Take it away

I drank a latte at 7pm thinking it would be perfect for the strong arm past the remainder of the semester but instead it has me laying in bed at way-past-late thinking about your stupid goddamn face. It's not the latte's fault though, it's mine. I wanted to log into Yelp to find a menu for Seoul Garden for Joe's birthday. I hated Yelp for some reason and deleted it almost as soon as I used it the first time. I logged on only to find you waiting for me like a thief of my happiness. 

Get away, get gone. I don't hate you for anything except breaking my stupid heart. I can't even blame you anymore for that because I only made it worse making you come here. Why do we look so happy in this picture. We had gotten lost in a corn field 5 minutes earlier. We stood around with southern Maryland yokels trying to figure out the food situation in a shanty barn out in god's country. I think about your arms. Your arms always smelled good and your hair was so soft. You smelled male and clean and safe to me. You pulled me close and made a space for me in your cavity. I rattle at the thought, feel sick to even think of my body next to yours, knowing who you are now. You don't exist as a current person. That's insensitive to your memory perhaps but it's just how I have gotten on, gotten through. Your crazed paragraphs-long text rants never amused me and I might be crazy but you're fucking clinically insane. Writing nigger on my bannister like it's supposed to be humor, telling me my cat hates me when she's been with me for 13 years and you can't even fathom that kind of loyalty. It confuses you. Your stupid arms. Your stupid smell. I used to leave the door unlocked for you, thinking somehow you'd come back like the stray you always were. You didn't, you never were mine anyway...I deluded myself thinking you might have been once...maybe when that photo was taken. Yelp. How fitting, I yelped when I saw myself. Girl, wanting to get to you but not really. I didn't want to have sex with you that first night but I did because you already had my bra off. I tried to hurt you every which way I could but it didn't phase you...you only had to do one thing to hurt me and you did it perfectly, expertly. I'll cash in all my chips one day and buy myself a clue for when it comes to you. Eating donuts in bed like it's your job. You made me so sick; we are too different to ever make an equal equation. You have to do to one side what you do to the other and neither of us would cross sides. I would have followed you anywhere though. I would have breastfed our children and been a wife to you. I had decided on you and you let me down with an unfailing accuracy. I could never get you alone, you always had your girls with you. Cut to the chase now ok, it's out of my system. Remember that time you tricked me into thinking that plastic snake was real? No? Me neither. 

Tony

My heavy fingerprints bound across your chest.

Pitter patter this all night thing. Stare at me a little more and then tell me not to touch you. I lost myself in your embrace, all black pea coat drowned in your chest. Your eyes hidden by those eyebrows. Stop breathing so I don't think about you anymore. 

I try to tell the whole story of how it was, how it is now...and it just doesn't matter. I shake in my fierceness of who I was then compared to who I am now. My heart has been packed on ice, preserved like a cucumber in a brine that can't be recreated. It's all there, the elements of those rudimentary feelings. I liked you and you betrayed me. I reached for you and you told me not to touch you. The sheering off of this emotion, I want to like you, maybe love you but I just need you to act right. I turned around after performing a miracle and your wouldn't walk through the sea with me. So now it is. Drive away in in your truck and I'll stand here like a stupid girl and chalk it up to not being good enough for a drunk whose addicted to laughter and cocaine. 

I tied a ribbon to a tree and pretended like it meant something. Call me on one of those giant plastic phones, I'll answer the pay phone at Lakeline Mall and giggle even though you didn't say anything funny. It wasn't expecting anything, I didn't even remember your name. You hang with those girls that know people and are beautiful and fun and I'm not. You told me not to touch you. That's not something I hear often, if ever. The way you said it was like biting into an eclair and hot lava pouring out; my heat stopped. 

When it happens it's not immediate. 

There's a sort of gray speck and it spreads like ink on water. It unfurls and curls and that's when the aching starts. The gray is smokier now, like a bar at last call. Edges become blurred and breathing is more difficult. It opens up further and chokes whatever is in its way. "I know this" I whisper. "I know what this is" even though I can't see why, I can't breath and I find no escape from the claustrophobia of my existence. Now is when I start slow, cutting one pill into halves, swallowing the fraction with milk and taking gulping breaths to fight the urge to call out of work and power through this experience. When I was a kid I just thought I was mad; mistaking anger with fear. "I'm tired" I think. I manage myself 

Feel Better

I'll feel better

When I get up to pee

And feed the cat 

And give her two units of insulin 

So I can go back to sleep.

I'll feel better

When I put the water on to boil

And it's screaming relaxes into a hiss

As it's changing the composition 

Of the the coffee crystals. 

I'll feel better 

When I find something to wear

That doesn't make me look fat

But let's me be fat

And look good too.

I'll feel better

When I see the lumbering metal orthotope on wheels

Coming down the street 

And I get in and there is a place for me

So I don't have to stand squished 

Next to the businessman 

Who can't keep his eyes away.

I'll feel better 

When the day is over

And I can peel off my leggings 

And smoke weed on the couch 

And drink cold soda water

And think about my life

Like it's written in stone 

Instead of in the sand.

I'll feel better 

When I get into bed

And my cat follows suit

And wants to lay next to me, purring

Like she feels better too. 

I'll feel better

When I put in my earplugs 

And lather my chest in essential oils 

And pull my eyemask down 

And forget about what it would take for me 

To just feel better. 

Corona Comma Constant

Where do your eyes fall when you look at me? When you walk in  I wind up the tape in order to record the next three hours. There's a flea in my ear. It whispers "you're foolish for liking him" and "he's not for you." All the seconds sprinkle whole minutes into moments and sheet out into hours and the finished product remains the last m o m e n t  we are together. Side glances and the way you stand so close over me. You standing around me today, when I was shelving, I could tell you were watching me. I could tell. I don't want to fail you. I want to sit in your car and listen to Mazzy Star. Racing against you, the way you smell fills me up like warm milk in a jug. I want you to swagger around me, I want to meet your friends, I want to go where you go.

Mein Professor

I am irritated that I don't have my notes here to copy-type my evidence of you. All of a sudden I got really tired. 

Shifting uncomfortably

What am I trying to say? I'm scared I'll touch you. 

The other six days of the week are unecessary.

Everyone knows my name it feels like, except you. 

Moon set 

All alone

Listening to the heart throb hurt love music of this generation 

 Cut crystals 

Stab my heart

Vibrating skin

What is there to say? 

Spoiler alert: nothing, nothing and more nothing

Lay alongside me 

Not touching 

Knowing you're there

Is enough

I think

Ode to someone I do currently like

I'm trying

You can't say I'm not

You smell 

Like mint gum and maleness and old spice

Or something

And the air of you just titters me 

Makes me flighty and dumb.

I think you think that

About me, you think I'm dumb.

I'm pretty, I know that but I don't know if you know that.

Do you?

I'm pulling your thread

Trying to unravel the mystery 

That embroiders you. 

You tell me nothing until you tell me everything. 

I'm trying I'm trying

To get at you, get right pressed up to you.

Looking at all of those beard hairs like individuals

Wondering how good you smell on the surface of your flushed skin.

Wondering if I could maybe love you

Because I can like all day 

But I have to be taught to love all night.