My great aunt's pearls
are too long around my neck, bouncing off my clavicle like tiny semi-circle promises. If I wear them loose expectations choke me as if the pearls were too tight like a fashion statement. At the first garden party where we decided to dress like flappers, you let me dance around you until my feet turned blue like the oxygen was gone, even in the middle of the garden, where everything was budding but heavy around my neck.
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I used to know you
dirty socks home after sunrise forgotten birthdays dead flowers. Last night you stuck a rose under my sleeping nose after you creeped in. I slept on the couch until you get home library slip tickling my bellybutton like raspberry fuzz long overdue. Now laundry day pillow forts violin valentine's bouquet if what you say is true we finally made it out of the bad days where kisses belong only to me and my tea gets cold from laughing so hard. Pomegranates
You think they're too sweet for our kale salad-- tiny rubies sparkling on taste buds-- staining our shirts, so we discard them in couch cushions and cover our torsos in the fleshy pink dribble. How like you--a hard center disguised in sweetness. They're not on a mission
from god--or even their mothers hands too frozen over from planting vague rage to squeeze love back into the earth instead it is they who take first who stays alive. The Stone-Heart Girl
Inspired by Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. He called her names to paint her into boxes he could understand. But what she could not understand was why he couldn’t love her for her and not another or a figment of his imagination. She imagined, if he really loved her, it would taste familiar but there was no taste for home to the stone heart girl. He kept her secret as if ashamed of her ivory. Grabbed a mallet to chip away at her best intentions. Believed he knew better because he convinced himself he was, as men do when they don’t know the whole story. No way of knowing the stone heart girl. When everything burnt down she could finally roam free the rubble, the remnants, of the stone heart girl. Not Afraid Anymore
I’ve never seen Star Wars through when galaxies flew off the screen and I fell asleep. One of us said it was the hero’s journey who believes in heroes anymore? My mother used to let me hold things between my toes to know what real fells like. Nothing fits between them now, not even you. It’s only darkness. I sleep with the lights on, the closet door closed I’ve seen enough monsters. This girl I used to know
decorated her days in purple pipe cleaners and googly eyes. She covered her hands in bright yellow finger paint and waved-- her hand a mass of eyes that would stick everywhere but on paper. They lived in her shoes, on walls, in her hair the better to see everything. From the first day of preschool to her fourth birthday when the cake tasted strawberry and the princesses all had googly eyes. She pulled them from the sugars, as if to see what the princesses saw but other people's eyes are only reflections of the things we pretend to be and all she ever saw through googles and clever confections was blurred, if crafty. [a terza rima]
Late night, after the restaurant you dragged us away to your old haunt Too familiar with how your eyes play, you liked the way I spelled 'chrysanthemum,' less when I refused to stay. You sang your apologies like an anthem for the the things you knew you lacked and asked me to forget them. And, through the bed sheets, my stomach racked I was never quite sure how all I had known had been attacked Now, on the list of what you don't allow, is to talk about the things I want. He's not the guy that you are now. The Last Five Signs That You Are Alone
your eyes never know where to look on trains other peoples’ public kisses taste like charred doorframe, in your mouth you are the only person watching sunrise from the brooklyn bridge on a thursday the toilet seat is cold apple sauce jars go unopened post-it notes stay stuck to walls, constant reminders that you are alone you forget how hard it is to fall asleep alone after sleepy whispers once faded beneath late night elevated trains now the closet goes unopened and you, afraid its contents will seep through the cracks, like your secretive mouth bury your indecencies under comforters and leave the window open. cold-- but the only way to reach thursday you thought you saw his shadow in a puddle last thursday it was that same pyramid-shape as love in a pea coat but you were alone and, without mittens, there is nothing to shelter your hands from the cold like the way everything goes ‘local’ after midnight, most of all trains you put your finger to your mouth the shape between your lips wordless and unopened as the sun sets along the hudson, your eyes remain unopened you come home late, to make a pot of tea and wait for the end of thursday gingerly bringing the cup to your mouth turning it so you can see ‘All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone’ you bring a thermos and read ancient philosophers on trains as a distraction from the cold you imagine him most when you’re cold pretending you long for the bag of doritos you’ve left unopened claiming warmth from the newly abandoned seats on trains not like the seats in your apartment, where he sat last thursday assuring you, you would never be happy alone “shut your mouth” the last time his words reached for your mouth their sentiments came out cold like his side of the bed, now that you sleep alone and the drawers that go unopened-- as unfinished as every thursday since you watched his smile disappear on a crowded d train you spend too much time training your mouth to go without ‘us’ on Thursdays when singular-pronouns feel cold next to the unopened opportunities that you can’t help but feel alone Petrichor (the first rain after a dry spell)
I. Metal arms, spindly malnourished bench-presses carry the parachute above our heads. The wind swallowed everything but water. I am a fish. You are drowning. Fatal. II. Dropping pennies face up on sweaty cobblestone barely missing puddles as we jump across congested streets. Today was a good day, when we ignored the storm and got to play dress up, instead. We are made of water. Replenished by the rain. |
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