on the first day, i am sitting beside the last.

lifting a tissue from its box

and passing it to myself

As she drives on home

through the radio’s silence

she is listening to someone

hoping to hear them, say it clearly

so she can say it back

And later

softly to ourselves

and today when it is gray the radiator will not stop muttering to itself and i want it to shut the fuck up. 

it is hissing so softly, sputtering steam, doing its job, making heat for me, and i never complain to the windows who leak cold air through their cracks because i guess i just prefer it all to happen in silence, so silence i will get while i freeze on up and as i die i will blame it on radiator

i do not wake to boys in bed

but i will wake up next to him

morning light,

do not wonder what he is thinking

know what he is not. 

know us yesterday,

wearing lace as the pride on our sleeves,

shooting from the same glass,

gleaming with the same gloss,

sleeping       still.

for the next day when we rise,

the pink will still be on his lips

and when it leaves them

it comes,

it stays with me  

There are others 

And there is you

Contours cut from the purest white marble 

Dancing for a possibility at having no fear

This year 

There is more life across John than I have ever known 

This will not change me

The romance of vignetted silhouettes 

Horizontally sliced by plastic blinds

It will just make me more aware than ever that I know you 

And not what you are thinking

2. There is a staunch and marked silence in the moment you understand you are misunderstood

I built a house inside of myself at the center of a field who knows nothing and no one but me

It will stand still as things roll slowly from dawn to duskscription text goes here

all we have are holograms and tin cans on mile-long strings and hinge and luck 

all i asked for was one speck of your dust

while i melted gooey down your printless fingertips until i was not myself, 

i was counting upon my own

"one more day until i will get to know you"

until days started sailing like leaves

forming piles of "she loves me"s and "she loves me not"s

wading heavy honey

how many times will i let you break my heart?

how much of me is spent while waiting for morning to come and tell me what to do?

because nothing seems clearer than what is cast in bruised blue 

3:11, interrogated by a streetlamp peering inside my window asking 

what is it that i even want?

your answer,

i'll have it

What if I told you

You have provided

Me 

The gift

Of speaking to the might-as-well-be-dead?

My could have, 

My should have, 

My would have

You grant me permission to honor their after, 

My life, 

Our song,

Rolling honda hearse

For when I saw red

I left her at the intersection.

Your language,

A riverbed

Your clay,

I harvest 

Fill my bucket,

Work desperately at the wheel,

Shape something.

You tell me

“Hold it,

Make it yours,

Give it no legs”

i want to believe that we grew up making whistles from the same long blades of grass 

i know this

that she shines so bright that she leaves me glossy red

i am blinking black eclipses

i keep on looking up

it’ll come around

i’ll come around 

i dreamt my teeth were falling from my gums 

sprouting legs and scattering away

i think they must be running blind

i grew them and their plaque 

i heard the sound of their tooth parade chanting 

“up up and away”

then it was just me

along with my empty mouth

and a tiny heart poorly stitched into my breast pocket