Kitten

You're somewhere in Ohio right now.
You said you were leaving two days after Christmas
And that you didn't have time
For gifts or kisses.

It's still in its box
Beside my bed.
The kisses I'll never give you
Fold themselves
Into the corners of my mouth
And come out as half smiles
Sometimes.

So distracted by the nervous flutters in my stomach
And where to put my hands,
Noticing the buttons on your collar.
And all the minuscule dust motes
That have floated in unimportance, so serenely for centuries
Except when they caught my intense, longing, jealousy
When settling
on the outermost fringe
of your eyelashes.
All the dead skin of a hundred people touching you,
And I will never.

So in the double music
Of our conversation
And my running thoughts
I didn't ask if you'd come back.

The box rests by my pillow.
The photograph of the kitten on the front dressed as Santa
Looks at me inquisitively,
Confused,
Dressed all wrong for the new year.

Misplaced among shreds of wrapping paper,
Presents opened, joy shared.
Looking out of place the morning after Christmas.
The last unadopted stray -
That no one showed up to claim.



Yeah, ...I should probably rewrap that.

Hopeless

I even notice the wrinkles on your shirts where you fold them.

What's a word for friends that aren't friends?

Because we might start to care about each other.
We might kiss
And we might hold each other until everything falls back into place.
We might never say,
Keeping hands in the openness.

And we may cry when one or the other leaves
From a worn out heart
Or something breath taking that came along.
While we held our spot,
(Baby we weren't ever really dating)
While we grew on each other,
( We never said those exact commitments)
While we slowly became part of the others life,
( I'm sorry, I didn't intend to confuse you)
Because we were too afraid to call it
Something, anything, other.

I will sit in my room
And loop the paradox of friends
(Friends don't kiss each other on the mouth.
Friends don't hold each other naked,
Tight as matching spoons.)

Wearing a disguise will not fool tenderness,
Will not cause pain to pass over you.

This can still break your heart.

He took me to the water
And there he gently let me down.

Past and Present

On rooftops with the best intentions
Our nervous hands stuttered over skin.
Like children bathing in neon puddles,
April nights warming over our nakedness.

Spur of the moment,
A warning not to kiss because that would be too far.
Maybe it started out in lust
But
By the end you'd stolen my heart.

And I have carried that exchange for over a thousand days
But it's time to lay the lights down low
And make peace with my ghosts.
For all the loves I have killed and sewn together
Following a snatched handful of blueprints
That I never was able to make breathe.

And in the end you are an epoch
And I am a name and a face,
Less than a song to you.

We've never even kissed;
I have thought every day about kissing you.

Time to Heal

I'm trying to find myself
Complete
And I'm worried you won't wait for me

Because right now you don't even know you're waiting
Just bookmarked in the front of my mind

And I'm so afraid to tell you
Wait wait
While my delicate heart spun of chipped glass and spiders web
Whispers softly wait wait
And do not waken love until it pleases.

When infatuation makes me ramble on like an insane person

I lay here at midnight

And run possibilities in my mind.

Wondering how do I tell you that I've loved you for six years

And that your smile is the only one that's kept me alive,

Kept me in hope.

How do I calm these soft feathery stirrings when I see you

Biting back all I could say.

Keeping eyes averted

And hands grasping at the air at my sides, anything to keep from trembling. 

How does one stop loving so unrequited?

How to I separate my heart from what you are when we are both made of the same stardust?

How can I untangle myself?

When you are the thread that has been winding itself quietly through my days

Leading me to here

Why do I keep whispering to my heart

Wait, Wait.

So afraid?

Will I ever put these puzzle piece words in the right place

Finding the key 

To tell you what I desperately long to say?

Will it even matter then?

Will I ever be free from the haunting of you

When you have drawn patterns of your self on my soul?

And not loving you is like denying my body air.

Why am I so stupid,

So naive,

And painfully self aware?

Why do I love you?

Why do I dream recurrently of laying with you on a bed of moss,

The last generation of Eden.

And that you will turn to hold my hand

Embracing yourself,

The self in me,

Like a missing rib.

Where do dreams go to die?

