Supple skin, insides of elbows
we scratched til they bled
split lips and scraped knees
I would follow you anywhere
Burrowed in your old clothes
you didn’t wear dresses
so neither did I.
Curled up on your too-green carpet
watching the fish in your tank
commit suicide one by one.
Can we stay the same?
Before Momma’s on the phone
shouting about faulty vaccines.
Before the world descends upon us.
In the night
you would slowly voice the thoughts:
what is the value of a human life
if it is miserable. If people laugh and mock,
if that life is silently and hopelessly
alone, and suddenly aware of it’s own strangeness.
It takes hours, to string this together
creeping towards 3am in the pitch dark.
we are sitting on the floor,
I promise with all of my eight year old honor
all of my fighting might,
I will not abandon you to this cruel world trapping
you. All this unknown grief
for the emotions you cannot understand.

Over the bridges to the north side of town
fluorescent flickers, the beer billboards are bigger
Where you live.
We don’t really have billboards on the east side of the rail yard
Where I live.
But I don’t find you in the elementary school
shut down, infested by the deadly spiders.
or patriarchs inebriated, stumbling back to
cinderblock houses where no one really waits up anymore.
Every soul a flickered star. Maybe dying,
finding last comforts in the black velvet of night.
No, I don’t find you hiding in the hateful corners
of your brother’s triangle folded flag that rested
on a coffin.
Or the alcoholic bottle your mother hands me with a friendly smile.
Tiny threads of crumbling concrete barely connect my world with yours
I might be dreaming, at night lying in the grass of the tallest hill
Where you live
Holding me selfishly, the night is black in my eyes
and the view is not so clear back to
Where I live.

Late at night I am creative
in the form of a fizzing soda bottle
pomegranate deep purple liquid
poured into a glass tumbler three fourths full
standing on a chair moving cereal boxes

that tall glass bottle in the back of the cupboard
splashing it in the tumbler clear and sour

half a teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lime
mixing until I see the pink froth on top
drinking it down before I realize what I’m doing

Flash back to a few hours before
“you smell good” is what he said to me
leaning in, whispering it in my ear

Well how do you like me now?
breath full of fruit and something sharper
I can’t say you’d approve of the way my brain buzzes
but I know, secretly, you would understand

I used a thesaurus for this
I wanted to have the right word
for when you look at me
and laugh
because you’re amazed
I’m in front of you.
I wanted the right word
for when you unexpectedly
grab my hand
and say what I’m thinking.
For the way grape and melon slushies
or ice cream with too many sprinkles
are things for only us.
For all of those times I’ve said
“I know”
when I don’t.
Spitting off the tops of parking garages.
When I try to tell you what you are to me.
Trying to describe the deeps of your eyes,
my strange love for your nose,
and that smile that launched a thousand blood cells
or something.
The broadness of your shoulders I imagine curling
into sometimes
when I’m feeling tired.
VITAE
I wanted to fly kites and sing
directly
on
key.

December 30, 2010 1:00 am

Am sitting, as always
at the left edge of the couch
clutching my tall glass of water
forcing myself to drink
the weather is so dry out there
forcing myself to exist
the weather is so dry in winter.

December 30, 2010 1:13 am

Barely illuminated, I search
my dead grandmother’s eyes
for wisdom, familiarity
but they tell me I look like
the French side of the family
which in reality,
Never existed.

December 30, 2010 1:27 am

I smell too much like you
but it is late, I cannot stand
long enough to shower
without my knees buckling
my heart beats in sets of three
the doctors cannot fix it today
so, I am like another inch gone
at the rim of my water glass
******* to the jugular
of my feeble, thorough
existence.

The world sifts through my window screens
warm, soft air pressing up against my bare legs
a neighbor girl laughs through the black night
it’s to late to be neighborly
but still they talk
and the dogs bark
my brother’s piano music floats up to me from the first floor
and I wonder if the people walking
stop to hear Chopin’s light tones
turn to jazz and then to something distinctly more baroque
as the thunder clouds roll in.

If you can hear this
I don’t know
Been waiting in a cookie cutter hotel
the sheets turned down starched white
scratchy
So you’re not coming today?
that was both rhetorical and sarcastic.
Today or tomorrow
the next day, no
I crossed off your name but
I don’t know
If you can hear this.