other than what I am
I am learning to indulge myself in my every whim
Why not?
I’ve gone my whole life not indulging, judging, chastising, trying to fit, trying to be everyone’s cup of tea.
It didn’t work and I didn’t like it.
Now I think I will just be.

One time
You used the word
Reek
To describe how badly yours hands smelled of orange
And now sometimes when peel a cutie I think about
You saying
Reek
And how your hair flopped into your eyes
And that stupid watch
Everyone liked
On your wrist
Just there
Beside your fingers

I remember your thumb knuckle
I liked it a lot
I don’t remember your finger nails
But I remember the way
Your hands sent me
The way they felt on my skin
The way I craved them
The way that electricity jolted through my throat when your palm pushed against my Adam’s apple

For my withoutness of you
I can be humbled when I need
I can feel longing when my other seeds
Fail to take root

But

I wish I knew
You
Still

So

I could eat a cutie and
Not try to remember
The way
Your lips parted
And you flashed your teeth
When you said
ReeK

Feeling like maybe for now music is too much
For now all those sounds sound like noise
Silence accompanies the flick of my lamp
And the sudden quiet of my mind
Much better than the
Constant ***** beats and nasty flows
That used to charm my ears
Now the sound of crickets in the city
Are a luxury I simply can’t override with a synth pop track
Now the way my sweater brushes against my skin
The way my glasses rattle when I spin
Around the room to a tune I’m playing in my mind is all I want to hear
My neighbors air conditioner
The random honking car
The voices echoing down the hall
All these anonymous sounds call to me

They have no master
No order
No point
They exist simply because they do, they are collateral and in that they are everything.
They are collateral and they make up the experience of one entire sense.
And I only want to hear them speak
To know what my world sounds like

Honestly the way
That Maroon 5 is constantly playing in my head
Is music enough for me
Just to sink into a pocket
Unexpectedly while I order coffee
“Give me that red velvet”
Making my hips twitch and my brow hike
Is enough music for now
Harmonizing perfectly well with the din of the world
With the sounds of my body
With the breath from my mouth

Who Knows? Maybe moans retire
Maybe silence is something else to explore
Maybe deep in the quiet a voice is calling
Maybe here there’s a rhythm I have yet to explore
Of course there is.
Of course it calls.
Of course there’s more.

Jeans tight up to her waist
And a thick *** *****-line
water dribbles on her nails
From a jar of water that still smells like Ragu

It’s okay

I want a foot massage and tea made for me
I want to acquiesce and please
I want to back and forth
I want to have breakfast at the cafe by my house in the morning with my lover from the night before
I want good *** and better moods
I want someone who I don't know yet

I want *** and touch
I want more I want you to bite my teeth
I'm hungry and I'm tired and I want someone nearby
Who knows how I like it
Who know how to grab my thighs
I want a fantasy
I want a dream
I want someone who can tease me and make me feel super green
Super lean
Don't be mean
Make me feel seen
I'll be a dream
It can all be easy

I want to laugh and dance around
I want magic and sleepy breath sounds
I want what I like and nothing more and nothing less
I want someone I don't know yet

I'm a sleek owl
With hooded lids
And talons razor sharp
My neck turns round
I weigh 2 pounds
And my call is like a harp
Who knows how I see the world
Who knows what I recall
Who knows if I live
To **** the kids
Who rule the streets  in early fall
I stay up late
And contemplate
Or maybe I don’t even think
Maybe I live in this tree up high
Counting the seconds until I can blink.

Reminding me of London
Nightmares huffing afoot
Freezing cold
And far too sold
To wipe my hands of soot

Leggings tugging at my legs
In their cloth pockets
Bunching behind my knees
Restricting my relaxation
Stretching out all wrong
My knees will be baggy in baggage claim
No matter I’m here now
As you shiver there by my side
A touch is a touch is a touch too much
Wailing indistinct won’t subside

Detachment in the whites of my eyes
Devotion dripping from my cornea  
Doppelgänger in another life
Singing sweetly the song you crave
She’s named Gloria

No bad memories
Let’s push them away

Naked now in bed and I’m feeling as
Cold brew in Alaska
Try to smile spotting a moose for the first time
How much is not too much to smile at this sighting?

