My Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You

When I said it was you that made it good, I was lying, it
was me. I told you that I never lied to you and
I did but it is still true that you are the one person I
have lied to the least. 


I mourn like you are
dead sometimes, I even
lied to a complete stranger the other day
and said you had died in a car crash, just
to have something to say about you other
than what I always say.

I hated that you felt so comfortable
sometimes, you looked like an
orangutan in sleeveless shirts.

I screamed at myself in the
supermarket for writing poems about you
still, reminding myself that everything
reminded me of you.

When we got really bad I would
go over to Cory's and ignore your
texts for hours until I was sure you were
asleep.

I have a growing queue of things that would make you laugh.
I don't know where to put them.

I'm terrified of settling with the dust and ending up hating everything.

So I don't settle down anywhere, doing anything, with anyone and

I love everything, absolutely everything. 

tender and respectful art?

lotus flower poems.

the folds in my shirt appearing and dis-
appearing as my hips make the rounds, I
love the shape I take on when
hands caress my curves, they came
out of nowhere, it seems I was a length
of wood, a slab of material with no
definition until
the subtle crook in my arm was noticed,
the length of my neck and the fold of my thighs
as I lay on my side, too.

Yesterday, a friend of mine experienced an omen if there ever was one.

He was sitting on our front porch (as he is the 'du' to my 'plex') reading an e-book on his brand new phone. 

Not unfamiliar with the readers of today's exodus from the real world myself, when he says things melt away, and the pages, or in this case e-pages, build walls between him and his immediate surroundings, I know to what extent he's referring to. Breaking from what could only be screen-induced eye strain, he looked up from the the downloaded version of 'Romeo and Juliet' and was shocked to find that a bird had ambled up to him, and from the looks of it was, for lack of a better phrase, half-dead. 

The bird couldn't move his legs, but his head and wings were jerking about. Not knowing what to do, wanting to help, my friend scooped the bird into cupped hands and held it until it died. He said that at a few different points it seemed as if it would be okay, that it would just stand up and fly away. But then it's eyes would close and he said he almost felt the wind move from the bird into the air and all too quickly the universe had snatched it back. He then placed it under a bush outside his home, hoping nature would dispose of the bird in a more dignified fashion than we humans do with our boxes and our chemicals. 

This story made me think about what last wishes I would have if I were injured and knew I were to die within the hour. As undoubtedly was the bird's case, it is likely I would try to find help and if help could not be provided, just a pair of hands to hold me as I faded. Just another living thing to witness my departure and to ease the inevitable loneliness in death. 

condescension and the deepening folds of dark. 

moods are made up of everything we 

want and everything we have already. 

wanting and waning/having and indifference. 

how indulgent and disgusting I find myself sometimes. 

how delightfully oblivious. 

how annoyingly warm. 

I felt like I was my body for once - like I wasn't only inside it.
Plucking tall glasses from their perch above the sink and
letting loose the dark that wiggled, relentless, inside it's bottle.
The gold was chipping from my mother's cheap wine glasses,
creating a sort of sad ambiance you, surprisingly, so often 
find yourself yearning for.


I could easily have chosen either extremity my sisters have so triumphantly
exemplified, their past in ash and smoke, their faces freshly pink from battle.
But as I sipped on bitter drink and cried on the front steps, in my most
adolescent fashion,
I was in wait.


There, in the belly of it - flavor resembling nothing of the puckering and
rambunctious, summer-sweet cranberry and pomegranate that
prod my insides - lurked a hazy twilight.


And I,
haphazardly stealing from the bottle's mouth,
didn't realize just what was stolen
from my own.

I have become a bowl
sitting
under
a broken
faucet

for too long.

(drip)

Different patterns across my
face, shivering ripples, in my
way a
rouse
to keep me
interesting.

(drip)

Though, I
cannot always
catch
what falls
off
of
the
edge.

(drip)

Mm. Smell that angst.

I will rip the first three pages from your favorite book and I will
eat the memories I have of you
in one
bite.

I will devour any trace of you by
burning
my skin
away.

I will dissolve every look every time every
good intention on my tongue like bad sugar,
like bad sugar you
will remain
a temporary
satisfaction
for anyone
you touch.

like a fictional character's pain

a hand
touching my cheek,
I feel it there - warm - settling on my
skin like debris settles
on the earth after the
explosion.

