Lazy Sundays are for loving

"I wish you didn't have to work in the morning. I wish it was one of those days when you wake up fine and the sun is out and the day is warm. I wish we could just lay in bed and you could hold me and I would read to you la dispute lyrics like poetry. And we wouldn't say much but just understand. 

And you would know what I mean when I say 

"In your smallest touch are things which enclose me, or that which I cannot touch because it is to near."

I would read you my favorite Paul neuruda and my favorite Alysia Harris and you would absorb the love I would try to tell you, desperately in these borrowed voices. 

I'm mute. 

All the things I would try to tell you in stupid poems and good ones 

and ones when it came down to it, 

I was too afraid to write. "

Baby Shoes For Sale, Never Used.

So there I am on a normal Sunday 

5 months pregnant, it's June, it's hot as hell,

On my way to the hospital to get checked out because I've had some bleeding.

I'm not too worried, my boyfriends complaining about wanting to go get a burrito on his day off instead of drive to the hospital but here we are.

The nurses seem casual. I'm Johnny-Ed up in a semi privet room in the woman's clinic, curtains separating me from a very busy day delivering babies.

After 6 hours of waiting and some brief apologies the head midwife checks me out. 

It's uncomfortable but here we are. The nurses stop smiling. 

They talk to me haltingly as if each word it being carefully selected to remain neutral. 

They get the doctor on call and apologize for putting me through a second examination. The circle of faces peering into me is slack, slight frowns all around. 

Very quickly I'm given a brief explanation. Words that aren't really sticking, "delivery is eminent". The nurse and doctor wheel me up to delivery, they keep saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I don't know what this means. The joking nurse from earlier tells me that I'm being very strong but I don't have to be and I can cry. Confused tears come spilling out but I'm still trying to keep it together, I'm not ready to let go, not of anything. All I can't think moment by moment is I'm ok, I'm still pregnant, the baby is ok. In this moment it's ok. I'm not ready to let go. 

---

I will never forget the way the nurse set up equipment in the corner of the room for a birth but not a baby. All these hard metal medical instruments and not a single soft blanket or incubator. 

There's something indescribable in the pain of having your body fail you and knowing this little infant inside you that you've carried for 5 months and got to know each kick, each mood, that is so perfectly healthy and active in your stomach, for no reason at all could be dead in a matter of hours and you are powerless. 

No matter how much you could want something in your life, want your baby to live and grow up, you are powerless. You dont get to decide this one. 

There is the life you see flashing in front of your eyes isn't your own but theirs - tiny clothing and hands wrapped around your finger, first steps and tumbles, first birthday party that you will never get experience, that they will never get to have.

You feel cheated, you feel such rage and you don't even know where to put it or what to direct it at. Angry with the grief that you cannot provide the basics as a parent you cannot give your child safety or life, and all you want it a goddamned blanket to wrap them in, just some sense of normalcy. Something kind, some single thing you can give your baby that isn't horrible or harsh. Something that says they mattered, they were loved and wanted, and they deserve to be handled as delicately as any other newborn in that hospital. 

The baby survived. At 25 weeks gestation she was only a pound and a half at birth. She's a happy 8 month old now. It was rough. We both almost died. I bought her and continue to buy her every soft pink blanket I can get my hands on.

The last time I ever saw you.

We drove in the car, shared darkness.
The dashboard lights had us under their spell.
Swelled with desire you reached out
To touch, my leg, my hand,
Briefly a grabbing breast like ripened fruit,
The last of summers harvest.
Autumn was our season.
Caressed between thighs, drawing back,
Laughing at my frustration.
Boyish teeth glinting in the moonlight
Leaking through.
Desperate with want I grabbed your hand, my lips
Brushing skin, drawing you in,
Like I had many darknesses ago
When we were all tangled heat,
Senseless passion,
Foolish youth.
Pausing, you dropped my off.
Strange sudden shyed look in your eye.
Autumn was our season,
But this,
was winter now.

And the train continued quietly steaming off into the night.
You left and took my heart with you
Leaving me the color of breathlessness.
My nervous anticipation the only thing left to hold in my hands
Like the prayers that someone would see my address
On the corner of my unplanned stow away heart and send it back to me.

