it has been two weeks and
the fantasies are starting
the daydreams where you show up
in the middle of the night hands and breath
shaking
clothes anxious to take their place
on the floor in the corner
where we are no longer lovers
in name or shape
we are sea and mountain we are
paint mixing spilling
into and out of each other
the daydreams where we stay
laced and woven
beneath your grey blanket
until the doves start whispering about us
sometime around seven in the morning

three different beds
and
not one is home

I told you a year ago
while we were buried somewhere
in the mountains, I'm not sure which ones,
that I believe in magic

and you didn't say so but
I think you silently agreed—
how could you not?

You too watched the sun climb from behind
the mountains overlooking us,
and heard how joyously the birds sang when it did.

I've become a museum
in which you
are the only exhibit

what good is it
to be a writer
who never writes

-I'll never call myself a writer again

it's the way you delve into me
like I am the most divine flavor
to ever grace your tongue
your lips pull prayers out of me
that would put those
ancient hymns to shame

My father scours the yard with
sweet, intentional steps
He picks a red leaf from the field maple out front,
a yellow one from the tulip poplar in the back,
says thank you to no one in particular.
Later I sit at my mother’s desk writing, again.
I notice two leaves,
one red and one a soft yellow
placed gently on top of her daily planner.

there's something comforting about
returning to the basics
welcoming a heightened heart beat
with open arms
being okay
once again
with the sweat collecting on my palms
touching my knee to your's
barely enough
for you to even know I'm there

It’s a quarter past eight in the morning
The birds are singing, they’re getting better at their harmonies
As the weeks pass
I count four different songs, mingling together, pouring in
Through the window we left open all night
It’s finally warm enough to let the breeze
Carry through my small over priced apartment
There are new leaves on the trees, my favorite color green
You leave new fingerprints everywhere
Like I’m your favorite book and you’re rereading me
For the third time
The curve of your smile compliments
The arc of your lips,
The curve of your hips, eclipsing the morning light peaking through
My ***** window
You say you could stay like this forever

I spend five minutes trying to catch
a mosquito between my palms
I forget all about my book,
about whatever I'm writing,
just to avoid a bite
as if a bite would be too much to handle
as if I didn't already wake up
without you this morning

am I coughing because
I have smoked far too much or
is it because I am trying to
rid my lungs of whatever
you there is
left in me

My greatest act of self hatred
Was letting myself believe that
I was nothing without you

I became these things
for you and
in your absence
these things
still remain

I'll get sick in the bathroom at school
Because we haven't spoken in days
And
I'll buy the cigarettes I hate and you love
Because that's what you always tasted like
And
I'll try to love myself like you did
Because no one else can
But
I'll die before
I tell you that I miss you

I've always loved mismatched people and things
But the way you wear your makeup
A shade or two lighter than you should
Makes me wonder
Why would you want to trade
The soil in your cells that I adore
For the faded tone you feel so many prefer

I put so much **** into my bath that night,
Hoping it would sink into my pores, anything to get you off my skin and out of my veins.
I sat in that bath until it was as cold as your pool on that one spring night.
The only difference is that this time you weren’t there holding me.
But oh, you were there.
In my watery eyes and erratic pulse,
In my slightly wet hair and torn up fingernails.
I wasn’t sobbing hysterically.
Just the occasional tear trailing down my face past my vacant expression.
Watching them hit the water, I remembered when it used to be blood
That would spread in reddish brown clouds all around me.
I don’t hurt myself anymore.
I just let you do it for me.

you say you can't move your hips
the way that boys want you to
but no one brings me to my knees
the way that you do
when your lips erase and retrace
beautiful words on my skin
that I never thought were
meant for people like me

Who would have known that
My smile would find its shine
By the gaze of two crystal eyes
At the hands of one nervously scribbled line

you plucked at my heart strings
like those of a harp
and pulled music out of me
when I was so sure
I had been bent
permanently out of tune

they played with your heart
like it was their favorite game
and didn't bother to tell you the rules

I'll lie to whoever comes next
"I don't like being called baby," I'll say but
what I'll mean is that
it will never sound as good in her mouth
as it did in yours

We made a game out of it
clapping mosquitos between our palms
while we sat on a blanket
in the middle of, honestly,
their house, covered in grass and dew.
And we quoted, I'm sure a very smart scientist
who said that they could be eradicated—
all of them
those tiny things with
black and white striped legs
and long thirsty throats—
without any significant damage done.
If that is the standard
for whether a thing should exist
or whether it shouldn't,
I pray no big and great thing
notices us, melting entire continents and
setting entire countries on fire.

I wonder how no one else stops to look
at the perfect, untouchable vertebrae of the clouds,
the illuminated flies and gnats and mosquitos
hovering like snow above the grass.

How no one cares to talk about october breezes
between their toes, in the curve of their ears.

How no one hears how earnestly the squirrels
run across cool pavement and up oak trees
where they'll spend the next four, maybe five months.

I hope I'm not the only one
who notices these little magics.

It's a cliché, almost,
daffodils springing out of snow.
But does that mean that
it's not worth noticing,
maybe even marveling at?

How devastating the quiet was
Without your paws pawing
Beneath my door

So excited to hear me snoring
So thrilled to belong to me
And I to you, friend.

So very quiet.

I like the way my father talks about trees. Introducing me to the one across the street from the new house—"This one's a sycamore, and I'd say it's doing a **** good job at it." It'd be a cliché to say he thinks of them as his friends, which he doesn't. But it wouldn't be overdone to say that he knows them as if they were, which he does.

I don’t know if I’ll ever tell anyone
About how we fell asleep
Together for the first time in
Two months how
Even after I turned over on my side and
You turned onto your stomach
Because it’s just more comfortable
That way, we kept our feet
Tangled my toes beneath yours

And we may have stayed like that all night
But I’ll never know
I slept far too soundly

We met you in the morning
Two miles up the mountain’s spine.
All broad and beautiful,
Full of intent, and of blackberries.
Before I knew it not three yards stood between us.
My two legs together were smaller than just one
Of your outstretched arms, reaching
For something sweet in the bushes. Quite like us, I think.
“Black bear” is the word we used.
You sauntered off, smelling of musk and honey,
Your child, all fluff and fight, in tow,
Probably entirely not knowing
That you were the miracle of the day.

I've spent hours, probably,
strolling the same streets,
walking the same trails seeing
just house quiet my feet
can possibly be on three inches
of dried up leaves,
wondering what the doves,
what the wrens are saying
so loudly, so charismatically to each other
and it's a wonder that
one hasn't said to me
"why do you need to know
what it is that we're saying,
is it not enough to know that
we're saying it at all?"

have the snails,
the owls,
the quiet and sleepy groundhogs
ever once complained
about something as wonderful
as the rain

There's a bird that sings
at 5 o'clock on any given evening
where the sun happens to be out.
He sits in the crepe myrtle out front,
so excited and boisterously
announcing yet another sunset—thank goodness.
I wish I knew just how to thank him.
I do not think that he'd appreciate a poem
as much as I would.
Then again, I could be wrong—
I usually am.