I can soon feel the bruises bloom
beneath my skin, they are varied in
color and in size and they remind me
so much of
the valleys I've left in my wake,
I wouldn't call them craters for
they are not baren. I do believe in
the preservation of life
in all things, I find it necessary.

but without warning the hand disappears like mist
though my fingers, I cling to something like the
dew you see so often in the early morning, I cling to
space and to time and to the very edge of
everything, that is, everything that I can
think of.

instead of sorrow I feel only emptiness, no stabs of
pain or gasps gasped in horror, just
a dead-pan expression
and hollow
silence.

there was no burning.
there was non-chalance and too
much space, a rift that sank from
her chest, with bones protruding like piano keys,
to my chest, pock-marked with kisses and swelling
in pink youth, I
still don't understand
much of it, but I have
always known one thing:

we will never get another try at this.

it means nothing when I picture your hands sliding
through the motions of my patient body, of your eyes smiling when I am
beneath your slight frame.

until everything is anything again and
until the wind has stopped blowing at my back
or until I have enough courage to turn around,

I will settle, with limbs limp, into a deep, u-shaped sigh
and drift in and out and
in and
out of
this conversation
watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and
fondle my breath,
knowingly or not.

oh high

there's something in the middle of me, in the middle of 
me there is a large something
pushpushing against my skin and
aching against my vital organs, I 
can feel my heart strings as they are
are tuned up up up and pulled to the taut
-ness of a mandolin. the monotonous monks that 

haunt my chest take on a barely audible hum, 

angelic, the lightness of 
their voices driving into the tips of 

each of my quivering limbs like 

feathers, they are like
feathers in the sense 

that I am

covered in 

them, I am

buzzing with 

a glow of satisfaction - !

--------------------------------------------------------------------

^that is a work in progress. I've obviously got to come down from that high. 

I need more than I want to.
I want more than I need.

What is left?

"Have you seen how thin he is?"

You look like you're ten years old. 

You look like you did in that picture on the fridge

of a boy all wet from swimming and happy from 

living.

It's only now that I realize,

I never knew your 

happiness.

I only knew 

my own. 

I pull on my skin sometimes, I
pinch it away from my neck and collar
bone, mostly, I'm not very sure as to
why. I shouldn't be a big believer in
hidden meanings or false realities, and yet
I am. Almost religiously, I am.

I thought that maybe I could force the fizzy feeling in my throat or

the everything-smells-like-you phase or the

forgetting or the remembering or anything anything. 

But I'm not good at forcing things, seeing as I don't exert much energy into

anything but myself. 

How? 

when I'm sick
I'm drunk on myself.

I also enjoy power-disc-ing, whole
vegetables and tea. lots o' tea.

eloquence is out the window, even though it's my favorite thing.
unless it's pretend eloquence with a british accent. then I'm down.

repetition is a sort of therapy for me, I've found

I don't trust you, 

I don't trust you, I don't. 

I think you're too easy-peasily swayed by the fraying ends of 

dress hems, by the tails hanging loosely from the back of girls too

pretty for you, and by your impatient and italicized 

need.

I am ready to be swallowed by the massive curls of your body and

I am ready to have my heat (it's all gone to my chest)

recognized standing next to your heat (I can tell it's all in your head)

because the time it has taken for a 

face-forward-palms-un-clenched

acknowledgement 

has been ex-

cruciatingly

hopeful and

pain-

fully

trivial. 

I am ready 

to not be 

trivial 

anymore. 

But I don't trust you. 

I just don't

trust you

at all. 

if you're wondering

I'll be dreaming safe and sound, it's
all I've got so I'll be sleeping a lot more
often, now.

I'll be drifting in and out of the
conversation because it's all I can do to keep from
watching your
lipslikepetals
caress the air and fondle my
breath, knowingly or not.

is/was

bad books and toothpaste left on my face in the morning, I'm early all the time and I don't want to wait for anyone to finish their sentences before my mind becomes a mimosa pudica, the foliage closing, sleeping in the dark of the closed mindedness I've been suffering from. the magnitude of dry layers my skin has collected is truly astonishing, only letting pass my hesitant perspiration and the vibrations of my gong-like heart muscle. it resonates within my chest cavity before sinking into a slumber for days at a time. I don't miss it, I don't.

sticky red and circling black charcoal, the
pink cheeks are all mine, I can
still blush on my own,

               (thank god)

I can still feel the heat surfacing while I
am painted in this sickly green fluorescent light
         
            (as compared to
                 my own
            sweet sunshine)

I don't feel pretty all the time,
but when I do it's on my own
- all -
on my
own.

Mmm.

that anyone could make me feel naked in
suspense, a need to curl my fingers? I'll remind myself 
that I need my bed rest, that I need 
the thing that heals, that I need 
anything at all is too much, it's too
tedious to need, I won't admit to 
it, most of the time I won't. 

groaning grows from the throat,  trickling down, 
my voice isn't sweet like honey,
but more harsh harsh harsh in ways like
dry swallowing big pill after pill after pill. 

the ends of my fingers are beams, they are brightest 
when I touch the space between me and
the space between you and the soft space
left after drinking what we 
bottle 
up,

every time
every time.

I know you're as hungry as I am.

Let's let the hem out of every 
skirt we own so we can
be
  long 
     belong in
their fraying ends.

writing this while I'm not writing something else

there's something to be said about
the time it takes for words to
formulate, make their way
all the way down to the tiptips of our tontongues,
I savor the ringing silence that comes
after the bitter ones leave, the after-taste of
arguments and the residue left from things I didn't mean.

if I could I'd pour nectar down my throat and
speak in whispers only in whispers and then
quiet quiet
quiet
down, I'd
whisper,
quiet down.