monologue

"But I love you."
Where? Where is this love? I can’t see it, I can’t touch it. I can’t feel it.
I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can’t do anything with your easy words.
(Closer, 2004)

i promised myself i would face your absence with dignity.
instead, i remember:

the floor cold, room hollow. the shower stares at me,
the tile laughing at our despair. my words are meaningless, your gaze
empty. i think back to the time right after we met.
sitting on the decomposing stairs. there was dust, so much dust.
you brushed the cobwebs off my words. i meant them then.
so full of promise, the broken glass you carefully led my sandaled feet
around.

you fell asleep with my hand on your chest,
my ring stuck on your index finger.

____________

and now, this:
broken sobs.
the heat of anger, the final storm. the word devastating
clinging to the wallpaper,
my private collection of last looks.
some vacant echo reverberating
between the walls. water, tears.
water.

so much water.

____________

i remember waking at seven one morning in the spring.
it was raining, you still went outside for a cigarette.
we were quiet then. i fed you pieces of an apple, you watched me
fall back into sleep.

you owed me something then.
the word love is an agreement, a treaty.
the word love is a sentencing.

it owed me an answer when i asked it,
how will this ever survive me?

____________

that evening on the boat when you made me dance.
i wasn’t afraid then. we had cheesecake
and miles of river ahead. that boat would have sailed us
as far as we let it.

the yellow rose that died before its time, your hand against my
thigh under the table. sweat. the sound of trains.

quiet.

____________

and then, reality:
i am too much like
your mother and you are
too afraid.
the water steals the room, too deep to walk away.
i turn, gasp for air.
i turn back.
there is only a ripple where you were.

fighting fire

most days, 
i find myself trying to decide who it is that i miss; 

was it the boy with the blue guitar, or

the one who smelled like tobacco, 

even the man who hid behind loud engines and guns.

or maybe i miss the one who took without asking, 

the boy whose eyes lost their color

with every new day.

there are those that came and left silently in the night,

nameless masses only alive in the few dark moments i allowed.

there were the few that got close, and the many that got all the way,

entering with no charm, exiting with no consequence.

and for each one that visited, 

i sewed a pocket in my jeans,

sixteen homes with doors that even my tiniest stitches 

couldn’t keep

shut.

 __________________________

i don’t own enough bookmarks to mark the beginning and the end

of each of their chapters, don’t even bother anymore to fill out the blank

pages where they once walked, 

but none of this stops me from

missing them, the ones i never knew, the ones who were afraid,

the ones who feared nothing. 

i miss all the men that i haven’t met, my future pockets, the future scars

that will be mine, and all mine, to keep.

i wonder where they are now, if in the morning, they will remember my name, and everything i gave them that i meant to get back. 

i tell myself there is kindness after the violence, respect after abuse,

rain after fire,

that next time, i will be better at sewing, i will make one pocket strong enough

to keep him there safely, i will rip off all the others that didn’t hold up with time.

i will remember that wherever there is light there will be darkness, 

with power there will always be weakness. where there is gasoline, there will be fire;

and so i pick up my needle, my thread.

and so i put down my match.

keeper of scars

welcome the charred lips and
cigarette tongue that you taste as you come,
dirty and wild.
you’re just that kind of girl, aren’t you?
the kind no one can seem to forget,
but they’d rather not remember, or keep.
you’re just another drip of saliva
that paints their acid mouths, replaceable muscle that
licks the filth from their naked wounds.
you don’t even taste the pills you inhale, and
his scars? you read them like a map while
he tears off hunks of your flesh that never re-grow.
you cringe over nothing except the moment when the bar lights dim
and you’re forced to stumble home.
your mind is the strainer that sits in some rusted sink,
the one that collects the leftover
silt of those that came before you. your body is the mother of
aborted misadventures, your soul the child of an abandoned universe.
you are the keeper of scars
in a house built on fiberglass
that offers no door from which to enter, or leave.

