through my apartment wall I can hear my neighbor writing on a chalkboard,
only a couple of scratches every night,
and I think he must be making tally marks:
another block of time passed stacked on all other passed time, segmented for ease of reference or glorification or
erasure...

there are cobwebs inside the gaps of my joints --
I am 21 and I have been kissed and I have
tripped and fallen and burned myself on hot metal and
drunk too much sobbing from the alcohol sloshing inside my organs and dissolving holes in my soft tissue and I have
tried Christian novels when I felt aimless and lonely and
been undressed by people I don't speak to anymore and
my body is a haphazard concoction of chemicals,
some ash and some poison accumulating already
into something irreversible...

my body and my mind is a sandbox I've been ******* with in pitch black, hoping a fistful that I throw one day will at least hit a light switch,
and I must have packed a pile of sand too high because now she misses you,
all her concavities ache for you... and
I'm not sure she knows who she misses, in particular,
just that she used to have a hand to hold in the dark,
and that she doesn't anymore.

the alarm clock
in my childhood bedroom
has always been
fast by a minute or 2

every month or so i
realign the last digit
with Apple's universal truth

and every month it
slips
out of sync
again

it must be off by such a small fraction
of a second
i tried to calculate it once
0.00001 some-odd something
one brick so minimally out of place
causing the gradual collapse of a skyscraper

i havent found the energy lately
to practice this ritual
and today

my old clock
is fast by 3 minutes
neon green bars flickering silently
marching on
announcing fates to the unwilling and
making
rash judgements

there was nothing i planned to do
with those 3 minutes
and i knew it was
justified in its conviction

but i
realigned the last digit
and watched for 3 minutes
the green flickering rhythmically against
the black screen
climbing minute by minute
finalizing again
my execution

we're all the same, aren't we?
beaming rainwater-soaked prayers through our windows into the cloudy cold twilight or the red morning,

reading underneath creamy lampshade light,
teakettle steam fogging up our wooden cabinet doors,
twinkling kitchen high hats like tiny constellations in a cosmos of homes...

I know that I am not alone in the way the boy sitting in the restaurant window shifted his weight onto his left leg and tucked it underneath him,
in how the girl in white sneakers hopped over the puddle in the sidewalk,
in coathooks and shoeracks and umbrellas and rubber boots,
in the things we have made to protect and aid ourselves against the rawness of the earth.

and I miss your home, your rusty pans in the sink and rough gray towels, your irish butter and frozen burritos in the fridge and nothing else,

but there are so many lives and so many mornings shared among them to comfort me; I am not alone--
we are all missing homes, love, and I am better knowing that I am only feeling what I am supposed to.

I still find myself summoning you

even after I have been numbed and dulled and
painted greyscale,
the crawlspace between my bones and skin filled with spent ashes...

my stomach has learned to fold origami butterflies when she
feels like reminiscing,
missing when her floors weren't littered in corpses...

I still find myself summoning you

when I think that I have found a potent lighter fluid,
just to check that he still isn't enough,
and remember that I am still underwater...

I still find myself summoning you

playing your music, singing your songs in the voice that used to sing with you, and I am envious of it as it follows the melody from a memory I exhumed tonight because
it sounds like it remembers you better than I do,

but in the end I am glad I am forgetting you
even though it will never be my choice to let go
because perhaps one day I won't remember
what it was like to sing with you,
and I won't even notice I'm
underwater

In a large mixing bowl, add:
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose existential anxiety
- 1 ¾ teaspoons philosophical meanderings
- ½ teaspoon purple fatigue from the under-eye
and beat
and beat
and beat
for an hour or two or
until the mixture becomes a pale periwinkle.
​
In a separate bowl, cream together
- 1 cup sticky nostalgia
- 2 cups creamy moonlight, chilled
then crack 2 large wet pupils, at max capacity,
and mix, watching the salty yolks
dissolve sugary memories,
until time travel
begins to make you sick.
​
Then, stir in ½ cup sweat
from folded creases and crannies,
pour the batter carefully into a greased pan,
and bake underneath hot cotton bedsheets.

While waiting,
pluck 6 of the brightest stars out of the black sky,
pound into flat sheets, then
collect 6 pearls of hardened regret
and wrap each in a star.
​
When the cake turns a greenish-grey,
uncover and
top with star pastries
and pink marshmallows
from the early sunrise.

I have a body with purple crushed fingernails,
with burn scars and with joints secured by bolts.
I find soot and oil behind my knees
and in the creases of my sunburnt elbows,
and I tuck it underneath my tongue for nourishment,
paint black the fleshy bottom of my mouth.

In the daylight we work,
in the moonlight we drink and stumble to bed spinning.
We wash our hands in gasoline
and our faces with dirt and kiss our women goodnight.

