Maybe I just don’t know what doing right by you in this moment means. I wish it didn’t seem like we are only functional when one of us is stable or good. I keep wanting to take all of this on but I don’t think it’s all mine.
Be my fake savior, oh.
Maybe I was right a year and a half ago, locking the door after successfully smiling my ex off my porch five months after the breakup, when I knew I attracted what was alike to me. I know I could not support two or me. I know I would not survive, would not allow myself to have to survive, any more of other peoples fucked up shit.
I can make you feel better, oh.
But I saw your face and I wanted you. I heard your voice and I wanted to listen to you for years. I tallied your humor, your skill, your style, your strength and leapt into this crush with both hands open. I thought that you would never want me; I thought your rejection would be my safety.
And i, for all the openness I have tried to grant, can still not get honesty correct on your terms. Still can’t figure out what’s mine to tell, how much of myself to share, what’s safe and what’s forcing you to shoulder something you didn’t volunteer for.
What is safe? Are you safe around me? I know sometimes I make you doubt. I am a screaming, raging daughter of the earth. I admire justice, lap up the leavings of others’ revenge. I turn cold, bitter, a Himalayan vault of nitrogen anger and untouchable spite.
Am I safe with you? How many layers of myself will I unfurl? How many will you insist upon? How many times with I resheathe my claws wet with my own blood, penance for the ills you’ll say I’ve wrought? I am only a festering, shrieking harpy. I have tried to love you in my own rotting way.
So I don’t know how to do right by you, in this moment. I feel alone. I feel sad. My ability to glory in aloneness has been supplanted by memories of your eyes, your voice, your eyes. I seek your breath, the moving of your rib cage next to mine. If we have fought let me atone. If you are sad let me cry. I would carry this alone so that I can understand it. I would carry this because weight is what I know.
I feel alone.

i want to write poems for you. i look at your face and that's all i can do. 

i want to write the kind of poem that ten years from now, you'll dig out of a shoebox and unfold the yellowed paper and i'll say oh no don't remind me of that and we'll laugh about how completely love-stricken i am for you. 

i want to write the kind of poem that keeps you with me for the next ten years. 

i want to write about the way you laugh, the pleasure and the invitation of it. i want to write the kind of poem that will make you laugh. 

i want to write about your hands. i do write about your hands. how every ounce of human strength and grace and dignity somehow grew into ten furious fingers and your ability to choke me, hold me, cook and break and write and play and create. 

i want to write poems about how carefully you handle the hearts of those you love. 

i want to write about your smile and the way it crooks everyone in the room into whatever joke you are telling, i want to write about your eyes, your voice, your eyes. 

i want to write poems that will make you pause, poems that will make you think, poems that will sneak up on you a few hours later and whisper against the back of your neck just how much i love you. i want to write poems that make your skin warm. 

there are days when all i can do is look at you, because my voice gets caught in my throat, and my heart stops moving in my chest. i think that silence might be my last defense against the layers of my shame and history and fear that threaten to wedge themselves between us. there are days when all i can do is look at you because you are golden to me, a pillar of fire in the sky toward which i will always be walking. i have walked through the same desert for generations, but every life i have lived was walking toward you. 

i am as inept a writer as i am a lover, so instead of all these poems i would write for you i have written only this one. but i am not done writing, and i am not done loving. 

mine, the joyous laughter in the hallway. mine, the flicker of candles on your bare skin. mine, the curtains moving in an evening breeze. mine, the pressure of your palm against my chest. all these gifts, and a million more.
how many times have i said: you leave me, and i grow: abandon me, i am unkempt and unmeted in my ability. but here, at last, in your proud bed i am willing to pause. here i acknowledge the need to express gratitude: here i press a kiss to the curve of your neck.
it's true that i am seismic, eternal, great and growing in the wild ways of the world, a predator and a murmuration both. it's true that i am smaller than a grain of mustard seed. it's true that i am slit open stem to stern, bare-boned and heaving with the guilt of previous generations of my self.
all these things, and a million more: learning to see myself refracted in the decisions and revisions of a distemperate world. mine, the grace of your forgiveness. mine, the pressure of your hot demands. the gift of you, all the ways that i can grow. you perch me, laden, at the threshold of desires i cannot even name.
if, in my last days, i manage still to be greeted by the warmth of your smile, the challenge of your wit, the beauty of your affection, then i will have lived well. i would spend my decades serving, twining, growing up and into the lessons you bear.