there are few evenings when you
even bother to let the fresh air thin out of your thoughts, rare when
you notice the lull of the t.v. in the background, tuning out every word.
but aren’t there some nights when you can’t seem to ignore
the persistent barking of the dogs
that hunger for your flesh? don’t you feel their greedy jaws
nipping at your toes when
you tell yourself: these sounds, this racket, do not exist.
these persistent noises are simply
the birds flirting with the trees, the stars
making love to the moon, the clouds reuniting with the rain. 
but no matter what you tell yourself, you still can’t seem to shake
the approaching surrender;

these dogs, they’re calling for you, and tonight you are
powerless to the sound as you finally
drop your baggage on the steps,
abandon your skin, your hair, your antique jaded scent
and blindly follow the deafening noise towards the quiet, towards
the silence that is waiting for you, waiting for
only you to stumble home.

what the marriage would have been like

sunday mornings

i tried to keep you frozen in slow motion

so i could watch you squeeze 

fresh orange juice for hours, spend light-years

watching you crack and re-crack eggs

that sizzled with authority on the hot grill that never grew

cold. there always seemed to be one hair that

somehow managed to wander into your sleep-filled eyes,

an extra slice of toast that inevitably found its way to the 

floor. you’d make coffee strong enough to put hair on 

your mother’s chest, each cup washing away the drips

that persisted down the back of your throat after another pill

found its way into your brain. slowly, i would watch you

crawl back into bed, the narcotics taking their course,

helping you find a slow motion of your own that left

no room for me. 

for as long as it lasted, i’d watch you sleep, cover your

cold, lifeless limbs with the closest blanket in reach, and pray

you’d wake up before the sun went down. i no longer saw the man i loved 

in your eyes but i never stopped looking.

_________________________

these nights, i don’t sleep. i make tea to wash down the pills i can’t

pronounce and i allow cigarettes to burn you away in the morning while

the grill stays cold and untouched. i wonder if you’re alive,

if you ever found that ring, if Thailand taught you everything you hoped it would. 

i wonder if the man i once knew is somewhere inside of you. 

if he’s out there, if he ever shakes inside of you,
please say hello; tell him i miss him.
tell him i always leave my bed unmade in case he comes home. 
tell him i don’t apologize anymore for the way i feel and tell him
that somewhere inside of me, there is the sixteen year old he used to know; 
tell him she is not broken or scared. she is clean, she is sober, and she still has an insatiable
hunger in her soul. she is not alone, or sad. she is alive and she is waiting,
and she is thirsty for sunday morning to come.

universe

sometimes i manage to forget the curve of

your shoulders, the taste of your skin on mine,

the lulling ache of you inside of me --

but they don’t make greeting cards for this. 

the simple act of forgetting, even if just for one 

hungry second of this relentless pulse, i ride

it like a beggar, hungry for salt

and sweet, sweet denial. you never understood what it was like to sit

in dangerous quiet and use your voice as an instrument

of justice, to follow the faint scent of autumn towards spring,

to write words so true they sting on the page even after

the ink is dry, and the war has ended. 

never let the universe regret you 

i think she said, but somewhere along the line you forgot

to listen. how does it feel to know that even

Hell doesn’t want you? i wish i could say that and smile

but then i’d start to remember and i would remember and remember

and remember your hot breath on my neck, the tingle of betrayal

between our damp bodies, the vividness of you walking away; 

and then, when the smoke sings on and the stars cower from the sight,

i will put you in a jar with all the other things i’ve lost

and seal it tightly, quietly knowing that some day i

will open it again and i will remember and remember

and tell everyone.

to the boy with the angry eyebrows,

i’m sorry that no one ever took the time to paint you
while you were basking in the perfect morning sun
cause if i had a brush i would have traced every chiseled line
shaded the deepest shadows even the ones
behind your eyes; i never would have let your colors fade or
allowed you to be forgotten next to something newer
more vivid more alive
because i still remember what it was like to be dead with no
one to paint no colorshow no fireworks no explosions inside
placed on a wall and hung observed watched because you are special
so tragically special and beautiful and some nights
i stay awake until dawn and wonder where you’ve gone since our
months beneath the fireflies and if
“who you become is who you really are” and if you could paint,
if maybe you ever would paint me and if so how would i look?
and i can only hope that in your memory
i dance across the page
in shades of purple and green and i still have my long
hair, just the way you liked it and i would be sitting cross-legged on that old bench, head back and eyes laughing with the stars.