6/19/11

All my relationships are like layaway.
Every moment you spend with me-
Just a down payment.
Leaving me hoping that this will finally be the day
That you will love me enough to call me your own.

And take me to a home,
A place I've never seen but dream about quite often;
Let me belong,
Finally to someone and somewhere.
I just need to know I am wanted
And for more than a warm arm on a handful of lonely Monday nights.

...

Softer Skin 6/30/12

I always remember the strangest things about you.
The way your hands look when you drive,
The way a smile looks like
Hanging from the corner of your mouth.

The linger of your self
 ( pitter patter of baby feet, shallow sounds of arguments now ended)
seeps into the cracks of your childhood home
And every floorboard tells a story of you.
Every wall and hallway still reeking with your sound,
asks after you.

I remember the way the sun painted you gold.
Early morning couplets we would make,
Arms tucked loosely around each other,
Face to face, as innocent as children.
And I do not know why
I could not keep the days
When we slept in our softer skin.

when you look me in the eye, in the intimacy of silence
I never know what to say to you.

I remember you in the hallway,
Hands hanging limp.
Accusations and questions folded in your brow.
And every memory ends this way,
The wind down and soundlessness
Of your heart and stomach on a race to the floor.

Falling out of love is a different music.
Chords being dissected and faltering haphazardly into silence,
The last ones courageously dying off in a handful of ugly notes.
So unlike the carefully constructed love poems I would leave in your mail box.

I only know how to end things sadly
So I will say this:
I love the way you reach out in the middle of the night to hold me.
I love when you are gentle,
Even by accident.

I have a kaleidoscope love,
Only good at
Half -reflecting.
Always undressing when I get nervous.
If breasts and thighs
Distract from eyes
Then I'm champion at hide and seek
When no one else is playing.

Your commitments smear,
Colors on the merry-go-round;
Temporal sounds
That didn't even have the grace
To last a season.

We are so changed.
Shadows of all the good things.
This will be the last offering I bring
To pass and be passed over.

Life takes you to unexpected places -
Warm lights and wood stands,
My fingers stuttering over the points of a Jerusalem Artichoke.

The shinny red moons of pomegranates.

You smiled at me and made small talk.
I kept my six year secret.
I never knew how to defend my heart against the disarming smiles of grocer boys.


He doesn't love you He doesn't love you
So stop. 

Restart

Tell me it's not the end of the story,
Tell me I can love again.
Black tree branches through our arms
And the January rain upon our upturned faces.

We knelt with paper and erasers
Rewriting the samesamesame story.
Again and again exploring our guts
Looking for loose and dead ends,
Holding our vacancies.

Alien atoms through our fingers and feet.
The neurons firing off
Always stuck on the wrong equation.
The missing math in our love
Left us empty handed.
Slight of hand,
A trick,
Joke.

Car doors and the sound of your street at 3am
Remind me
That some girls are for company,
Some are for keeping,
But mostly people just leave.

Can I just fall in love with you?

After ones heart has been broken
It takes a certain bravery to dust yourself off
And chose to go on loving
Another person,
The world,
Yourself.

I want to be brave.

E.

I'm trying to find quiet strength 
Again.
I'm sewing the pieces of my self back together.
Finding some bits in last years coat pockets
And some, hiding, have rolled under the bed.

There has been a consistency in loving you,
An invisible thread I have never talked about.
I've been keeping the secret of you in the back of my head
Tucking it between the pages of fear and hope, 
Wrapping it in the day dreams of "good enough".

I come to you in the too small broken clothes of others expectations 
Embarrassed to have you see me like this.
Wearing something that looks a little like dignity on my sleeve.
I am a master of pretending it's alright.

But there is honesty in my love
simple and undressed.
After all the stories and the rough lived lives-
Covering up the bruises,
There is relief in the quiet round sounds of truth slipping out.
I love you.
I have always loved you. 
I always will love you.

And I want the best for you
Even though I know that's not me.
You deserve innocence 
And all I can do is bring you grief.

I don't think this is going anywhere and we both know it.
I'm not really satisfied with this,
With being almost and maybe.
I don't want to keep spending time like down payments 
With the promise that one day we will cross that line and belong to each other.
That's not how this works.
That's not how any of this works. 