mine, the joyous laughter in the hallway. mine, the flicker of candles on your bare skin. mine, the curtains moving in an evening breeze. mine, the pressure of your palm against my chest. all these gifts, and a million more.
how many times have i said: you leave me, and i grow: abandon me, i am unkempt and unmeted in my ability. but here, at last, in your proud bed in your narrow room i am willing to pause. here i acknowledge the need to express gratitude: here i press a kiss to the nape of your neck.
it's true that i am seismic, eternal, great and growing in the wild ways of the world, a predator and a murmuration both. it's true that i am smaller than a grain of mustard seed. it's true that i am slit open stem to stern, bare-boned and heaving with the guilt of previous generations.
all these things, and a million more, learning to see myself refracted in the decisions and revisions of an intemperate world. mine, the grace of your forgiveness. mine, the pressure of your hot demands. the gift of you, all the ways that i can grow. you perch me, laden, at the threshold of desires i cannot even name.
if, in my last days, i manage still to be greeted by the warmth of your smile, the challenge of your wit, the beauty of your affection, then i will have lived well. i would spend my decades serving you for the gift of the lessons you bear.

be gentle on yourself                              but not too gentle
practice self care                                     get the fucking work done
others and yourself deserve kindness     bitches get shit done
slow and steady                                      race your own expectations
go to your closet and pray                      the sound and the fury

where i am happy: where your heart sinks
quiet into my arms, where bliss is rain falling and white walls.
your mouth fastened to my future and i had always thought
that this was impossible, but here you are,
dancing. the white ring left around my finger after
a summer of you: after years: when all of me will full bloom.
so that, shaken awake at night by the ferocity
of my dreaming, there is a spotlight in the sky
at full posture, directing me: a white halo where your hands
will be again, come morning. what could be impossible
when your name in my mouth is a realized prayer?
since now that i can speak, i am a whole voice, a place
unto myself where your soul is welcome.

what is simple? if i look at you
and see peace, and affection, and fulfillment,
can i choose that? can i opt in
to a new dream if it belongs more to you, but
i see it clearly every night?

what is ease? if in touching you
i make you say my name, if in loving you
i make us both insular and wrapped
entirely in the possibility of us,
can i make that come true
even when i have never loved anyone else?

what is new? if this is foreign, is it
just another path i can choose?
you leave me guideposts and lanterns:
would i be foolish to ignore
what is so clearly etched with my own progress?

touch me here in the forest, set my feet
on the trail you know: i hear you,
i sing your descant. and if
you are quiet where i am used to volume,
and loud where my instincts go dull, i may
accept this as portion of the new view:
this mountain, this sunset, and you.

in limestone, granite, sedimentary blocks
we built the channel, ran the course.
the green of the water, hemmed in
and dutifully moving us place to place:
the braying of the labor, side by side,
grey backs and heat and flies.
where i refuse, you insist, and years from now
we may have built a world for that.

i dream of children and fences
the moon and a dozen things that smell like you
green eyes follow me across the dawn
you measure me, silent, absent, seen

in you i have a treasure smaller than skies,
tangible, hot in our bed at night

small voices that are not yet born
haunt my hips: what will you ask of me,
before the end? and, in the end,
what will be beautiful?

