These days no shower is hot enough.
Every millimeter of me not red under the spray
is a study of gooseflesh topography,
an untouched map that begs for smoothing
before its mountains exhaust themselves.
These days I stand over the kettle
just for the heat of its scream,
and listen for the words in the smoke.
I want to follow it back to its fire,
like maybe that’ll be warmth enough
for my iced bones. Do you want to melt,
the sun asks, because I’ll help how I can,
but you have to come closer, soon
and I close the curtains and tie off the quilt
over my head. Let my lungs cloud
for the sky won’t. Don’t taunt me, star.
If I could supernova, my god.
Tag: poem
Missing the Missing
I haven’t been outside in 42 hours.
I keep closing my eyes and seeing cornfields.
I know this city is beautiful, objectively,
even subjectively, if you get me tipsy and out
late at night when I can see the stars
needling their way through the thick dark
that closes over us like a hand.
I pretend the callouses brushing my shoulders
are God’s fingers, and not those
of some faceless something.
I know I used to say its name in my sleep.
I know I used to say it was the only thing I wanted,
to sit at this city’s knees and listen to its stories,
let it comb its fingers through my hair.
But it never did those things.
I couldn’t find the right doorstep,
or the right window, to crawl through
and slip into its bed, wrap my arms around it
and tuck my cold toes against its ankles.
I wake up alone, and roll over, bury my face
into the pillow so the sun can’t see my shame.
I tried to love it, for a while,
even when my love letters went unanswered,
but sometimes you just get tired
of waiting by the mailbox in the cold,
so I started thinking about colder places
where the frost was staved off by the fireplace
and the earth outside stretched on for miles,
gold and silver and smooth as icing.
I don’t know why I always want to leave
the places that feel most like home.
I don’t know if I’m afraid I’m missing something more,
or if I don’t want to be afraid of missing that.
But here I am now, in a place
that will never love me back,
and all I want is to go home,
turn back the clock, say
I’m sorry, I never meant to go,
I just didn’t know how to distinguish
being held from being trapped,
and if you’ll have me back, I promise,
I’m yours to keep, I always was.
Sept. 27, ’18
right now all i know is i am going through hell
and i don’t know if my feet can carry me
he wrote a whole book on this spiral
this descent away from sanity
but it wasn’t an instruction manual for
how the hell to survive
i built this purgatory myself
but they took it over before i finished
and made it something i can’t navigate
i am blind and afraid and growing weaker every day
what i would give to see the sky again, the sky, the sky
Sept. 25, ’18
drowned on the way to school this morning.
someone said something stupid
that made me feel stupid
and now every step is waterlogged and
squelching, announcing my disgrace
to everyone in the hallways. these strangers
who pretend at sympathy but
comfort with cruelty. “it’ll be okay,
glass half full, you make your own
happiness.”
everyone keeps kicking down my block castles.
eventually you get tired of rebuilding.
living in the ruins is easier.
don’t even know what i would give
to sleep through the night again.
sleep doesn’t want me,
why should i want her.
the rain has always been my greatest lullaby
but this storm seems to be making
a mockery of me.
too quick to cry, too slow to thunder.
everyone running inside when i
slink by. hiding their faces.
can anyone make sense of this
lightning skitter pulse
it should have a bigger meaning
than this.
September 17, ’18
“When the Candle Goes Out”
I wanted so badly to be yours.
I wanted to be something you
wanted to keep. But these are not decisions
we can make for other people.
I will love you forever, even if
right now, I don’t very much like you
or the way you’ve made me feel.
But I will love you,
because you were what I needed
and I like to think I was what you needed, too,
to get to these places we are now,
even if they are not next to one another.
I wanted to stay there forever.
But if it wasn’t meant to be,
then something else is.
uncurable
my body has stopped wanting
to be a body,
because it is tired
of pills
and it is tired
of being untouched
and unheld
and left behind
because it is easier
for other bodies
not to have to
drag it along.
my body has stopped wanting,
and this is scary
but hopefully also means
it is finally time to rest.
Germany, July
We ride a lot of trains here.
I always get stuck on the side with too much sun.
My freckles are coming back.
I’m so grateful I don’t have words.
Thought I’d lost them.
My feet are so tired they don’t remember rest.
My soles are in the shapes of cobblestones.
I can point out the cities I’ve crossed through
by the grooves from the rocks on my heels.
Bring them home.
A handful of dust from under each bed
I ever dreamt about you in.
I forgot to buy souvenirs,
too distracted,
but there’s enough sand in my suitcase
to make us a mountain.
Forgive the grains in my teeth
when I smile. This was a summer
I relearned my grin
and it would be too cruel to ask me
to stop.
July 5, 2018
It hasn’t been easy, without you.
I wouldn’t want it to be.
You were the moment that made this year
momentous, and even though it’s
not what it was, anymore,
I’m glad the memory gets to go
untouched. I know I don’t have
the same fate.
Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and I
forget, that we aren’t like we were,
and I’m halfway through a poem to you when
I realize I’m writing you,
yet again, and you won’t know,
because you don’t look for me,
at least I think you don’t,
sometimes the songs on your playlists sound
a little bit too much like
me,
and I hate that it makes me start to hope
you haven’t forgotten, you keep
looking, you maybe find yourself
halfway through a thought of me
before you remember
it’s probably best if you didn’t.
I hate that I don’t quite believe me.
I hate that I don’t quite know
what to do with my hands
when they’re not holding yours.
Chatterboxes
Quiet as I am, I’ve been collecting.
I’ve got biting words. Snap and snarl.
Flinching words. Smack and dodge.
The thud of tired words, hitting the mattress,
shoes thumping to the rug and
sighs muffled against pillows. Cool fabric
I wish lined my throat. Stuffing.
Make it easier to talk to strangers
by not having to say anything at all.
But you, you, you have words
like I’ve never heard before.
Good words. Big words. Silver-dollar words.
Leave you gasping laughing words.
Poking jeering dancing words.
Words that sparkle at the corners
of your mouth, meeting dimples.
Champagne words. Popping bubbles.
I think maybe one day you’ll teach me
softer words. Flower growing words.
Blossoming tending harvesting words.
Coaxing words. Saplings from soil.
Just enough rain to soothe the sunshine.
Warm and plush like a palm around mine.
When you said you liked me,
the air was flush with red-tinted words.
Like the tops of your ears.
Like the apples of my cheeks.
Words that crunch into me.
Words that hollow.
We’ve got a hundred thousand words between us
and we’ll make a hundred thousand more.
Just as long as you keep talking.
Just as long as you keep me talking.
We’ll trade these words for quiet, currency,
right when we need it most.
June 17, 2018
“Death Rattle”
It’s your car, and it’s dark out, more shadow than world,
more ghost than girl, my hands going inwards
every time you try and hold them.
The car rattles. Rocks. Lurches like we have been
swept out to sea, and the water is climbing
up the windowpane. Rain from below. Lightning cuts
through ink, so I can see your face,
just as we submerge.
poetgoes 