how i spent these years without you
i will never know.

your kindness lowered
my shoulders
and i could finally breathe in freedom.
i could drench myself in your eyes,
soak and unfurl.
my whole heart is here now.  

i dried flowers from my chest
until i bloomed violets
and emerged a meadow.

i crossed through your arches
where you held me
with your eyes,

suspended,
to float.

i climbed iron stairs
i hung thyme in doors
and cast shadows into your living room.

i hung branches from my wrists
because i wanted you to see me.
i told them:

“i see everything

all the time”.

they didn't believe me but
i know you see it
all too.

i slowed down my music
so they could hear it
but you heard it all so loud.

i wiped off my lips
and ate bitter
leaves of anise
just so i could feel a pulse on my tongue.

i hung branches from my arms
so i could feel the soil on me


i felt new again when you brought me there;


its like i went upstream
   like i fell through walls
   like i became a woman



i could only see my eyes
in yours,
and i don't think i can breathe again


(you’re back and everything that i lost
and was brought home again).

Heaving into the airless room of your heart
willingly, I sat on the bone-cold floor

subsisting on chaotic peeling inches of light
in the dimly lit corners of your diaphragm;

but I have grown old inside the succubus
stomach of these walls, and I am drowning

listening to you speak of your emptiness
as you bathe all around me
in the holy waters of narcissism
the cathedral of your sorrow eats

itself; I tethered a promise into the middle
of you, and I could yet spit at salvation



the lock on the door;
I could spit at salvation
but I have tethered a promise
deep as this imprisonment
masked as a woman.











into the middle of you

is where I am most alone.






my father is dying; of the many times
I chose to stay, this is not one

you have abandoned me within you for
the last time; I forgive

but you are not the god

Consumed and spit out many times
through the unlocked door of salvation,

the cathedral of your sorrow eats
what of myself I have cloistered there

not so I could be a sacrifice on your altar;
you are not the god of my promise to fill you

but my father is dying, and you are a prison
and heartbreak can funnel no love.





but a prison has become you.









I appreciated the slowly peeling inches
of dim light in your many hard corners,

growing old in the succubus of these walls,
drowning on the inside
listening to you speak of emptiness.







as you speak of empty




and I appreciated the peeling walls,
respecting
the dim light in the many hard corners;

but I have been growing old in this bitter love
where you say, and I listen of your empty

where I am prostrate, drowning in walls
so as to lessen the sting of your sequester

but I could fall through this door
you have opened; I could sink
without a struggle to our grave

where the cathedral of your emptiness
would truly become a skeleton

see, the sinew of it is not in self religion
but that love is the heartbeat.








too.












where I will no longer be stifled
in the asphyxiation of your self religion

breaks my hoard











but the anti-gift lies in my cloister,
and the world moves as I am misappreciated



and I listened to you tell me how empty
you are, and how you invite, but how
no-one comes

and I bathe in the bitterness, as well as
the love, because this is something which I
have promised

but I am drowning in a room,
a room that talks to me of walls
and of ceilings, and of floors

and of itself; but never of what is given
by not walking through the unlocked door

into a place where the cathedral
of your emptiness
may preach, aware, that the sinew
of love
is the soft aorta if you are the skeleton.










but the cathedral of you I will worship
even as I sever the love

the ocean would warm us. we watched her waves
embrace the shore where sea urchins lay.
she was deep red coral, and salt-dried,
hiding ***** in her divots.
her rocks underfoot were green and
mossy. long and neon strands of algae.
the restaurants along the streets
were full of golden people,
dusty with sand and dried salt.
calamari and flour frying.
the early evening sunsets,
like glass on water. the blend to night
goes unnoticed. motorcycles
amplified at night.
we were young then
when we took our grandmother
by the hand, crossed the street
to the ice cream stand.
she didn't speak our language
and some words we missed in hers.
you'll never know a shock of hearing her speak out of her own tongue.
for years we were lost from each other. i wish i had known all along
that she had learned to speak to us.
i wish i did the same

i used to mark your bread for you.
from red flour, a rhythm
of tuck in and roll.
i'd never been built like that
before
i formed bread like you taught me
but i formed myself first
now it's only found through
a lavender mist as
each day passes quietly
that i remember chalk on my hands.
dust from boards and dust from bread
maybe my cure is bread itself
to form it again and give it a name
like mine.

who took away your softness
and made you feel
the harshness of the ocean?

who took your tide away?

your lips tasted of salt once.
but the blue dye of your
ocean has begun to fade.

you were then,
so plump and mighty.
but today you lie flat
in the shallowest of
water.

tangled in the algae,
gathered by
your fingers.

who would you have been
with a rage of good and doing?