But coated in whiskey and grime and spit from the mouths of mechanics and truckers and anyone else who wanted me,
my tongue is drunk and slowed but still refuses to forget what it is.
I am, unfortunately, a body that courses with concertos of amber glowing cobblestone and morning sunlight sparkling blue and sprawling green vineyards and everything unmarred and more vivid than life,
and my tongue knows I can only love things that taste like music.

The poets
have staked a claim.
They are not always the type to decide
or declare such things, but
on the matter of the Season of Beautiful Death,
they have unanimously put their dissociated feet down––
Autumn belongs to the poets.

They plant their feet like roots and stand
with limbs like bent branches in half-hesitant salutation of
the low-hanging sun,
and of the wind that smells dangerously
like the citrus-salty sweat on the sternums of
lovers who have long forgotten them,
like smears of strawberry sunset-stained tears on
sticky steering wheel leather,
like caramel-amber irises that they could only then taste by
licking the syrup off the cursive characters
in their own love poems.

Here, now,
with these stacks of decades still decaying in the corners
of our ugly, cluttered crowns,
this is our ritual:
squinting up at the lavender-blue sky, we
concede that we are still broken – (alive, but dying) –
and reinitiate ourselves
as poets.

We breathe in this different kind of death, this
​beautiful
death –
our sticky strawberry reds and caramel ambers displayed like artwork on
these glorious twisted giants –
and we can
pretend we
believe that we
and our heartbreak,
too, are beautiful.

And we look on with aching solidarity
as they burst
into a fireworks display
of a funeral.

She squints her stubbornly sapphire eyes
            so she doesn't have to see
                        how sharp the edges of the world
                                    really are
She blasts music through earbuds
                        into her sensitive ears
                        even though it kills and burns
            so she doesn't have to hear
                        the truth about people
                                     or life
                                     or herself
She cuts scars in her soft skin
            that bleed the blaring music
            she forced into her head
                        so when they dry into scabs
            she won't have to feel
                        what dreams are really made of

Her eyes
            her ears
                        her skin
were a gift to her so that she might
see
            hear
                        feel
but the cruel, ugly world
is too much for her
            Why me?
                        she whispers
                        through hopeless tears and clenched teeth
            Why am I Chosen to see
                        the world
                        through the lens of raw reality?
She begs for
blindness
            deafness
                        no feeling
like the rest of them
It is too much for her
to be
truly

Aware

I want to exist in a way that floods my capillaries with
the silver sparkling sea foam that erupts out of the sky-colored lake
and fizzles out like I do,
like I will.

take me with you,
seagulls and woman in bohemian jewelry
and billowing brown—

I want to exist in a way that I will never.

until my palms can absorb crocuses,
crumble into sand and soil for them to grow networks of roots
in my bloodstream, I will cry by the water
and every time

I see men with white beards and squinted blue eyes riding bicycles,
years swirling behind them as they pass because
they already know how to live,
how to accumulate life distilled from tumult.

it is too much for my drying throat to hear the orchestra
without being able to drink its dripping scarlet passion,
to nourish myself with it,

but I could not live without the smell of music.

I don’t know what I came to do here,
so take me with you,
ocean and seagulls and bohemian woman and old men on bicycles with secrets, and
take me with you, violins, in a way that you cannot,
nor that I can even describe to you.

im always
boiling over

always at
            the b r     i       n            k
of somethin
                      g
on the verge

always breaking
tripping            wires
falling            over
shatte­r            ing
            some
                        thing

­everything
is
always             mo            vi            ng
time
            changes
         ­               things
stretches some            things
compresses
            other
things
no matter what
            things
you fill the minutes with
            like little microwave hot-pockets
even if you leave them
            em            p            ty

if they are
            cooking for
too long they
will boil
over

im always
boiling
over

always being
pushed up
            the mountain skyline
                        past heaven
where the linear flow of time
            morphs into
                        infinitesimal infinities
and the sky blackens
with thick
            st            ick            y
suspen
         ­     se

but im never
boil            ed
over
just always
boil            in
                        g

never brok            en
just perpetually
break            in
                           g

never fallen just falling
never shattered
only
ever
            shatter
                        i­
                                    n
                          ­                      g

i dont even wish for
whole-ness
anymore

static-ness
empti-ness

or to start over


i wish
for entropy

to finally
take over

for time to finally
change

me

for boiling

over

for my cracked spirit to finally
break all over

and to finally
turn

to dust

We were having dinner together
            the three of us
It was silent
except for the clicking
            of our forks on our plates
and dark
except for the dim orange glow
            of five little candles on the table
I should have known
            because there was
something deafening about the silence
something blinding about the dark

