Community building

Start with this: bring a baked good everywhere you go,
and leave it there. Host dinner parties. Then, host the kind of dinner party
where folks come over early and help cook.
Go to meetings. Be the person who stays late after the meeting
to help put the chairs away. Once you are known for
being that person, try also getting there early to help set up,
and say, hey, what if we put the chairs in a big circle instead of rows?
Go to dance parties, gallery openings, poetry readings
with the same people who are at those meetings. Ask them
how their children are, what book they’re reading, if they could recommend
a restaurant. Do not talk about the news.
Visit the grocery or bakery whose shop sign is in
a language you cannot read. Ask the person behind the counter
what their specialty is; order three.
Leave wine in your friends’ houses. Sing along
with hymns in church, with the jukebox at the bar, with the radio
when your car windows are down in the summer.
When you hear a good idea, tell that person that it is a good idea
and let them tell you how to implement it.

Today all I can do is stand in the middle of my kitchen and let waves of grief wash over me
But then I get to thinking, why do we say that they wash over us
This rolling deluge of everything I lose when your body ceases to walk and talk next to mine does not make me cleaner
It does not sluice away any of what I am feeling, there is no evacuation of dirt at the end of it, just
Me standing in the middle of my kitchen, drenched

I will never be able to walk around in this town and not see you
You are what the bricks are made of
You are the crests of the cliffs overlooking our lake
You are the rhythm of the waves on the concrete breakwater
You are the potholes, the asphalt, the sidewalk, the city square
You are the gulls that follow me, the ravens that conjure me
You are the divots in the limestone they dredged out of the lake
You are the first brewery, built before we even had a courthouse
You are the sweeping illnesses that perpetually knocked us back
You are the halved headstones in our oldest cemeteries
You are the belonging of me to this place you are

There’s the ex I just didn’t have time for, the ex whose emotional needs were so high I was exhausted in six months, the ex whose complete inability to see me highlighted my alcoholism, and then there’s you.
And I still wonder how you’re with her, when you lasted so long with me, and you could not have picked someone more different. (This, tho, assumes too much agency for you I think. You who always picks the path of least resistance.)
And you’re gonna cum to another boring blow job video tonight, after playing xbox for two more hours when she’s gone to sleep, because this is comfortable, because this is what is known. Should I regret losing this?

The dim side of 7am still, the sky
just opening up. Hours I know
I cannot get back: spent in the
deafdumb of sleep, unconscious and
waiting for traps to spring, for wheels
to unwind. You are
my waking moments, still.
There is no light or heat that
could burn off this fog,
so I enhance it, stay small
and still in the grey pre-dawn.
Wishing I had scratched the ink
pure out of your skin, wishing
I had made a souvenir of your eyes
or your grief. A trinket box
filled with what you won’t let me
let go of: ticket stubs, highway tolls,
the lip stain I wore on our second date.
Even alone I am not without
the burden I meant to put down,
when I left you. The sky a mile wide
and fraying, and me, grey
under its belly and losing hope.

What we were taught to want:
The things you think you are:
And what I have done
To be slowed to be in this moment with you:

Categorically, strange. Sizing ourselves up
Against the night sky, a television family,
A print ad for discount shampoo.
Purchased physical beauty, where stretch marks
And scars (the places where I have held you
Imprinted on my skin) are battlegrounds
To be conquered, where my body
Is primed for commercial  conquest.

There is no affirmation for deviance.
If you create, if you challenge or create
Or catalyze or incite, you do so
Because you must. There is no
Narrative without your labor, but
They will tell you that the story is already set.

we crawl from branch to branch, tiny coordinated limbs
gross in the great, scheming abandon of the world.
I rub myself along the soft of the stalks:
a show for you, directionality, so that you can feel control.

somewhere along the sunflower stems
I've lost you, your face in a yellow frame.
I think I am free but it's one moment, one leg over,
until I am at home again.

your dance, distinct among the rest, tells
of your journey and weary desires:
still you chase among the blossoms.
still you gather, and make your honey.

bury me here in the brown red dirt:
with cups and bowls and spoons and soap,
mint leaves and the dozen ways we call the moon.
plant me, and let me grieve.

I walk over my own grave, send shivers 

up the spine of this already-spent shell. I walk 

over frozen ponds, the shallows there

filled with bodies I have left behind:

I press my white palms up to the ice where

the soles of my feet pass over.

I climb mountains built of my bones, 

grabbing the knobs of my hips for 

purchase, finding footholds in my own 

open mouth, jaw askew, emptied eyes. I

wade through the swamps of my old

blood, slipping on old skin, pushing through

past selves. I walk over my own grave

dragging my headstone a few feet farther.