• Teenage

    girlish, warm-blooded
    sheep in wolf’s clothing

    eyes glisten with a shred of world
    pools for tongues to lick

    youth spilling over the walls
    home in a bubble or a cloud

    limbs like railings to be gripped
    hips like bannisters to slide down

    eventually,
    nowhere else to go

    house creaks like a dying thing
    and my hands grow tired of skin

    and you cut your hair
    and i gasp at the death

    how could we have aspired
    to be anything for each other?

  • Water poem

    Lie open on the rocks
    To cool the body down

    What we lost lives here
    Among broken cliffs
    And sea spray
    Where everything is slick
    And ready, with mouth wide

    Is it enough to be mystified by the air?
    To love it?

    The moment always wants
    To be free of all the others,
    Twisting with its great shoulders
    To face the sun

    Torture of yesterday,
    Stones cast like dreams
    Into the ocean, lost to the swirl of the gods.

  • Night into day

    Tongue in your teeth. There is no space between your words and their meaning. I look around the room, like you don’t matter.

    We are both worrying. Again.

    I am used to being loved, I say with my eyes. As if the number of times means something. As if you’ll feel sorry for me. You are staring at the lamp in the corner, imagining its white-hot bulb where your head should be.

    We wait out the worrying, or something human kills it.

    In bed, I decide there is nothing normal.

    We are weirder and wearier than ever before.

    In this light, everything is.

    The night air makes us soft, defenseless. We don’t have faces in the dark. I feel sorry for ever wanting you to feel sorry for me. A dismantled thought has many frightening explanations.

    Good morning, everything. These next seven minutes will last forever if we focus. (We focus, but not well enough). When they’re gone, they are long gone, swept away like ashes after fire.

    You watch me make trivial decisions. Black shirt? Blue? Sometimes, that’s all there is left to do. You watch me with a kind of confused wonder. Where does she go? Where does she put herself?

    Right here. I reach for you.

    You, capable of killing too much of yourself for an idea. I am so terrified, but won’t tell you that now.