My father's fork stopped clicking
and he looked up at me
there was
            something crazy in his eyes
his irises turned to ashes
            and fell like snow
            from his darkened face
and he stood slowly
my mother and I with him
            as if drawn up by a magnet

She said his name
            slowly
            careful not to break the delicate silence
but he yelled hers
            his eyes flaming now
            shattering the silence
                        like the brittle glass it was
and he hurled the shards at her
            a thousand at her heart
She
        f
           e
               l
                  l
            with a dull
            eerie
            thud.
Something screamed
            and told me
            to keep the silence
so I stood petrified and said
nothing

But it was already broken
He threw a thousand more
            and added a thousand
            tongues of fire from his eyes
at me
And I fell too
            next to her
I gripped her ****** hand
            as we died together

            killed
                        by the shards

            of broken

silence.

can i ask you–
            my last request
            ill ever ask of
                        anyone
will you
            **** everything i was
            leave no molecule of ink or
                        inkling of madness

burn all my poetry
            and swallow the pathetic pride
                        escaping in the fumes
scrub my skin
            boil down all the feathered hope you can find
                        it is the only half-decent detergent for tear-stains
            scrape until i glow
wash out my throat
            bleach the mold with indifferent silence
                        if you lay it thick enough
                        the words should lose their sticky grip on the walls
            and drown my lungs in perfume
use forks and trowels fashioned from steel apathy
            to pick out the overgrown weeds rooted deep
                        in every crevice of my brain
            dig out the parasitic seedlings of poetry never written
                        plans never executed
                        fantasies never realized
                        words never understood                        
                        storie­s never told

            **** them all
superglue the shards of whatever is left
            so she
                        will never know enough
                        to care
and bury me
            in the clothes she touched
                        when she told me
                        she loved me

i want to pick myself up
            head in pinched fingers
pull my tired body out of reality's
stone walls and
            blurry vision
aching steps
            and charred black worries

crumple me up
            melt me down
and pour me
into the tiny orange flame
of a tall white candle

let me hover over
life
crackle softly
rest peacefully
and
burn

slowly

I decided one day
            as a child of no more than seven
that when I grow up
            and have children of my own
I will name my first daughter
            Celeste
☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽
My baby girl Celeste...
            stardust shimmering in her black eyes
                        hair the color of red giants
            Saturn's rings on her delicate fingers
                        comets coursing through her veins
            constellations on her cheeks and collar bones
☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽
She will daydream too much
            but her teachers will understand
                        that she does not belong in this world.
Her laugh will be as brilliant
            as glowing nebulae
                        flowing purple silk
                                    trillions of miles wide
                        floating in the void
            bursting with new life
If you make her angry
            she will turn you to ice
                        2.7 Kelvin
            crystallize your tears
            make your breath
                        freeze
☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽      ☆      ☽
But if she loves you
                        like she will love me
            she'll never leave you
Because my Celeste loves you more
            than the Sun loves the Earth
            than black holes love the light
            than galaxies love their stairs
and she'll love you until
the universe itself
            stops
cold.

You know those
long days—
not the easy fleeting ones
that drift by more smoothly
than swift pencil dashes
marking
the path of a waxy crayon butterfly—

Not even the ones that chug
slowly
along the creaking moaning train tracks
burnt red with gravel and rust—

No––
They are the ones
you have wrap tightly with
heavy chains
sizzling from lying out in the grueling sun
to drag them along
yourself—
the hard metal digging divots
into your back
as you
P
U
S
H
onward
teeth clenched
sweat oozing from underneath your hair

but still
you
stake
your tiny
inconsequential
dusty sneaker
into the
ground
again
and
PULL

HARDER

how can you tell me you love me?
you know i know you don't mean it
            i know you don't mean it

just like i knew you didnt know–
            couldnt read the lovesick poetry
                        etched onto the curvature of my pupils
            when you laughed and said "you love me"
because–
            no ones in the business of truth here right?
                        i know whats going on
            we're just pushing jokes real close to the boundary
                        but still no one could trammel up enough evidence
                        to make a case for one or the other

but god if
if you meant it

if you really do love me
then
            i dont think i know who i am
i dont think any of me is left
i think
            i am all evaporated tears by now
            and spent ink

please i hope
i hope you dont mean it

because

this doesnt feel like love ...

id have to forget about you
forget that i ever believed id have it someday
tear down my hope banners and polaroid fantasies
            lists and plans and dreams
because

you told me that i
already have

what i thought i wanted

i guess i had hoped you
wouldnt give it away so easily
            even though i used to wish you would

i hoped id feel enveloped in it
thought id never have to bandage up another frostbitten finger
but i

god
why am i still so
cold?