Thinking of Madrid
Your one redeeming quality
your thumbs
Gliding along the coffee mug
In that old woman’s cafe
Aged photos on the wall
The best tomato I’ve ever had
Walking for hours while you called me a *****
Denver
Baltimore
With the gun and the perimeter and the door

Woodbridge
With the spaghetti in my throat
And the tremble in the notes
That you chose to bestow
There I am poised
Delicately
Trying to decide
Which of the two evils
May take my life tonight

Too much time spent in cars
In the cold
On the floor
Being BORED
what a waste

Sad sad sad man
Trauma and oblivion whittle away at your kidney
Doppelgänger in another life just a sheep herder in Sydney.

My  LavenderPlum princess  
Badder than 2007 Brittney
My velvet bustier
My leather string around the waist
My lips like honey  
My doe in the wood
My renaissance
My ****** milkmaid
My baby
Holy fear of goddess escaping from my lips
Dripping at your command
Soaking for your hips
My silly girl
My flame
My charmed and robust queen
My harlot my champion
My starlet my sapien

What was it
About
The soles of my feet
That made your mouth quiver

Maybe
The vulnerability

“He said achingly as he was convinced to stay for an hour longer”

I just like this tiny little bonsai tree
Of feelings for thee
Growing in me

I like to pretend I don’t know it’s there
Like I don’t groom it with the highest of care
Then it taps me on the shoulder when I’m in my wardrobe
I remember that I miss the shape on your nose
I remember that I miss your t-shirt on my collar bones
That I like having you around
That I like your laugh sounds.

You’re good egg
And a tall tree
That I really like to climb

You’re a skinny bird
And strong boat
That I trust to float

You’re a glass of room temperature seltzer water
And a strawberry top.

But I think you’re the strawberry too.

I like how you let me fall for you slowly
You let me pretend you don’t know me
I’m satisfied with wondering if you think I’m gorgeous
And for now not knowing
And for later still wondering
And forever maybe you’ll tell me

But I never want to ask.

I love the slate blue sky
Lightening over the gloomy, moody, swooshy sea
I love my pale skin that won’t tan
I love my hairy knees and calves and thighs
I love the cool breeze tickling my back
I love my oily, sea-salted hair
I love the plush sand from the high tide
I love my hairy hairy hairy waiter, covered in the cutest curly cues I’ve ever seen
I love the palm trees, with their fronds bent across each other from the wind
I love the muddy brown bumpy road
I love the rain and humidity, the wet.
I love the mist over the sea, making its surface a sweet mystery
I love the green and the blue and the brown
I love the happy, sleepy travelers
I love the happy, sleepy sea and my mind breathing it all in for keeps.

Hairy knees and skin that’s just learned to tan,
I’m here and I’m not and loving a lot and I’m ******* as much as I can,
A woman alone in strange cities is never alone because,
When she has her self all the rest has been and is and was.

Retreat and respite for a mood that shifts from good to better when the sun shines brighter and she gets some sleep,
Doing as I please is my bliss,
Going a way that looks good, saying goodbye when I decide,
Pleased and rested with an hour of sleep and feeling like I ******* shine.
Divine and mine with pleasure cooing in my spine.

Slowly and then all at once
I was beneath the sheet
It touches my nose and sways as I breathe out
Is it pink? Or white?
Who knows

Sheet touching my nose
And I crave nothing
I’m sweet on this sensation
Of cotton wooing my nostrils
And breath circulating beneath my chin for the sake of this prose

When the bee doesn't buzz,
And the fleece doesn't fuzz,
When the drones die out in droves,
And no pollen dusts our alcoves,
When the holy taverns echo,
Y nuestra miel acaba y esta seco,
The sweetest verse ever crooned,
I'll always buzz for youned,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
My sweet honey bee,
Bzz, Bzz, Bzz,
'cause only a Queen knows a Queen.

you made me feel like the hundred acre wood
and then you slowly rot my oaks where they stood
you burned the grass
soaking my soil with redbull and whisky
the maple sweet syrup you once adored now you find too sticky

I don't know you anymore and that is good.
Better than the falseness of your wind blowing through my wood.

