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.