I used to hear them breathing
Their shiny black eyes would
blink at me
cry with me
understand my childish mumbling
listen with undying patience
and reassuring sewn smiles
as I rambled for long hours on end
sprawled on the floor holding them above me

Even though they never moved
I could feel their heartbeats pulsing in unison
the warm glowing light radiating from their souls
I was loved and safe
Their kind thoughts like blue and yellow ribbons
in a magical whirlwind around me
protecting me from the world

I remember being so angry when
I was told they weren't alive
I cried and screamed in torturous agony
the soft purple dreams
that were sewn into me
viciously torn from my heart
I heard the white stitches pop
the seams broken beyond repair
my soul was bleeding
but deep down I had already known

Now I can’t even hear them crying
when I forget their names
I stare with stinging red eyes into their faces
for long hours on end
but I don’t remember
I know we had fun together but
I will never remember
our fantastical adventures in detail
I will never hear the comforting steady rhythm
of their heartbeats again
Now they are only stuffed spirits and
cotton hearts

The vast ocean of a winter night
outside his frosty window

tattered maroon carpet
beneath aching wooden legs

thousands of worn pages
drowning the room
in a sea of delicate ink pearls

he sits at his tiny piano
shoes melting into the floor
puffing deep thought through

his kaolin pipe rubbed smooth
by the years
that have now become as hazy
as his gray smoke

he stares with tired eyes
like dying candles
across the musty room

Monet’s blurred pink lilies sinking,
bleeding into vivid purple ponds
kept alive only by an old wooden frame

he tries to find himself
but sees only Monet’s mud
in the mirror

the fuzzy residual memories
of a colorful dream

his eyes drift down to his own canvas
trembling at the familiar wrath of
his veiny, calloused hands
and he dreams once more

Tell me who this child is––
this Boy King of Cinnamon Orange Forest,
glowing rosy and regal in late October light––

christened by Pennsylvania Sun with freckles dotting
his tiny scrunched-up nose,
and streaks of shiny golden-blonde in his pin-straight russet-brown hair...

Toothless Prince of Red Cheeks and Knuckles,
with eyes pressed closed in firecracker laughter,

when did you last cry?

Can you see the black grease stains on your calloused working palms when you are 15 years older and taller and bigger and rougher and a thousand miles away from here?
Can you feel the boots on your feet and contact lenses in your eyes and splitting pain in your shins and fire in your voice and knots of glorious rage and obsession and passion in your stomach and

can you feel my fingers
in yours,
loving you –– tiny toothless sunkissed you ––
and all of you for always?

Did your heart always know who you are?

what better day than today--

I can't sleep and I can't
stand the daisy bushes at dusk with their
orange glaring eyes glaring
at my fingers turned robot joints back when
they used to--

feel differently
and I

swear I
haven't changed so much and to
prove it I'm trying to dig the eternity out of
algae green and deep walnut irises stranger
and stranger with spoon shovels made of
shallow questions and polite interest without
getting so bored or
wishing I was--

what better day than today to die

I've tied the limbs of my
spirits and monsters alike into knots and
dizzied them in labyrinths of my own muddied judgment
paved with crushed clocks and compass needles and
they are all so far gone, I am
untethered--

even far from my dear music and poetry--

my soul is already split like colored mosaic glass, each of
a thousand fragments not just belonging but
borne out of some piece of art that will long outlive me, so
anyone that minded could
easily piece me back together in death

how I wish that death were the end,
the end, and not a passing over into
some other unknown rumored to outlast everything,
what more terrifying than that and if
I believed there were a true end I might have sought it
much sooner--

what is left for me to do but
papier-mache my body with my old poetry like a
sarcophagus absorbing the things I
trusted to hold me so much closer

when I fall
I fall hard

and fast
deep and
heavy

my heart eroding
            in the acid of its newest
discovery

            I hate

that
it only pumps when
            its blood is draining and
its fibers are being eaten
            
            alive

when I fall
I fall hard

rib cage swelling
            hinges nearly snapping
                        cracking
                       ­ breaking
as it unfolds
             and remolds
to fit

            you

when I fall
I fall hard

in my mind's echo chambers
my own voice dissolves into air and whispers
            its unconditional surrender

            I only hear yours
                        in eerie
            reverberating eternities

when I try to breathe

my lungs only
have room
for

y
            o                        u
              ­          y                        o                        u
   ­         y            o            u
y                           ­                         o                                       u
            y            o            u
                       ­ y                        o                        u
            ­o                        u
y
             o             u

