smoke that he fights with, i can go nowhere without seeing him.

pests and predators survive. 

i was too old when i finally learned that you do not read the police report, only the headline, or else your trauma will remember itself.

i spin a single story you cannot escape from; you bring me joy, i bring you blight. 

you taste of sunrise, ochre, violet, orange, a lancing of the monochrome with flush and heat and sex.

i feel like coal, layers of dead things condensed into fuel. 

between old shadows and new light i am only kindling.
there are pine cones that cannot sprout without the razing of a forest fire to crack the seams; where the deadwood of me burns off, perhaps i will be newer, brighter, stronger.




**



smoke that he fights with, i can go nowhere without seeing him.

pests and predators survive. 

i was too old when i finally learned that you do not read the police report, only the headline, or else the trauma takes you too.

i lie here with my hardened heart and ruined mind, waiting to make you the culprit for my own misdeeds.

spinning a single story you cannot escape from, you bring me joy, i bring you blight. 

you taste of sunlight, ochre, orange, violet, a lancing of the monochrome with flush and heat and bile.

i feel like coal, layers of dead things condensed into fuel. 

between his shadows and your light i am only kindling, waiting to be pulled up into the bright destruction of my truest sense of self. and whether it is his burning or your sunshine that arrives first is anyone's guess. 

i am not convinced that there is a logic behind sobriety. all those meetings trying to convince me that i harmed others, but i did not. i never stole, never threw a punch, never lost my income or my home. mine is a quiet kind of self-destruction.
i am not convinced that there is safety in sobriety, with the wide cloud of smoke rising above my head as i write this. they say harm reduction is the new strategy, but what if i never dealt the blows i should have? only i am reduced in this new religious desert.
i am not convinced that there is independence in sobriety. i have traded one box for another, one label for something stronger. those who want you to be healthy allow you to show up, bloated and reddened and tired but in a new dress, and tell you that you look great.
who will i be after this? in another ten years, in another cage? i will spend my life picking up and trying on new caste systems, new genders, new ways to be hated by the world around me. the only doctrine i subscribe to is evasive gratification, the slow drip of self-loathing.

the realtor asked how many bedrooms i wanted, what kind of neighborhood, what homely features. bloated with four years of constant drinking i gathered my focus in my hands and did not say, i do not know, i have never been home.
we wandered through house after house, and i met the ghosts of others' pets, aging parents, lack of money, shortcut repairs. when finally i met you, i was convinced no one else lived here, you were grey and white and pale and clean. i touched your attic walls, wrenched your basement plumbing myself.
i broke up with someone who needed me as i signed the papers. they could not stand that i had a home other than them. two years later a mutual friend will tell me that their home is hoarded, stuffed full of reminders that i am not there.
but you and i, we keep our hands clean. we keep our walls firm. we flood the basement occasionally, the stinking mud a reminder of what lies beneath and what will always be broken. you are broken in all the right ways for me. we chose each other.

coffee and cigarettes keep me convinced that hope is childish. that i would be a fool to wake you up, turn you over, see your bright eyes open to mine. to hope for your recognition.
i am tired of sleep, distempered with rest and placation. i want you to bite me and leave marks. i want you to grab me and leave bruises. i want you to hurt me and leave love behind.
i should be walking the dog; i should be buying fresh produce at the discount grocery; i should be putting the books back on the shelves. i should be carrying water and fire every day for you, the mechanization of care and careful kindling.
some weeks ago, a strange man read my writing and said it was not poetry. some months ago, a hated lover fucked me and said i was not queer. some years ago, my camp counselor found my adolescent journal and called my parents. marks, all, and none deserving of the words i waste on them.
buried in the richness of your cunt is all of my peace, and safety, and hope. if i am sluggish in the ways i move to make you cum, it is only the exhaustion of having finally reached this place.

what i am with you: a thousand half-spilled apologies, retching at your mouth. the guilt of me seeps through your floorboards, i am what makes you creak, puddles in your basement and makes everything smell of age, mildew, wet. is it regret if i miss the violence i did not cause.
the better angels of my nature have tried to rule: kept sweet, keep sweet, keeping sweet. we have appropriated every culture more domineering, more patriarchal, more silencing than our own. we have bared naked logs of spite, religion, gender, anger, built a hell and called it home. i was raised in the density of your forgotten hopes.
still. when you build a home of kindling, one of your children will learn to burn. you are my kindling. is it love if i embrace the power you made me find.