keystone, summer sunshine, path along the canal
where other beasts of burden called out—
you are a world to me, a delicate ecology unto yourself
in the paths of my veins.
lynch pin, wishbone, the grace of rain
at the end of a long drought: bring me with you
wherever you will go, show me the path.
i am dark with desire:
endless chasm, bottomless trench, an Atlantic storm
and miles of thunderheads in my wake
waiting to me filled
with the wind and the rain of your love.
you touch my arm, my neck, i light with
your insistence—else a canyon, rift of needing
in the broken soundscape of my heart.
draw your riverbed here, love:
carve an eon of traveling, feeding, blessing
here between my throat and breast.

i have worked so hard—worked so long—to arrive
in this place where you are everything i am.
will you pull me out of this city? will you tell me who i am?
after years maybe i am willing—or is it
too tired to say no, too broken
to work against your knowing, learning hands—
i wonder, does the work go to waste?
i have been so afraid, i have been hard pressed
to protect and preserve my self.
do i cede myself to you? what does this grant accomplish?
where i am land—traversed, seismic,
built and rebuilt in a thousand ways—you are
water, blood of my veins, spit of my mouth,
the river that is never quite tamed.
i could build bridges but i
have known too many storms, will not extend myself
for structures that can be torn down.
you make a canyon out of me, i am all echoes,
a long low coyote howl
of loneliness and discontent.

when you say my name, the lurch of me—
a rope direct to my heart, my womb, my mouth—
you draw me continuously forward, pliable
in the timbre of your voice.
call me Mary, call me Naomi, call me daughter or wife or mother
but call me:
without your voice in my ears i am
deaf to motion or growth, without your taste
i am barren, full of lack.

loneliness is a heartbeat:
the constant thrumming of your absence in my body.
how can i have met you this early, and crave you this late?
in the crevices of my bones—
between my joints, crooked into the lapses of my spine—
your name, your taste, your voice collide
and leave me spent for the chemical pleasure
of reaction. if i
was exoskeletal i could wear you on my sleeve:
but, mammalian and hot-blooded, i keep you warm,
i hold you close as bones.

that if i could make you feel cared for—
seen—protected—that i would prize you
and your body and your health and your name—
that if i could bring you joy, or pleasure,
or solidarity or knowledge or increase in any way—
that i might be able to earn you—a rock, a
solid and magnificent ownership of self
and what is worthy—that if i could be
worthy of you—and your affection, intention,
your blessing or your time—that i could cede
idealism, or individualism, for the pride
of caretaking and reciprocating your love.

between us your voice stretches, loom to loom:
where we both build and knit and seek, your story
could be enough to hold the line.
your voice as antidote, as cureall, as potion:
string me sweet and song along these passages
where the lantern is your sound and taste.
where i walk i make your pattern:
a whole picture, bright and mindfully made.

what i wish i could be:
a litany of the ways i feel you now, overturned.
if i am a canyon, you are a river
and i echo in the rush of your name.
more, then: built high and carved deep
with the ability to transform. should i
be less than what i am? if i am igneous
then let me burn, since sedimentary i cave
for the grinding and pressure of you.
tell me what i am and i can only
repeat it back to you, yours, yours, yours.

in our next lives, we say.
to gather--to earn--to find--
whatever we miss here, we say, on the next attempt,
we will secure.
(everybody wants to be a tree; nobody
wants to be a blade of grass.)
but if i am any part of my self following
whatever is to come,
i am most likely a dandelion: simultaneously
edible and purposeless, beautiful
and entirely at odds with every aesthete.
i am here to be digested.
i am full of sour milk.
coming in alone, leaving alone, is purity
to me. a full circle of absolution:
let me be useful, in the end.

i am here to be digested
i am full of sour milk

vegas, march 2019

that if i held out my hand for you in a crowded room, you would find it:
that you and i can be secure, rooted, unashamed and unafraid.