Imagine
       sitting in the endless
       pitch-black void of space
              lit only by stars
                    and more stars
                    as far as you can see
              and Earth beneath you
       reading the daily newspaper
and drinking coffee
       in an itchy old lawn chair
             day
             after day
             after day
Oh hi God how are you?
             the same
Hey Mom how've you been?
             the same
       every day
       every day
no period at the end of the sentence
no cover at the end of the book
no "CUT" to signal it's over
       I'm trying to believe
             I want to know God
             I want to love God
             I don't want to be
       the center of the universe
             I want to believe
       in that library of books
       with all its ancient pages
            dancing lead figurines and
       shelves that stand miles high
all the knowledge in the world
      there must be a book somewhere
in some obscure shelf
      maybe halfway to the Andromeda galaxy
            that knows what is best for us
            that knows we cannot live
for eternity

i thought i was special
i thought she went home and
            spent hours combing through my irises searching for
            colored flecks that match her own

i thought she was hoping so hard that i felt
            her wishes dissolved in tears
            seeping from her palms
                        when she cradled my cheekbones

i thought she always knew what i was thinking –
            that if i let her stare for too long,
            she would find the hopeless poetry
                                    brimming with bitter-tasting imitations
                        that i etched into my retinas
            and the thousands of tattered fading photographs
                        i plastered onto the walls of my mind
                        – a record of all the moments when she
                                    let me go

but really
i've always known she loves you more
i know because i can see your name
embroidered in the fabric of her spirit
and mine is
only
fading in temporary ink
it will be
g    o        n                e
soon

when i am faded and forgotten:
i hope you remember how special she is
i hope you
            tell her everyday ...

            while i cry,
                        missing her,
                        desperately clutching
                                    the skin she touched
                                                now peeled into open wounds
                                                burning in the cold
                        and waterlogged, bodiless papers
                                    covered only with
                                    bitter-tasting imitations,

i hope you
listen as her words melt through you
            as her laugh sparkles in the empty air
fill your cracks and gaping canyons with the gentle blue
            she pours from her irises in silky ribbons
etch the feeling of her delicate fingers through your hair
            onto your retinas
                        maybe you will be able to immortalize her
                        and everything you see will
                        glow
let your pained tears drip silently into her cupped palms
            as she holds you in her sweet rose-colored warmth,

and pin just this one moment
                        onto the blank walls of your mind
            the moment when she held you and
            when, inside, you knew
            that
                        she would
            never
let you go

I know you
I know your sadness
The gleaming blue
          of your eyes melts
          washes into a snowy gray
          soft flurries float down
          and freeze your pale cheeks
          tightening your smile

I know your joy
The light ripples of your laugh
          brighten the very stars
          echo tones of purple
          through my hollow soul
          make the giggling brooks
          glare with envy

With one touch
          I would thaw the frozen fractals
                    in your pained smile
With one breath
          I would smile with you
                    and live in the frequency
                    of your angelic laughter forever

But now cold autumn winds of doubt
          freeze my smile too
          wash my eyes out with snow
          lock up the sparkling sprites
                    of laughter inside me
          as I realize
I don't know you anymore

I used to know
          your joy
          your sadness
they are as much a part of me as
          my living beating heart
but are you different now?
If I rip your eyes from my mind
          your laugh from my ears

will my heart stop too?

every part of her
is in
          flames
even the tiny beads of sweat
glistening on her forehead
          emanate pure
                    pulsating
                    passion
it­ is an entity
          tightens around the muscles
in her wrist
her delicately fierce fingers
          weave scarlet stories
                    in the stuffy air that
          SNAP shut
stiffer than the wood of her stage
          sharper than blades

the fire escapes
          in sparks
          through the bottoms of her shoes
tapping
          clicking
          pounding
             ­       madly
the frills on her vibrant red dress
          trembling
          with every step
the colors fly
          golden scarves
          red and black lace
          dim green lights

the guitar throws his crimson and amber chords
                    into the air
they sparkle in flight
and land softly in her
          thick hair
like jet black
smoke

nothing works
nothing moves
            and everything does

time lurches and jolts
            sprints across desert
                        kicking up the dust of today
and it wades in old rubber boots
            through the sticky muddy swamp of tomorrow

grey and lonely
            tissue paper mornings
crumple
and then let pressure
            compress
them into smooth river rocks
            skip across the lake
            until the water's weight
                        drags them down
                                    fractures –
                                    breaks the glassy mirrored plane
            deep
                        they don't
resist the grasp
or try to open their eyes
in the murky water

as they sink below
the realm
where time

reigns

cool night air doesn't soothe
            it stings
stars twinkle but they
            burn

and clouds are
trillions of pounds

heavy

my bones that have now carried worlds
are frankensteined bits of shells and shrapnel glued
together with calcium paste
and slathered in blue dye
to make everything look new---

I was so whole.

