you,
you are poison ivy.
growing in my heart, sprouting first as a little bud at the base and then wrapping your tendrils and vines around tighter and tighter until I can barely breathe.

you are poison ivy
itching at the disassembled strands of my affections and i want to tear my chest open, pluck off the petals of my heart, hands coated in pollen and
tell you
there are no more petals
left to give.

you are poison ivy
you still spread your arms around me, reaching for more that i can give, lathering my pollen into every crevice of your poison skin.

you are a silver bulb and I am the moth that attaches to it, shadowing your every move,
the way your fork always grazes your plate before
you
set it down.
The way you run your fingers over the delicate arch of your ear or how you draw the sides of your books close together when you read,
as if trying to pull the
literature close to your body, letting it seep into your naked eyelids.

I wish i was that literature.

There was a whole new garden of emotions, of loss and sorrow sprouting delicately at my fingertips and
you
were not aware and
now all i want is to uproot my garden and start again.

you are poison ivy

and i can't stand you, that itching that feels like screaming and ripping and scarring

You were an itch that i scratched over and over until i bled

and once the bleeding had stopped and the cuts had scabbed over
I itched it again

and

again

and

again.

love is not a safe word
it’s one haiku revised 400 times
on cracked leather chairs in the corner of cafés

some of us love badly
she says as she kisses the rim of her glass.
some of us love stretched out
like pizza dough that rips when our rolling pin rolls it too thin.

some of us love in secrecy
we do not trust your hands.
you try to pull our scalp off and draw your portrait on our mind

some of us love clean
like bubble bath that smells like lavender from some fancy store in the mall
some of us love *****
we cant clean you off our skin

some of us kiss with our teeth
some of us braid our lovers into our hair
and when we remove the hair tie
it is crimped and messy and tangled

some of us love love
but only far from home
when we slip into bed we start thinking
and we can’t stay still

some of us wash our clothes even when they don’t smell
or aren’t stained
just because it feels like you are inside of our shirts and pants and sneakers

some of us walk alone past your house
on the way to ours
and stop at the front step
waiting for you to come out
and smile at us
the only thing we wait for today
are the smudged signatures of snails
scrawled across your pavement

some of us love to the bone
until there are no more “ifs”
just “is” and “are”
the collected poems of our fingers
swollen, bruised, red like a bouquet of roses

some of us love
and we regret it
we never get home in time for dinner because of it, we leak like a faulty faucet, we sleep with our pillows over our heads to keep everything in
but some of us love
some of us own a watch and know the time with a glance at our wrist, some of us own a sponge to soak up the water, some of us own satin pillows that feel like whispers on our cheekbones

Endless stains of blood
On white t-shirts
On nights that scatter blue trees over black earth
Alight by shooting stars
The mother tells her child
Unwilling to unlock the truth

The truth those stars
Don't grant your wishes
They grab them
With scarred scratching hands.
Alight,

The damp stitches in the soil
Cemetery symmetrical to hospital
Those shooting stars circling
Like a vulture
Speeds towards dead carcasses
Still, the murdering star will not cease

To break bones
That have already broken
To take lives
That have already been taken
To burn
What is already charred

Today
smells like burnt muddied skin
feels like gnawing on your own fingers for feast
sounds like tired, howling machines
spurring and sputtering, never-ending their onwards trek
Swallowing distances and with it, nameless faces
countless places

Today the earthquakes of death
Don't make the land shake anymore
For it has learned to cope
With the desolate cemeteries filled with mute bones

Today burns like gasoline
Looks like intestines decorating destroyed doorways
Today it rains curdled crimson

Tell me shooting star
If the child liked  jam on his toast
Did he snore?
Did he like math? Or english?
Shooting star doesn't know and neither the bombs.

As bodies fall from trees
like rotten plums.

The world was born in blood
And has not ceased to suckle its wounds
Endless blood thirst, Endless war
But not endless skin to bleed.

he wraps you in the seams of his quilted fleece jacket
only for you to tumble towards teetering ground with a
myriad of other dissipated items
a dollar bill
a cough drop wrapper
and breakfast bar crumbs.

his face backlit, the stained windows of the church
in which you have learned
that the weight of the world cracked adam's ribs
and made woman
the product of his suffering
but, eve
repeat:
you are not made from the vestige of this man nor the absence of him

you do not owe this to him
you do not owe him the gnawing on your fingernails
you do not owe him your skin, he buries himself under
creates a crater in your chest and uses your heart as his cave

you say he payed for dinner (the one that you couldn't eat: your stomach pulled inside out from worry)
that he
doesn't love you
or worse
you don't love him
speak not softly nor fading
do not let him lick tears off your face
and tell you they taste like sugar:
rip that piece of paper that he wrote his
number on
slipped his hand in your pocket at the club

for
he does not deserve you.

in a cave
off the coast of ecstasy
the greed of one man to another
is the perpetrator of death

from god’s ribcage
grow the gardens of eden
his blood flows through oceans
his fingertips write the
garden of verses
surrounding sleepy children

from god’s bones
marrow fertilized
skin becomes soil
clouds, his imaginary friends
fastened from the foibles of our minds

from forth: his creation
from flower woman is born
sleepily blooming, reaching out her
arms to the sun

as life comes to death
and life
again.

when she was eight years old
she
asked her mother
have you seen the girl with
lashes like butterflies against sharp cheekbone branches?
a dandelion sprouting from sludge covered gutters and streets
streets, where you feel that bitter bland nothingness in your stomach

it feels buttery to stare at her:
see how snow outstretches arms and twirls tippy toes, envies her grace
see how balloon sized raindrops pop, target the freckles on her arm
see how her forehead crinkles when she concentrates, nothing more than a beacon
proclaiming she trickles with stars

when she was eight years old
her parent's violent protests slipped bruises under her skin like pennies in a coin slot
but they could not contain the celestial girl tucked under her ribcage.

she would still look at her like she was the breakfast sun on a saturday
whistling by the creak, catching glimpses of dresses from behind the legs of trees.
see how this is special love, sweet as strawberry fields under soft sun
they would never feel on their forked, sour tongues

You were left behind
A victim of a mirage I’d stepped into
One yellow rain boot too deep.

You, slithering out of your cases
Scratched by the fading sunlight
Are my prized possession
For every moment you held inside
Was as carefree
As the words I spoke.

You were delicate artwork
not art as in paintings that were to be hung
carefully in the front of a museum
but the ones curling at the corners
slipping from underneath fridge magnets.

With my eyes pinned on the screen
seeping into my temples
Your naked feet fumbled with the sand
Fumbled with the hopping and twirling toes
of beach dancers
Fumble with the endless badges you have gained
over the ribbon on your chest
places you have gone
but, it is all as futile as it is alluring

sand is just tiny, little rocks
You will fade, these images
will fade from my memory

like the endless
titles in a bookstore
and I will return to my reflection
ingrained in silver circle.