when we have lost you, we struggle to know the loss.
what day to day touches are missed?
whose growth goes unnoticed, whose metamorphosis unsung?
but i wonder too what we miss of you:
if we could follow, would we see you active,
flying, singing, creating, answering?
or a complete, still peace--
would you, indeed, rest well?
or if there is a third option, are you at rest in motion--
a breeze of karma, a night wind over the lake,
a shaft of sunshine between the blinds,
the eddies of sloughed off skin that circle there.
when we have lost you, what have we lost?
and what can we yet glean?

if you watch for me to take my place in the crowd around you
and become one of many
it is your gaze that does that work
and not my will

*

i have underestimated the necessity of reflection

i want to sit with my grief
look it in the eye
speak with it
but it won't sit still

it ranges, restless, between the extreme and obscure
between mimicry and denunciation

it insists on action where i would seek rest
it insists on community where i would seek solitude
it insists on meaning where i would seek blackness

perhaps following
grief
is the best direction i can take

*

some days you are called to let someone's heart break
at your kitchen table in your hands in your lap in your mouth

gifts i accept from your mouth:
acceptance, charity, understanding, story.
i do not know what to say to you but i know that you will listen.
i spit out ire and fear and self-protection
faster than your warmth can disarm me.
for you i might be beautiful, who could say?
for you i might be peace or solidarity or support,
produce some amalgam between your mouth and mine.
i should be so lucky, to capture you in this way.

secrets i cannot even whisper to myself
insist on writhing out over the breakfast table,
wet and gelatinous as they slide toward your hands.
they are limp for you, a relaxed twining
of the worst of me, seeking stillness and rot.
and you will only listen, and tell me i am wrong:
you will not notice these entrails
till the heart of me, red and steaming, is laid out
before you like a lie i couldn't keep.

when i see you, an idea lights
up bright between my hips,
of sleep, of promise, of nightmares
and the sound of you
whispering my name.
tongue my terror: these phantoms
become realer with your acknowledgement,
the pressure of your attention
a cause for higher heights of fear.
crash me gentle to
the crags below: your face
and the ghosts you'll use to catch me.

"the beauty of my youth is gone, but the chemicals remain"

fat girls wear black
i feel myself to be a bottomless pit of endings
the feral way you size me up on the street
and in the bedroom
because i owe you greater strength
i owe you tireless force of will

this winter i am alone but you are still somehow everywhere i am
i walk, hunched shoulders against the howl, through
the tunnels of this city, grey palace of race and chrome, and
somewhere in the rush of juries, judges and felons
is your name. somewhere between church and the vacuous hiss
of snow around my ears is the timbre of your voice.

this winter i am present but still somehow you pull me
away from what this is, the ease of connection to one's body when
knees and biceps and cheeks all tremble together
in the bitter wind, the press of traffic, and i have lost the ability
to speak back to the rhythm of my blood when you take me by surprise:
on every street corner, a flickering lamp of your heartbeat.

Are rape jokes funny when they’re about someone you hate?
Are rape jokes funny when they’re about someone in jail?
Are rape jokes more funny when they’re about a woman or a man?
Are rape jokes more funny when they happen in frat houses or Sunday schools?
Are rape jokes funny when the people in them are violent?
Are rape jokes more funny when both the victim and the attacker have been victimized before?
Are rape jokes more funny if the victim is wearing a short skirt or a burqa?

I dream of the curl of your brown hair, the curve of your smile in the palm of my hand. I dream of giving you the ocean, a thousand miles of sunset and salt and bright air, ours to take and taste. I dream of the steps to get there: the time it will take, the ways we will grow, the miles we’ll travel to put our faces in the wind.

Who will we be, when we’re old? And what dreams will we chase in the meantime? A wide world, so much to want from it, and you and I so capable, fearless, brave under a big sky and gaining strength.

I dream of being next to you at night when your body slows and your breath is grounded in the bottom of the day. I dream of the mundane details where you are present: the artifacts of you in my life, the ticket stubs, hairbands, dinner plates. The days made sweeter by the works of your hands, there is no place I’d rather be than with you.