I have now already fractured
in every predictable place,
re-engineered and retrofitted my consciousness with
seismic dampers
and levees

and I am so strong, now.

how does it feel to know that it was you who broke me?
there is no one---
not even you could do what you did to me
again

and it feels good to be a god but mostly infuriating
to think of the fragile thing I used to be
for you, when you knew me.

I haven't seen a waterfall in 4 years,
my re-grafted skin has lost all its electric-sensitivity
and my heart still pumps blood but I reforged my arteries into metal,
which keeps me alive better than before but I
don't remember the last time I
felt anything.

I have neither raincoats nor kneepads,
no snowboots or hands for fighting--
they have torn and twisted my limbs, Lord,
the body you crafted from the glittering fabrics of light and time is
guilty and violated and battleworn, rightfully convicted of her own destruction--

I come to you sickly and pale and polluted, having
pumped my own bloodstream full of acid and toxins, I have even been fighting poison with poison thinking I’d found the antidote thousands of times--

I come to you with nothing in my pockets and
nothing in my heart but shapeless ashen remnants of things I set aflame in worship, now spent and burnt up in the fireplace leaving it
cold--

I come to you like a torrent,
whirling like mad having ripped through acres and acres
of manmade pleasures, through distractions and aspartame and
sleep aids, through souls-- those that are yours, God-- I have torn recklessly into other bodies and souls of your making, leaving everything decimated--

I come to you like a wild animal,
injured, weak, and frightened, with no recourse,
there is nothing that will save me
there is no one that will even see me in the dark
I have never been loved the way you love
I have never been pursued the way you chase after me
I have never conceived of a joy like the one you promise,
a peace like the one you promise,
a comfort like the one you promise--

I come to you, God,
a puddle of mud at your feet, God,
afraid to speak your name because
it is the only thing I have left,
unable to even utter the word daughter,
and undeserving I will let you feed me and clothe me,
clean and bandage up my skinned knees,
carry me, God,
walk with me, Father

i started going to therapy when i
felt my legs buckling
under the weight of my heart

when
i knew that
it had become so drenched and
dripping with guilt and longing that i
couldnt possibly carry it
anymore

even still
morning felt like
            sharp red stings
                        in the papery skin stretched over my
                        temples and eyelids
            and tasted like salt and secrets in a thick paste
                        on my lips and tongue

even still
day always left me with
            imprints of bathroom floor tiles
                        on my throbbing forehead
            stains from your raspberry laughter
                        in my ears
            and fresh wounds from your dagger eyes
                        penetrated deep into the concave surface of my sternum
                        i couldnt help it that my scars were in cursive
                        and read like poetry

even still
at night
            i cried because my head wouldnt forget
                        those dream-colored moments with you
            i cried because every day your eyes told me that you had
            i cried because your laughter tasted like you never knew
            i cried because my heart swelled heavier every day
                        and my arms
were getting tired

i stopped going to therapy when
in my white dress and
            t-bar high heels you said you liked that one time
i drove myself home
            after graduation

when
with a straight face and dry eyes
i knew id never see you again
and my heart
would never need
any more carrying

My grandmother has a pillow
on her couch that says
"God couldn't be everywhere
so he created grandmothers"
My grandma may have a slight hobble,
veiny, knobby hands, and
smile lines and wrinkles of every kind
but she most certainly is
an angel from God

She may have the marks
of a long life on her face
but she has the kindest blue eyes
like delicate robin's eggs

She may not have a model's skin
or figure anymore, but
she wears elegant, clean suits,
shimmering brooches  
on her collars,
and glittering little earrings

She may not have a voice
like smooth velvet anymore, but
upon hearing my slightest achievement
she raises it in ecstatic praise

Sometimes she looks at me in such a way
that I can feel her heart rise with hope and pride
for me and
for what she somehow knows
I am going to accomplish
she smiles a warm little smile and calls me
"the lady with the almond eyes"
pronouncing every consonant
as if each one is a delicate teacup
she is trying so hard not to break

I don't know how she knows
that I am going to make the world proud
but when she calls me
"the lady with the almond eyes"
somehow
I know too

You and I would stand in front of my bathroom mirror and
just hold each other, naked, acquainting ourselves
with the strange, biblical union of joints and hair
and skin and crevices and curves that we make
together...

Fingerpainting reverently on your chest,
I'd kiss your freckled shoulder, eyeing your reflection as it melted,
falling for me again-- and you'd
tell me in return
that my eyes are beautiful, and that they are green,
just like yours.
They are brown, I'd say, and
laugh and
leave
you to
confront only yourself
in my mirror.