You know I'm not in love with you.
I know you don't love me,
And life is too short to waste on convenience.
I want a yes that is yes
A no that isn't maybe.

It's not fair
To either of us.

What does it matter that my love could not make him stay?
What does it matter that my love couldn't make him a better man?

I climbed into that sinking ship
And clung to it for dear life
Because being an anchor to a dying vessel was somehow better than the uncontrollable sea of uncertainty.
And I bailed out water with my little cup and for a space it was enough.
But the waters overwhelmed me.
I still carry the guilt of the shipwrecked.
I thought I could save them.

Too long I’ve played second best in other peoples bedrooms
Breaking my body like communal bread again and again
To be passed around
And not one lover ever looked to preserve the whole of me

While I wraped soft flesh and sweet words around them
Twisted and braided and bent myself to their comfort
I’ve stood mute in kitchen corners
Eyes cast down waiting for permission
To have my birth-right voice back.

I’ve paid with blood and sweat
And down to the bones of my hands
For free air
For a small corner of the heart
Vague promises that melted
Like soft butter over bread
At the smallest hint of imperfection

At any straying over the boundaries
The square lines drawn around me
Saying ” here I have given you space to live but no further-
Here is your spectrum.”
For once you had fallen in love with my vast and vibrant rainbows
I am now given a handful of shades.
And then complain at how well I
Color in the lines
While you chase more free and vivid lovers,
…Like I once was.

Past time

I'm never a viable ...." Option" ... To you,

Just a pastime. 

And maybe I do this to myself.

Always being out of reach,

Always being boring and predictable,

Always getting attached unconsciously and where I shouldn't. 

Always half believing under my breath that this time it will be different
 and I'll be loved, wanted, treated like I am valued and worth the kind of respect and long term affection that I want.

That I've always wanted.

That's All I want. 

It's never a graceful end with us.

Always cliff hangers and question marks.

Always the invisible wind down 

And never periods.

We love in incomplete sentences 

That we pick up the thread and start over and over but always stop at the tenses -

Were. are. is. was. will be.

Everything is hoped for 

And everything is hazy;

Nothing is complete

Or fully said.

Implication pairs its self with commitment.

Our tongues dance round and round the subject growing older each year. 

I want. I need. I love. I will. I am.  

I can almost imagine your room 

I can almost feel the weight of a wedding band.

Put Away

You only want to touch me after dark.
Night time holds affection captive
And I’m only familiar in half light.

Nobody knows you steal kisses
When stop lights and street lamps turn on.
My convex shapes blend and bend into your eclipse.

I return though,
Your front porch has become something silent I cross
In the few seconds it takes for you to open your front door.

I accept your hesitant touch,
The hurried way you make love to me,
Momentary sparks in the darkness.
Tracing and retracing the the nations of your skin,
The desert of your back,
The sharp stone cliffs of your hands..
The fields of grass stretching off into sighing plains
when the stubble of your cheek brushes the smoothness of mine
Almost by accident.

I kindle these fragments of quick light
So when I return
And climb into bed pulling the covers up over my loneliness,
I can retrace the feeling of sunrises on my skin.
The golden way it lit lovers interlocking in sleep,
The moments I knew what it was to be endless.
I remember a time
you wouldn’t be ashamed to hold my hand in the day light.
You wouldn’t be afraid to say my name
in more than a whisper.

It’s 2am, the streets are empty,
Your house is cold.
Tonight I will leave your neighborhood un-haunted,

Tired of being a ghost.

Shulamite

You will find me in the fields

With the empty of your fresh harvests,

Noosed shells swaying in the breeze.

These vibrant lives are now hollow vessels

Echoing the sound of your voice back to you.

Your love has sucked dry the fruit and left the rind.

And I am left to question how many other hands did you bring in to sow the seeds
Was I twelve or maybe thirteen?
Do I have a story or a history anymore
Was it all left in genocide and rewritten
Did I loose the lineage and the noble heritage on the alter
In my omission was assistance
In my passiveness, permission
My pale hands, stained, clutch a voiceless throat.

Oh my brothers, who have turned your faces in anger to me,
Has the sun not taken out enough vengeance?
I have tended your fields well,
my own I have not kept.