Corduroy
by far
is the sexiest fabric

Zipper wisp you thighs a bit faster
You cat-call of body language

I wanna hear you coming

You are not a denim ******
Not cotton soft

My hands are rough
Let me feel your texture
Of parallel lines that go all the way up

Let me lose your button

You can find it later
Keep your innocence like that bear
In that children’s book you might read
To your own kids someday

Corduroy is ugly
So are we

Has texture
So do we

Is made from finely twisted fibers
Like DNA

Corduroy makes me sweat
Literally

And figuratively
If
We were trapped under a blanket of it
And could not tell the difference between

Scar tissue and fabric
Hair and fabric
I will have to bite you to notice the difference

Unless you holler like corduroy
A sound you could beat me with

Then we would just be a transcendental blanket
Of
This should be burned later

So
When I tell you
I think you’re **** like corduroy

It’s a compliment

Paint splashes of dirt on the bathroom floor

Kyle coats the room with war paint

He shakes dirt from his ****
and it splatters walls with childhood

This is when being ***** was a good thing
When showers were a chore

He is still muddy when he steps from the tub
Pigeon chest protruding like a plate of armor

She is not mad at Kyle
His smile is a saving grace

She is practiced in spit baths
And spankings that didn’t hurt
Only scared him

Kyle is a little warrior
With long skinny arms
And long skinny legs
And a smile like a lighthouse

She ruins a white towel
Is rough when she rubs the dirt away
Pays much attention to his ears

Kyle knows this is pointless
She knows this is pointless

It’s what boys do
They get *****

And mothers
Can only do so much
Acknowledge that they are helpless to the process
Of becoming a man

Kyle will always find ways to get *****

She won’t always clean up his messes

But parts of her
Will always want to

1
If unicorns were real
I can’t imagine much would change

I might own one
Get high on the finely chopped fibers of fur
Collected from his grooming

And when girls ask me how I came to be so sweet
I’d tell them how I was ***** once by my unicorn

How some sorts of sticky sweetness haunt your soul forever

2
In the second grade
I swore I had dinosaurs living in my backyard

This is after I swore that I actually had a backyard

Never mind the hand-me-down t-shirts
So big I often exposed a boney shoulder

I had the strangest tan lines then

3
Under my bed was a cave
Where the boogeyman taught me
I should be more afraid of my father’s feet at the entrance
And less afraid of things I could not see

In the shifting dark I could have been anywhere

Anywhere was somewhere
My father’s claws could still not get me

4
For the longest time I thought my grandmother’s ghost
Haunted me
I’d often wake to the smell of her musty home
Mixed with her perfume
and the sweet scent of the soft earth she often tended

Until one day I didn’t notice her anymore

Ghosts are the parts of the people we miss
When our stupid brains are still learning how to deal with loss

I’d like to say that once I finally stopped missing her
She was free to leave earth for heaven

I don’t believe in heaven

5
If god were real
And I could live forever by his side

I would still break everything
From bones to hearts

Because I can’t live for tomorrow
I need to live for today

6
As a man
I still tell stories in order to get people to like me

So
When my unicorn finally dies
Or majestically sacrifices himself
For my sake

I will grind him down to glitter
And unicorn glue
(Which is very strong)

I’ll make a sign so big you can see it sparkle from space

I was here *******

And this is how I will live forever

I let the towel drop and heard the first bird chirp of the morning

Strands of gold melted through the blinds
They warm my skin

It felt good to feel the warmth without actually being touched

Eyes shut
I find myself leaning
praying for the pressure of fingertips

I put my clothes on
Outside a cacophony begins
I think about the fabric of my clothes
How I don’t even notice what it feels like to wear them

I am more aware of being naked

I have been naked in front of you

And now I wonder how long it will take
Before I forget what your fingers felt like

I think of the birds outside my window
I think they live in the orange tree

Their sporadic music sounds like fear to me
Sounds like stress
Sounds like
What you do after you’ve put your ear to the ground
And have heard the rumble coming

I heard the rumble coming
And I waited for it purposely
Just so I could have a little more time

You are the most beautiful stampede
To have ever pummeled me

And to be honest

It felt good to be touched like that

My heart was in spin cycle and I knew she would hang me out to dry
Michael tells me

Tells me
I knew she would find someone to fill the gaps I couldn’t fill*

Dear Michael,

You knew this was going to happen from the start

But it felt good while she let you hold her
when her past came back to haunt her

How your arms felt like the biggest arms
And your heart felt like the biggest heart
And you felt like a man

A real man
Who can make her feel a little less lonely
Until someone comes along who’s better at it

She tells you about him

Tells you how funny he is
And charming
And about his mini crooked sailboat dimples

You are better than he is
You are better than the wind ******* back his cheeks

And you know what?

You’re brave for trying
Brave for giving someone else the weight of your arms
Brave for the buckle of legs when you saw them kiss
And wished he was you

You are so much better than that

And you’re brave

So don’t walk away from this
A lonely casualty
Or a martyr

Wring your heart out red again
Til your body is a fortress fire pumping passion
Into swollen arms so heavy
They dangle like chains

Let them know they can weld around anybody
But not just any body Michael

Not just any body

And not hers

I know
It doesn’t feel good

But boy

You’re so ******* brave

I can sleep on her thighs if she’d let me

Hear the ache in her hips when she moves

She is a body of bricks crumbling
Succumbing to the soft

It is my head pressed to the wall of her belly
Her hand on my face
Like a shield from the noise
Of her bombing

She is a fort
Still standing
Months after the ***** ricochet
And I know I could sleep safely there

She tells me I’m cute when I’m comfortable

I want to tell her she feels like shelter

Want to tell her I haven’t slept well in months

From nights where I drink til my eyes shut proper
Nights where this bed is one person too close to being empty
Nights where I wake up from dreams
Heart so heavy
I sink into staring
And don’t go back to sleep

I want to take refuge there
On thighs like trench walls
Hatched with bed post notches
From lovers who have lost

I don’t need you to love me
I just need to know what it’s like

To sleep in safety

To the simple minded man
This day would have been like the rest

Would have been an overdone steak dinner
Alone

But he plays a broken bone remix
Of ex-lover’s gritted teeth

It is the click in his jaw over steak
That reminds him of the gnashing

He nurses a beer
In between helpings

But there’s always the click
A painful metronome
For past music
When he was capable of lapping the language out of her mouth

Days when he was all noise
Like a hallway echo
Or a fist through drywall
Or a nightmare gasp

But now all he needs is the cotton he eats
To soak up the sound

So he won’t have to listen to himself keep sayin’

There used to be this growl my gut made
For your bitter music
When we choreographed a collision
Of bone
And breath
And teeth that touched when I still thought I wasn’t pressing hard enough

The masticating click
Reminds him of her smile

It hurts his jaw
And his memory
But he continues making her painful sound
Like it might actually bring her back

And it does a little
Just for today

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow is too far away