Every day that I stand again
in front of my mirror alone--
a similar but emptier amalgamation of joints and curves--
I could swear that my eyes
look a little bit paler...
like if I
point my nose up to the high hat on my ceiling,
with the fluorescent light spilling into them
the color could certainly pass
as the same green in your eyes and
I wonder,
and I hope

that being wrong all this time
doesn't mean I was wrong about you, too.

i guess my question is
what makes people move?
            what thought
            what spark
            what breath
                        in what language
straightens the bones in their knees and tightens the tendons in their legs like
            strings in wooden puppets
up
            down
up
            down
push
            ­off
lift
            up
step
down

how

do they decide
            where to go?
how
do they know
            it is right?
is it
what they are told?

do they ever make
decisions that are their own?

            i think if
that were true


no one would ever move


all paralyzed
            stuck
            in the pitch on the stairs

calculating
            visualizing
                     ­   optimizing
            philosophizing
ourselves

in circles
            in spirals
                        like drills
                        into the cold wet ground

With plastic crown atop his head
and draped in splendid royal red,

he arched his back and struck a pose
to loud applause from costume rows:

the pilgrims bowed and paid respects,
all masks and hats his new subjects,

the ghouls and ghosts saluted too,
and, standing tall, he liked the view.

When spinning 'round to win more cheers
from Mother who must be in tears

to see her son no longer small–
but as a lord, a god, of all,

he found that he was there alone
and where she'd gone he did not know.

Forgetting all his lofty dreams,
he felt unraveled at the seams–

the costumes then all came alive,
with teeth and blood and crazy eyes.

The king who once was lord of all,
lay crying, sobbing, feeling small.

A hand then pressed upon his back–
his mom had found the royal rack,

and wiping tears from burning eyes,
he wished he'd trusted his disguise.

do you think im pretty?

i know i
            have candle stubs
                        for irises
            and wrought iron door hinges
                        for a jaw
where other girls have
            mirrored ponds and
            flower stems

but i scrape the hardened wax off of my stony cheeks
            every morning
and sand down the splinters
                        on my wooden fingertips

it's all i can do because
            the moonlight i carry
                        turns to steam
            and the knots i tied in these flower stems
                        dont withstand the weight

do you think im pretty?
i promise my
            rigid joints can still bend to hold your waist and
            caress your midnight waves
            we can
                        stay here
                                    close
                  ­                              together
                          ­          and
                        breathe the same air
            dont worry about the

scorch marks on my neck or
splinters in my chest
darling they come from inside-
            right
                        here ...
            if you stay close
            i'll keep you
                        so
            warm–

and theres no need to worry
(because
            im
the only
one
close
            enough

to burn)

i washed and folded my dreams
            my threadbare memories
everything i had and i
carried them with me

it was all so much
            lighter than i remember
there was so much more

i was
wearing nothing
but my name
            i never needed anything else
it
            used to keep me
            so much warmer
than it does
now
i never knew how cold
            we are

i remember
looking down at my concave palms
            the ones i knew were mine and
            they opened so deep i could gaze
                        into the blazing eyes of galaxies
                                    –my galaxies–
            every star charted and named
                        nurtured and
                        loved
                               ­     so loved
now i
im not even sure my hands are mine
i know my eyes arent
            i know they
            cannot be so hollow

            they cannot be so hollow

when i went to unpack
every color drained into the ground
and
everything was
ashes

i
touched
my cheekbones and under
the faint shadows of my paper fingertips
my body crumbled
to

d
            u
                        s
          ­                          t

nothing is so
            small that it is
            inconsequential

and yet everyone is
            blind

sickeningly bright
            cities
                        with their glittering thousands
            flicker and burn
                        glimmer in the sun
                        and crumble to ashes in the yellow-grey
                                    belly of night
            and all resurrect at dawn to
                        die
                        again
    ­                                and again
                        without a moment of awe or any consideration

the sidewalks pulse
with
deep blue rhythms

a steady
           dull
                        drumbeat
                        lur­es immortal souls like a magnet
            with each
            metered throb
                                    pounds
                                    illusions into their malleable minds
                                    of meaningless mortality
                                    and empty entropy

their eyes glow with infinities but they
walk according to ephemeral rhythm
            marching through their cyclical days
with strings
            tied to their shoes
convinced they are free and
            that their grey and blue dreams
are the only colors
in the universe

There was suddenly sun spilling all over,
and suddenly hyacinths everywhere.
I have watched everything change so slowly
that nothing ever seemed to move at all,
and in my obstinate blindness, I didn't notice
that the ground had thawed, never mind that it had begun
to bleed spring.

I have never seen spring.
In all honesty, I have never lived
in any sort of weather –
only the starched, air-conditioned bedroom
in my parents' sickeningly stereotypical suburban concoction
of a house, where nothing –
not the dusty closed blinds or even
a blade of grass – ever moved at all.