How do I quell these cravings?
When the longing flees from my mouth and ears
Just to linger in the back of my knees

When I can't get you out of my minds eye
When I wish I had known you longer
So you would still know me now

Should I have memorized your finger tips your hand prints your pink lips... more?
And should I have you touched you twice more at the door?
Then should I have wrapped my legs around your knees and not lay coyly atop the sheets like a cat also teasing your breath from your cheeks?

Should I have devoured your lips a hundredth time?
If I had would you be in my bed tonight?
Beckoning me
Eyes aglow as I parade myself around the room.
Like a horse at the races ready to make me croon.
Desires more than met when I lay on your chest?
You’d look at my mouth and feel pride
Knowing just what it’s like inside.

Or maybe no,
You would still be gone,
And I would still be better for it,
And the backs of my knees would still feel sweet
From the touches you chose to forfeit.

There’s a cool breeze blowing
And I can already feel the relief
After the rain

The rain may not even come
Fickle LA weather teasing

But the sweet emotion
The unburdening
The wet eyes in the sky

Reminds me of home
Watching a rain storm pummel the pavement outside the garage
Walking up to my fathers back
Turned to face the storm
And I stood with him and felt
I felt held
I felt made of Stone
But one with the storm

Heady wholesome relief

Just a cool breeze is a enough to rustle through these memories.

Steal down the stairs won't you?
Come into my quiet heart
Here in the dark
Undress me
Savor my quiet parts

Turn your mouth inside out
Let me know your taste buds
With my fingers my nails and my tongue
Put your knuckles in my lungs
Tear the flesh
Beat it numb.

Why did you break it when you knew it was broke?
Why did you take it when you what they'd wrote?
Why did you taken me to you rivers when you knew I couldn't float?

I was somber and blue
But I lit up like a fool
You blonde goddess
I lit up like a fool for you.

The thought of you and I smiled in the dark
Whispering "Undress me
Savor my quiet parts
And please don't hurt me
Here in the dark".

Have you ever fallen in love like a cookie dipping into milk?
The milk is thick and whole and fills the holes
Where anxiety used to tick
It makes you softer, makes you better, makes you wetter and sweeter still
The only catch
My cookies beware
Is that if you get undipped
You’ll find yourself now soggy silt
Fumbled across a paper towel
Leaking your beloved milk.

Neon
No neutrals
New and glowing
Green and wet behind the ears
High on nothing but the night

How is it
That I meet someone even more lovely
More interesting
Taller
Better dressed
With more to say

And still
I rate their kissing
On a scale of 0-how you kissed me

Still I wish it was your touch that traced along my spine. Even though you didn’t do it as well as this new lover, I still want to know how it would feel from you. I want your fumbles.

Three times we slept together
that’s it.
That’s nothing.
But. Clearly it’s quite a lot.

Because still I compare every new lover to the way you’d throw your head.

Still I keep a guard up between my iris’ and their smile.

Still I feel like these are passing time until I see you again.

And for what? What do I want?

I honestly would just love to get lunch.

See what you look like
In the sunlight
Eating a sandwich
Smiling at new things.

What makes you belly laugh?
I don't know.
I just know that I like how it felt in the dark, in the sunlight, under fluorescent lights, nighttime lit by passing cars peeking though my window, I like how it felt under the moon.

And that I'd love to sit across from literally any table with you.

She's a seamstress in her way,
Stitching together her dreams,
So the seams lay exactly how she says they may.

With sharp scissors and a wet tongue,
She snips the cloth and licks the one,
Who'll slip through the needles eye,
Carrying all that metal in her noose,
coyly cuddling with rose and chartreuse.

Sad like Valentines Day 2019 at Fed-Ex, boxing up my husbands things, Papa on the phone spouting fear in my ear, tear rolling unchecked down my cheek, my thumb penning a pragmatic bullet point list explaining 'leave you'.

You’re just a tall bachelor I guess I never knew,
Took that flight with poor Lu
You were faded and probably wearing black
Suffering a separation anxiety attack,

So you high tailed it to your coast
And took back the peanut butter toast

It was a beautifully clean break
But it’s a shame we never socialized the snake.

