Crossing

6.26.13

My body says listen
so I tune out the birds.
One's building a nest in the gutter.

I know how
pain disperses,
the way a wave thins
to a slippery film
over sand. 
That's when, like magic,
you find your feet buried.

But I guess I know how I got here.
There were choices,
the kind you make because
you have to.

Where once I saw a fleshy cord,
I see a tightrope.

I don't have to cut it to know
if I tried to cross,
I would fall.

Me at 14

6.17.13

this is what it does, this is what i am always trying to explain- i smile, i sleep, i cut up fruit and walk along the river, but around me the world shrinks to this ring.  i fasten this life, i set conditions, the ring contracts even further.  there are sacrifices i make, and they are great. i will lose anyone.  i will lose everyone.  mine is a hunger too great to satisfy.  i write to him from the house of voids.  i was not built on solid ground.  this is a fist, a place, a lock.  i want to be held down, pinned.  at night i speak to stars.  he finds me by the water, and he knows enough.  i can’t be human, i can’t be human- god, i have turned my back on so much.

Running scared

6.16.13

it's not so imagined, the thing that's chasing me
so I tidy my hands into knives
and take off.
cut and rhythm, 
sweet hymn of reason
for the hyper pulse.
this body seethes when I keep it
from the only thing it knows how to do.
I claim this sympathetic leap
and landing, peerless, scared
to the very center of this autonomous system,
nothing left to do but run,
so I run,
I can run,
I can still run.

Not alone

6.12.13

I have tried to shove you off
through my therapist's hands.
I have tried to travel.
6,000 miles from you
for a month, I felt like a stillborn.

For years I have had dreams about parasites
so real I wake up convinced.
I have stared wide-eyed at the thought
of taking scissors to what I see between us;
umbilical,
electric,
hollow as a drain.

Full of greatness today,
I gave you another last chance.

When it was time to stop crying,
I drove home alone.

Rivers

6.11.13


Today it rained hard enough to hurt
Rivers down the black street
Tea, rice cakes, juice through straws
Stopped in time
Back in time
The places I've lived, the places
I've left
Deep enough
To dive, to swim