Here, there are magnolia trees that move,
swaying in soft rhythm.
They have peeled themselves like vinyl stickers off
the backs of my windowpanes, and they really are
alive. I know because they wave to me
in flurries of dip-dyed pink petals –
like a good diaphragm-laugh,
or maybe like a good cry.

I have never laughed,
or cried.
But I cry at everything now –
now that I see it is all alive.
It must be what happens when you start living
alone – growing pains –
I imagine the hyacinths must get growing pains, too,
from exploding like purple fireworks
out of the frozen soil in
no time at all.

I keep close watch of the scars on my body,
making sure that their stories don't liquidate and seep out
like blood when I'm not looking,
that they don't fade and discolor before I remember
who I am without them.
I'm afraid of letting them vanish before
you let yours vanish too.

So I stare pigment into the blisters on my right palm and I
still remember
the first time you held it,
at Six Flags when we were both high on funnelcake and the fumes of late summer mixed with bus fuel and sweat.

I do the same to my shoulder,
where yours would always be after I missed the midnight shuttle
and trudged home with a scarf up to my eyelashes
in the nearly horizontal snow.

And to my ears, because
I'd always have more work to do,
and you'd carry your stereo to my room and play
that song you stained so thoroughly with your voice that
I can't bear to listen to it
anymore.

I spend the most time re-burning the skin around my eyes
to precisely the degree that you did when you brushed the tears
from under them,
and that I did later when
I scratched away at the same flesh because you weren't there
to do it anymore.

I keep close watch of what I never thought would
turn into memories,
making sure that our story doesn't liquidate and trickle away
when I'm not looking,
that it doesn't fade and discolor before I forget
who I was when I knew you.
I'm afraid, too, that you've already long
forgotten.

Before I left to walk to your music show in the courtyard,
I slipped the knife my boyfriend gave me into my dress pocket.
It was heavy enough to weigh down half the outfit, and
radiated something putrid or dissonant in that crowd
of flowers and sandals and paint and honey-chamomile
for the entire duration, but
I needed a reminder of who I am now.

Being near you at all was already a betrayal of myself
because now I guess I'm playing his type: the ******* girl--
the stereotype-smasher-badass-***** girl--
calling her a "girl" isn't even fair
because she chopped enough of her hair
to be Wyoming's worst "******" nightmare,
and she wears work boots and flannels and scars,
(and sweatshirts to cover my secret scrawny arms--)
She’s a piece-of-machinery girl,
a rachet-and-wrenched-myself-together girl,

and it took so ******* long for me to forge a metal exoskeleton
hard enough to smother this stupid gushy heart.

Because a heart only compromises the real **** I have to do in the real world--
not your fantasy world where no one has a job but
slurping your excess passion alone is somehow enough to sustain, and
the men sweep bundles of wild violets-- shooting straight out of the New York City pavement--
into their hands as gifts, and
their women smile and flip their Pantene-commercial hair in slow-motion, and
together the lovers paint poetry onto each other's chests in the dark, and
your long-expired promise of that love-- of your dream--
that you had me believing
still plunges deeper into my stomach than I ever planned it to and it feels like a white-hot
knife splitting me open from throat to bladder--

You came out to hug me when the show ended.
I walked home crying a hydraulic expulsion of the final remnants
of my old, foreclosed heart.
Then he was right there waiting for me at home, and it was so easy
to pretend.

Pearls twinkling                                                        ­  
Cascading waterfall
Drip drop                                                             ­                   
Higher, louder                                    
The pearls sparkle brighter                                          
Flowing faster                                                        
Dr­ip dropping down                      
Down                                                          
I­nto a box                                                              ­  
Lined with blue velvet                                    
Soft, delicate                                                
Intricat­e polished wood                    
Smooth crevices                                                    
Lock­ed                                                          
Click.                                                  
                                                                ­  
Suddenly I break                                    
From iridescent reverie
Eyes dart to the clock.
One hour.
Colors flood back
You're not
"dedicated enough"
"smart enough"
"good enough"
My hands sweat
My spine quivers as it
Sinks
To a tired hunch.

I shut my eyes
Clench my hot fists
Squeeze out a tear.
Fingers stretch back out
And I try to re-enter my dreamland.
Pearls
Hurled onto hard wood floor
Rough grey tattered cloth
Splintered black box.
My sweaty fingers slip off the keys
Shaky wrists locked tight.
Again.
And again.
My hands are hot and wet
My knees ache
My back shakes
And I slam down hard with angry red palms
The box of pearls
Shatters on the merciless floor
I curl upon the rock hard black bench
Bite my bony wrist
And cry
Tears like dusty pearls
Sweaty fingers track fog onto shiny black
I’ll never do it good enough.
Why did I ever think

I could play


An impromptu?