I didn’t even know you were on my mind

Hair like spun gold
Your lips remind me of a big beautiful ship cresting the white water in a warm ocean at golden hour
Aura like a goddess
Scent of exactly what I want
Smile like a child
Heart of a lion and a kitten and a snake
Legs tall like the pillars in Ancient Greece.
Did they know you? Were you a goddess way back then too? That they built their cities on pillars modeled after you?
I think so

Romanticism gets the best of me on eves like this.

Where to even start, I don’t know
Maybe with your wholeness.
With your completeness.

Sometimes maybe it feels that there is too much,
Such a great muchness in you,
It’s not too much.
It’s exactly as much as you are.
And it’s a blessing and a beauty and a bounty
That you will always overflow and you will never run dry.

Just the shine in your eyes could make the whole sea glimmer.
Just the zeal in your laugh could contest with all the lemons in the world in zest
Just the shimmer of your hair!
It could send rockets to the moon.

The point is
That you,
You,
You,
You,
You are the point.

Nonchalant, like a toddler who pulls your hair out of your scalp with strong, damp little fists.

Nostalgic, like wet carpet and dusty, musty, summer camp drawers.

Ticklish, like a scratch you can't itch that seems to live just between your collar bones and your chin on the thinnest part of your skin.

Bitter sweet, like days old, left over red.

Whole, like cows milk ripe with chewy, sticky cream still hot from her utters.

Bright, like sunset on a day that you never wanted to end, haunting the night that you never thought would begin.

She reaches again
and finds it.
Ah, yes, there,
Swept under the rug.

Your psyche would shatter,
Your veins turn blue,
Your bones surely would melt into glue,
Just a glimpse of the dreamscape of my year without you,
The magic moments in my mind,
Would burn out your eyes and leave you blind.
Your heart would wrench.
Your throat would catch.
And vengeance would never be mine.

I’m never ***** anymore 
I used to drip onto the floor
Libido was higher, more, my core.

But I suppose, no, it was not.
Because it waned 
Yet 
I remained.
Yet
I miss being effortlessly wet.

I know, I know
It’s in my head. 

But maybe mostly it’s the bed?

Say, what’s different about my bedding?
Is it that I had a wedding?
And now,
Linens my sister gifted my ring and I
Sacrificed
Sprawled beneath some other guy
Another lover

Oh! dear, I’ve blown my cover.
Oh poor dear, my mother.
I'm a disgrace,
A divorce, at my age?

So, is that what stole my soak?

You know, you shouldn't marry a man,
You don't really know.

Is that what dried my dripping *****,

A quick ****,
From a new husband,
Who wouldn't hear no.

No.

It couldn’t be.

Far too simple for my psyche

When it’s no longer that contrast
The purple and blue and brass
I can’t grasp

When nothing’s juxtaposed
When there’s nothing to compare
When I’m naked and no one but me’s there

There’s you

My key fumbled with the lock
But you found me in that pause

Invited me to immerse my eye line
To indulge my gaze
To throw my glowing eyes into
The lavender sky
The silhouettes of the trees
The rooftops stretching out to Beverly

You waited until I was giddy
And craving your shoulder beneath my chin
To steal away into the night
Leaving welcome sweat on my skin

The length of your arm tracing the length of mine
And your perfume at my wrists

Sad like Valentines Day 2018 with my lover I loved no longer beside me in my bed, watching Inglorious *******, spaghetti I slaved all day on in the garbage because I spilled it in my haste, the words 'leave you' on my tongue.

I hurt the me
That was good to me
By being his,

I betrayed my own sweet heart,
And now she’s run away from me.

Now she hides in the shadows.

And I miss her smile.

I want to steal her light.

Of course she hides from me.

Nostalgic kind of love
The kind that hurts kinda nice
In the sweet places

It feels old and familiar
Worn out
It doesn’t keep you warm anymore
But you love it for its wrinkles and holes

Sugar sweet
Like a pinup girls pouty lip
In a magazine from the 40s

Something is wrong with it
But it looks nice

And now
On quiet nights
It comes to you
Unexpected

‘I hope I’m welcome’ it says
As it seduces my psyche
As it takes my cheek in its palm
As it looks into my eyes and soothes the pain that it brings.

