for many years i've been
quietly tempering my closest-held dreams,
diluting and dampering the kinds of wishes
that are so deep
and real and true that they cannot even be articulated,
they cannot be depicted, for fear of
chastisement or abandonment or a very strong wind.
i have peeled these hopes out of my heart,
cast them off
as useless adornment, unintellectual, unwise.
if it doesn't further my career--
if it doesn't progress my education--
if it can't be put on my resume,
then i can't have it.
i am not sure what to do about this.
it is merely a statement of fact.

i write haphazardly for the imagined gaze, looking over my shoulder;
i listen to music quietly, waiting for footsteps behind me;
i read with phone in hand, waiting for it to ring;
i speak with hesitation, sure i will be interrupted soon;
i cook unsure of measurements, of how many servings are needed;
i park looking for other vehicles, one vehicle, somewhere;
i sleep carefully, arced along the absence on the other side;
i live breathlessly, fitfully, waiting for fulfillment, for you.

because by the time i say something
it will already be too late,
i'm writing a letter to you
that you will never read.
it's about how i've loved you too hard,
known you too well, kissed you too often.
it's about how i've
written this letter to you too many times
and never sent it, and should have,
many many times.
it's about how when i see you my heart
stops
and my blood races and i flush,
how when i kiss you my eyes close and
the churning of my body pauses
for just that one sweet moment.
it's about how your time
is so scarce, and how that in itself
wastes whatever effort you spend:
how i need more,
will always need more,
will never be sated or quieted or soft.
because by the time i say something
i have already decided
not to write this letter again,
i am writing it now, and will send it
after i've left.

when the white lady in the hood library
asks me if she can help me find anything--
seemingly grateful for a 'safe' face to talk to,
or maybe just to talk to someone
who looks like they might want to talk about books,
and not tax returns or job applications
or high school research papers and wikipedia--
when the white lady in the hood library
approaches me, and wants to help me find a book,
i ask her what the young people are reading these days.
she looks at me funny; clearly she hasn't seen
what's already in my hands, austen, joyce,
hemingway and faulkner, atwood and carson and friedan.
she says, evanovich? and i try to hide the smirk,
but she sees. proulx, she says; and i say, sure,
can you show me where? she hands me a paperback,
worn and torn, smiles and leaves me.
impulsively i want to touch her shoulder, turn her around,
and tell her-- i am going to read this book naked.
i read it in high school, and then again in college,
and hated myself afterwards, both times. for a book
like this, you must be willing to bare yourself,
to open yourself up, gut to sternum to mouth,
a red line of blood up your belly and tongue,
to get even a taste of what the author is saying.
i want to tell her, i will read this book naked
on my stomach, in the middle of my bed,
in the sunlight on a sunday afternoon when i
should have gone to church but skipped, to sleep,
and to read this book naked. because proulx
and irving and plath and morrison and vonnegut
must be experienced wholly, as the sentient, sensory stories
that they are. you can't do that wrapped in image,
you can't read them cloaked in your outside face.
but i don't reach for her, i don't admit this to her,
i just add the book to my pile and sigh
because the white lady in the hood library
probably talked to me because i am white.

it's a foggy night, the mist seeping up out of asphalt and concrete, a reminder that beneath the flattened and fortified ground still lies the original swamp. streetlights create halos of orange, spheres of fire turned sickly in the dense air, dotting each corner. from her balcony she can see clearly only to the ground, to end of her block; beyond that, more pale dots floating in the mist, but no sidewalks, no front stoops. pedestrians appear only to disappear at the other end of the block, engulfed by the dimness, the pallor, the pixelation of the fog.
she lights up, the fire in her hands the only bright thing, a visual event marked by its difference from the rest of the scene. the fire sprouts at the first click, as though eager to purge the dank air around it. the night smells oddly natural, the stink of urbanity covered by wet wood, wet grass, rotting leaves, and now the dark brown tobacco smell as it fills her lungs and nose and mouth. the first drag is long, and nicotine races into her blood, heady and unkempt. her pulse, quickened by chemicals, feels louder and faster than anything else in the night, even the cars slowed by an inability to predict what the street will be like on the next block.
she exhales, slow and smooth, the taste of burning leaves coating her tongue. the blue smoke rises into the mist, hangs heavily between the water molecules. silver tendrils shoulder their way up into the higher fog, visible for long minutes after their release, maintaining form and color as they crawl upwards. the second exhaled breath rises more quickly through the path cut through the mist by the first, catching the old smoke, joining to it, both pushing higher together. the darker smoke from the cigarette as it burns lists laterally away from her hand, lazy as it goes, unconcerned with its shape and all the more twisted and looped for it.
by the time the cigarette is burned down, she is the epicenter of a halo herself, one made of blue and grey haze, the smells of old earth and chemicals and burning carbon, and a memory of hot sun and warm dirt and greening, browning leaves. from where she stands the lights in the street are even fainter, disguised once by fog and twice by smoke. as she turns to go inside, she sets the smoke to swirling again, and agitated by her movements, what once lingered around her hand and her body now sets itself on a course for the sky.

always, the waiting.
this time, cemented by knowledge and desire,
stagnated by distance and stress--
for the depth of the need i have for you now,
there are not enough words
there are not enough memories
there is too much changeability, between me and you,
and i cannot be satisfied.
i am not sated by promises, i am not
filled with affection or articulation, i will not be
contented with hope.
i am caprice, winsome and lithe,
curling up between your fingers and
blowing away like smoke in a summer breeze.
i am all need, all desperation,
all loud and vibrant and crying:
the depth of the need i have for you now,
it could eat me alive,
it could swallow me whole.

i am a black hole for words, my stellar consumption
outpacing and outreaching all communication.
i am a sneering gulf of nothingness, of stagnation,
a pit that creates nothing, says nothing, provides nothing.
i am a path for hopes, when they get lost;
for dreams, when they are abandoned; for anger and rage,
when they are spit out, verbal, projectile.
i am a way for all of these, and logic, and illogic,
to reach across the universe, to be deposited in
some smooth elsewhere.
i am a road that lets language pick its own verb,
an allowance for ideas that want to run
and jump and hobble and stumble and skip and
claw their way into other minds.
dump a sentence in, find it where it lands.