Home Room.
I left a note
in your locker
slipped it through the bones
of your ragged ribcage
knocked against your chest
before the bell rang
scribbled over old wounds
and labored breathing
with my thin handwriting
Sorry to force my way in
I forget the combination
guess clumsily at the digits
turn myself this way and that
writhe back
work it out walk it off
I open back up eventually
but my wrists are weak
this paper is crumpled
Written between blue lines
along the sinew
our tired veins
(if this is us
if this body is yours now, too)
“this is my heart,
this is my heart”
Flight Patterns.
If you’re my home, I'm homesick. You board a plane and everything becomes unfamiliar. Through this turbulence —that tremor and tremble— my wild whirlwind mind is wearing itself out. Thinning, finally. Exhausted. Can I starve fear by depriving it of safe ground, or still water? We're soaring, I think. Flying further. Shape-shifting our longing by sky gazing. Fast moving storm clouds. Stars, if we let them transform across our sleeping bodies. Awake, I am gentler. I’m your sunset if you're dawn.
I am becoming aware of how I am softening. Dripping like condensation from cool glass. Pouring over you. Melting against you like tired fabric; an old t-shirt, sheer against the press and pull of nostalgic palms —admiring the way it drapes so easily around the form of the wrist when turned right-side-in. Gently pliable at the back, loose at the neck and through the shoulders. I keep asking you to leave me behind when you go anywhere, ashamed, within the walls of your suitcase. Confined. Latched for good measure. I beg sometimes, to set aside my tattered affection. It's old. Worn. Habitual. I subject myself to writhe in that heap I'm in. I come up with new excuses when I am restless and alone. A puddle of mathematically inaccurate if-then algorithms. No rest for the desire of your figure.
I am programmed this way, a skipping record. I dream so often that I'll lose you that I can't help it. An ambitious nightmarer that you quiet with a shake of your head and the way you ask to lay with me. (I almost always answer, "Please.") Let me dissolve with the sharpness of our memories. Pain blurs around the edges eventually. Faded and pale. I watch you adjust the settings on your camera to keep us in focus. A new lens to see more. Developing this snapshot of time in a way that still feels beautiful to you. As much as I discard your vision, you disregard my desires to break, destroy. Shred.
I know I'm wrong. I write about it all the time. You tell me so, softly, when I am doubtful, but I know. I know. I just need the reminder. When you do, take me from your desk drawer and keep me between the pages of your book. Read me at the wrong time, the right time, all the time. Vulnerable, like folded paper ripping neatly at the seam, wet with careful envelope-kissing. Tearing without outcry, I am still your love letter. Always. Cautiously grazing your skin, at your fingertips, your lips, when you fold me up for later. Tangled and afraid for now, I think I am the pieces you packed for comfort, weary of travel.
Where is home now, and are you homesick, too?
Vapor.
Tired ocean eyes
stare at an endless horizon
Downcast lashes for now
Dark and snow-tipped
fluttering like birds
on the echo of a hillside hymn
a prayer whispered
from languid terrain
and cold exhales
Pale curtains part
for intrepid dancers
a slow ghost waltz
rising up gracefully before fading
like mist; a fistful of dust
disappearing in a ceiling of shade
Grey and white, silver and still
Shrouding the jewels
that encrust your gilded winter
like a sunless daydream
You curl into warm sweaters
in search of humbler stones
I’ll watch you comb your beaches
carelessly plucking quiet agates
collecting my unread poems
or the weight of my longing
silenced, in a small glass jar
Mendocino.
What a rush, a terrible rush
At my own expense
Running blind like always
My sordid adventures
But I'll be back soon
I don't know how to drown
In your tall trees yet
And I envy them a little
Embraced at their necks
By loving ghosts
Please hold me, too?
Find me when I'm lost?
Perhaps I'll kiss you with my eyes closed
Pull you under me
Wade more gently
I'll cool you down
Leave you just long enough
To shiver in my absence
Or taste the salt
I left on your lips
Friendly Fire.
I’ll sculpt with bitterness
in stone, in clay
in my clumsy cynicism
the ragged figure of a young man
I’ll craft the sloven years
with nothing refined
or smoothed over
rough around the edges
It’d be the embodiment of
a strange shyness
swallowed mouthfuls of hope
and perceived cadging
That reminder is ugly and this statue is uglier
such a proud, lonely pose
shrugging away from
any hands that ever cared
I’ll leave my tools in his side
and step back to look it over
“A real piece of work”
That’s what my father would say
“Of course I was,” I’ll laugh
But I’d abhor the sight of it
and cast my work in metal
finished at last
He has the shell I’ve always desired
this bullet proof self-portrait
and I think I almost admire it
so much I avert his bronze stare
I want that cold skin
As I remove my palms from the kiln
patch the real wounds I’ve obtained
in kinder cloth
I wonder thoughtlessly
if that poor soul
is ever jealous
of my warmth
“I don’t care,” I say aloud
Turn off the lights and retire
leave my shadow to stand
the silhouette of my stillness
but beneath my breath
find that affirmation leave me
thinking of his lifeless eyes
my eyes, too
“But I do care,” I say softly,
to no one but myself,
an empty room, and my sculpture,
“God, it hurts.”
Racetrack.
I made note of my run
Marked it in the leftmost lane
Speedy Gonzales Saturday mornings
with the radio on
Drown out my panic
and the caricature of my self-loathing
with a schedule
Song, speech, song
Forgetting the nostalgic
high pitch sounds of
getting anywhere
too quickly to measure accurately
I'm already halfway there
My destination highlighted
On the map in my dad's old truck
tucked in the pocket behind the seat
curled gently and careworn
I know this route
It has your name on it
and I'll be there soon
you just got there in a hurry
Fast as lightning
Warp.
Blue petal skin folding inward
A shivering self embrace
Trembling shoulders
and small cool notches
Freckled spine lingering
Beneath pale raised rivets
Scarlet fingernails rest for now
Having clawed at the neck
Never quite comfortable with how
She's gotten bone deep
Unreachable
Asleep
Tucked within the marrow
Hibernating
Perhaps until spring
Storm Chaser.
I’ve been saying, “tomorrow,” for the last three months, dreaming again in a bent and hollow sort of way, shoving myself into all of my crooked corners. I’ve purposely avoided it up to now, trying to dodge it, like an expert lightning runner —my sad attempts to slip unnoticed past the inevitable summer months.
It denies my wishes for a moderate temperature and ruthlessly tortures me with its slow crawl in my direction, wrapping its clammy hands around my throat to pin me to hot pavement; sparks within me and kindles unkempt fires, burns me at the shoulders like Memorial Day fireworks —feels so potent I can almost see it tucked behind the horizon. Waiting.
I want to taste a sky that slowly darkens, bowing its graceful head to welcome a storm that may never come, existing only to fool me into praying another day for rain.
Dream Catcher.
Retrograde brides
Sink into the warm pool
Catatonic smiles
Beneath hooded lashes
My poor ancestors
Foolishly donning a white veil
With bright, crystalline eyes
Their still bodies
And pale, sullen cheeks
Drown me
Finger brushed collarbones
Apathetic embraces
Pull me deeper
into a wavering mirror
Of deafening static
Their collapsed chests cling
Against my beating heart
And I decide my suicide dreams
May kill me in the end
But only because
While I am alive
I am painfully aware
I have not lived