So many, many changes
In my lady palace, in my pink wallpapered hall,
You see, now I wish to know your middle initial.

You see, it's your chest hair that captivates me
On your face I ruminate
And it's your side eye sugar smile that slumbers on the suede side of my soul,
Especially when we found this new fold
a shape all knees and elbows
tucked up and out and in
a shape with my breast on your rib
and your thigh beneath my shin
all skin on skin
it's that love makin'
that a softer me would want to swim in.

Maybe I'm soft again
Maybe I should let myself lick you

"Let myself"? A world where soft desires reign?
Maybe it's not the initial I want to store away in my brain,
I actually just want to know your middle name.

I’m good.
No, but like
Really
Really good.

I hated your stiff ankles
Really really really hated them
I loved you
But I hated
Those ankles

Stiff, unmoving.
Like bricks, you said.

I labored for two years
Every time I saw you
And
Them

Cursed ankles.
Stiff and plasticy skin.
Freckles that weren’t freckles.
Burns that weren’t burns

Failure to coax
those muscles into relaxing
Failure to ******
the tendons into lengthening
Failure to ease
that joint into movement

But
I did like how my thumb fit behind
Your ankle bone.

What to do with the hum-drum, mundane, been done?

That no longer comforts, rests easy or pauses.

Now only exciting excites
Nothing bites quite as it might
Have when I was up all night
Dancing,
Now it’s poetry and mirrors that
Charm
Me

But thinking of that sweet drunk girl dancing on her toes at midnight with a stranger...
AH!
There it is.

A new mundane for my new old brain to charm when clouds won’t let go their rain.

Isn’t the wasp
Who acts like a bee
More a bee than the bee
Who all day, only has to be

I have w e i r d anxiety
And I don’t quite k n o w where to put it
I feel off
Like watching a black and white movie when you’re a kid with a theme that’s b e y o n d you and knowing that you don’t quite know what it’s about
A lack of an aboutness with yourself
Much about what I do and where I go and who I see
And triumphantly living this l i f e
As I w a n t
But feeling a l i t t l e far from m y s e l f

I’m writing a bookmaybe I should get back to it

It's March in California and,
It feels like an early September evening in Virginia,
An owl is cooing,
A nostalgic singsong that reminds me of the woods behind my parents house,
Comfort seekers in my senses inflate,
Disappearing into a heady haze,
Anything to distract myself from the mini self-betrayal I just executed.

I can watch myself as I do it,
Basking in this nostalgia,
The detachment from my pain easing my shoulders,
Making me feel high,
Or maybe it's the serotonin and dopamine,
Coursing around in my body,
Freely,
As it pleases,
Results of.

The owl is howling and my roommate is home,
My phone is silent and I'm blissfully alone,
Detachment, detachment, detachment,
My favorite drug, how I've missed you.

So sickly happy,
So near to trauma,
(my familiar place)
But my perspective saving me from feeling it..

I could be in Virginia in 2008,
My legs a little hairy,
A breeze blowing through my long, long hair,
Innocence teasing me.

Or I could be here, now,
Listening for an owl that has stopped calling.

How delicious. Sweet detachment.

My favorite drug.

Sleepless in Seattle on my mind and in my feelings,
Making me feel moody and 90's,
Chunky belts and colorful, dark sweater,
Old airports in family comedies,
Big clunky landline phones,
When Harry Met Sally and I watched it on a plane for the first time last summer.
Baroque in my headphones and 1950's swing playing from the ceiling

Girls talking loud, so important,
Deciding options for their next photo shoot,
sweet and divine making their plans.

And me
Silently observing, enjoying

If I were an overweight man
probably
I would be creepy

But I am a nice package

They're in L.A. for the weekend.
Oh, they've been to London and "her boyfriend is an *******"
She wore the baby blue, "it was my mother's", and it brings out her eyes
Why is he friend's with Madeline?
She's a *****
But we like her. She's very bold.

Plans laid and heading out. Good for them.

And I'm still here.
Ache in my neck,
Baroque in my ears (because I heard it improves learning and slows heart rate),
This anti-poem coming from my fingertips

Alone in this cafe and now the mood has shifted.