Go on,
Look at all the other girls out there
And know that I'll watch silently from the sidelines
Never questioning a single thing.

One day you might wake up and they'll
All look the same and even I might become just another face.
I'll never ask you to change
Just content to watch you quietly move through the moments that I can
But don't count on me being here
If you ever come back.

I've been listening to your songs and humming them to myself

Ones 20's are confusing.

It's wanting to be so open and honest with everything like you were when you were a teenager,
And somehow, being acutely aware that there's some things you shouldn't tell people.

Like
"I think about you every day."

I've put my eyes into cases. 
Her mouth was a cut dark line 
In her face .
Playing for her and with her
Before she had to drive home around the corner,
It's been years since that game started. 

I still have those tights with the hole in them.
You still have my heart,
But you haven't got the best of me.

All those nights and the conversations leading up to them,
We knew they would never last.
There's always her,
And I've still got him,
And you've still got you.

And who knows now what I wanted?
What I want...

I still have those tights with the hole in them.
You still have my heart,
But you haven't got the best of me.
You haven't got the best of me. 

The same damn song on repeat on the merry-go-round

Obsession is going through your Facebook friends at 2am
Wondering which ones you slept with
( the number is twelve. I think he said twelve,
Was that including me? Was I thirteen?)
And wondering if it was just the pretty ones
I guess you can do a lot in 10 years.

Obsession is being turned on by you
And being confused when you touch me and then shoot me down
Wondering if it's on purpose
Or if you're accidentally gently fucking with my head.
It's wanting to touch my self to thoughts of you
Moans from your ghost hands getting caught
Between the tip of my tongue and bitten lip
But at the end of the night getting too depressed to
And crying in front of my hand mirror
Teaching myself how to cry pretty.

Obsession is where I keep you in my sketch pad
That picture you sent to me on snap chat
That you have no idea that I saved
( don't worry it's just your face)
That I touch instead of the real thing
Studying the microscopic patterns in your irises
And the crop circles in your beard
Knowing I will never get the details right.
It's difficult to erase you, even there.

Obsession is feeling like I'm in the most beautiful moment ever
Sitting next to you in your sisters car
As we're on our way to a show that your last fuck buddy is throwing
I want to parade around like the better replacement
I want to show you off
I want everyone to know
But instead I sit on a couch half the night drinking my alcoholic snapple
Laughing with some of your friends that I wish were my friends
Being hit on by a 40 year old rapper
But not by you, not where everyone can see
Not so I ruin your game or make people start asking questions.
In retrospect I hope I acted normal enough.

Obsession is embarrassing myself over and over
It's wanting to read your journals
To know what you think about me
Because you don't say
And you never tell me I'm pretty.
It's when my eyes slide over to your phone
And I remember when you said you delete all your messages and don't save nudes
I just want to know if that's true.
And what's your worse memory
And what's your favorite
And when did you start taking Prozac and why
And what you really feel about your dog maybe getting put down
And what you're like when you're down
And what you're like when no ones around,
Am I really the crazy one?
Have I just forgotten how to human?
And what's so great about you anyway?
And fuck if I'm going to love and chase someone who doesn't love me back.
Not again.
And what are you doing Wednesday night.

Final Chapter

Kiss me again, let it be final.
Finish what you've done.
Just for me, just once ,
Let's finish the story.

Ships in the night must be about us
Because we drift in and out of each other's lives
And there's never a certain beginning
Never a defined end.

We're just a handful of half finished sentences.
Void of the commitment of tenses.

You said that maybe in the future....
But I know what that means.
I understand how life gets in the way
But I also know if you desire something
You don't give up on it.
I thank you,
But I don't need kindness, I need closure.

The next time we kiss will be the last.
You don't know it yet,
Not in those terms.
But like old Velcro we are just now beginning to unstick.

And I will always remember how special I felt
On a night drive with you
Music and darkness and the clearest sky with the brightest stars
And all the possibilities sitting in the seat next to you
Young and infinite and aging.
But I know I was never special to you.
I just thought that if I wished hard enough
I would be.
Just the endless madding hope that one day
One of us would wake up different.

And So I'm finally giving up on you.

I will run until it doesn't hurt anymore
So far it hasn't happened yet.

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.