Sour Puss

I mean, I get it. I should have seen you from a hundred miles away. "Opportunist" is what you are. I carefully curated a section of this city and it is what it is not because or in spite of me but it's fucking mine because I set that flag pole into the dirt and proclaimed it to be so and it was. I let you in. I showed you things, told you how it was, shared the history and the mystery and the soundtrack that went with it and you backstabbed me in the most obvious and painful way. The women in my world are real with eachother and we don't hold back. I tell you the truth and you balk. I agree with you and you wonder why. I try to pantomime the five years I have on you and you turn your head. You make poor decisions and maybe your father is right, maybe you are selfish. Not maybe, you are. It's not enough for you, you crave bad decisions and you bask in the limelight that really is just a flickering bar light hovering over your phony halo. I'm mad, it's true but you knew you knew this would hurt me and you went boldly ahead in your plans. Did you want him to fuck you? Is that what this is about? You can't feel like you know a place until you fuck everyone in it? Why do you have to do that? What is the story here? What am I missing? Because all I see as far as Idaho is a girl with no solid footing in a place she hardly knows and men that hardly care to give her the tour outside of their bedroom. 

Why Can't I?

The secret that everyone knows is that we probably will end up together. I'm scared of your kindness and unsure of your motives. You're free and untethered and I guess I am too. We fall away and then fall back in. What am I to do with you? I think you know me better than I like to admit and maybe that's what scares me.

Running On

I want to know

What you thought 

Of our encounter.

You paced clutching

Your coffee like

Pearls.

I felt like time was slowing

And our student audience

Was waiting 

For the climax.

Yes, you moved back and forth

Nervous laugh

Side smile

Signature. 

And I leaned 

And spoke clearly 

For I knew you'd 

Appreciate that. 

Back and forth 

My eyes followed yours

While we sort of flirted 

And kind of conversed

About classes 

And badges 

And you not sleeping. 

Why can't you sleep Zack? 

Do you pace in your dreams?

Stepping like a peacock 

Untucked button down 

In place of bold feathers 

Unsteady gaze and breath caught

In your throat like smoke. 

Keeping you awake.

Not to want

I can't love anything.

I can't hold my hand steady

Keep my face 

I lose it all 

Buckling in the crush

Your wit you listen 

I think at least 

And wrong isn't the word

Desperate isn't the feeling 

Maybe more like in the way

Scarlett O'Hara Green gown staring down 

Wanting something getting nothing.

All that time wasted 

What did you say? Could you come again? Finding fuel to take us back 

In time

And that what passes us 

Is all the time

And when I asked you to drive me to California and you said to rent a car and then I knew. 

You don't have the time for me and I guess I don't either

I can barely afford moments with myself 

And why do I feel like shit and why do I go there 

Trying to be somewhere with you but 

We never even left we never were even 

Walking side by side but you take off 

Motorbike just right 

And I get it wrong every single time.

The moral or the parable 

Is that always, forever, until the end of time. If someone wants to be in your life they'll be in it. No hard feelings, no forced hands...they'll be there or at least try and then you'll know. 

Howl

It's irregular, this air. 55 degrees on an early July night...or morning. Ever anxious am I to find the reasoning for this drop in temperature. Broiling heat rids us of our senses. We sleep naked open tight fleshed glistening with fevered summer dreams. I lay here now smelling like spring, wishing you'll come to me like dew in the morning. Your face rises over me and makes everything grow brighter. Hello to your pretty mouth, hello to your body stretched oak high and just as strong. I lay here in the night and run your fingers through my hair, baking in the moonlight while Juno orbits Jupiter. Can't I just ask? Couldn't I just know what it felt like to be unraveled by you? Grace of your fingers and stars in your eyes. A Lone Wolf can still love, if only from afar. 

Nervous

My heart races when someone knocks on the door. My fingers tremble when I sit in front of everyone ready to tell them to reach into their pockets. I can't stop the shake, the breathing that isn't normal, the fear creeping up and rattling me to the core. I'm nervous and anxious, more so than ever before. Summer brought boredom and boredom brings anxiety. The $18,600, The she-devil that pays me, Europe, the world and ISIS are all I think about, all I stay awake and then dream about. It's heavy, this fear, this pain that comes for me. I expect my plane to be hijacked. I expect my insurance company to deny me. I expect something bad to happen now because something bad did happen already. Grandad getting cut up by his boat motor has set off a series of alarms that I liken to events that will turn out badly. My heart isn't broken and my body is as fine as ever. I breath and walk and work and try to cope and still I just want to cry. The cause of the pain is the only thing that can heal my hurt but where's the root when the whole thing feels like a throbbing, frightening mass? Breath into a paper bag, burn sage, do the fucking things you need to do in order to feel better but I'm still scared inside, I'm still wanting to cry and can't find the tears to do so. I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared. 

Work work work work work

I cut myself to close. My relationships with lovers are non existent because I am in love with someone else, myself. In order to keep this relationship going I never slow down. Over booking days to trade in as texts apologizing for skipping that drink or lunch or walk. When I'm in school I'm 100% in school, there's no half in for me...it's all or absolutely nothing and it never existed because I wouldn't have done it in the first place. This Summer was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be two classes, diversity in literature and painting. It was supposed to be library work and trying to volunteer again. It was supposed to be nothing like how it is right now...predictable, stable and controlled. I hadn't planned on Grandad dying. I hadn't planned on a fishing accident being the cause of his demise, someone so careful doesn't have accidents. I hadn't planned on the divers recovering his body from 36 feet deep at the bottom of the lake. I hadn't planned on Oklahoma and that almost week with my cousin and the vulnerable drunkeness of the entire experience. I hadn't counted on coming home to a writing job, one that actually paid something meaningful. I didn't realize the extent of what I would have to put up with though...the childish nature of working for someone who treats their business like a weekend hobby meant to garner friends and connections more than it was meant to actually assist someone. I hadn't counted on that other girl quitting and me having to pick up additional shifts, about 9, in order to fill in the gaps left by her. But in the midst of all of this I find myself outside more. I want to hike, even if I can't make it all the way. I want to walk around the park, even if it's so hot I can't breath. I want to run sometimes and that's even crazier. In the midst of all of this and despite everything this summer has already been I'm somehow finding time to do the strangest things. My days are fortune full, open to interpretation even though they are still structured. A map has always been my friend but never a necessity. I'll use it to take notes to reference later when I want to remember this time. The x marks the spot on my heart where whatever I'm looking for will inetivebly be...as long as I can stand the possibility that it will change. 

A dash for every time

Cut your cloth and wrap myself in it. Wax poetic with the minutes we spent, burn the candle we made on nights I can't sleep. They say you're no good, that you're too lonely, too hard hearted, too unreliable. She told me not to be embarrassed or anything but I was. Not because I like you, never for that, but because I feel like you like me too. Your face fucks me up, runs me off course and through ditches of heartbreak scenarios. Come be an Eagle Scout in my bedroom, explore new places, embroider my back with your finger touches and start long burning fires in my hearth. Get at me, fish have no memories but I do, and I want you to be in mine for a long time. I want to know what you were thinking when that photo was taken. 

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. 

Ode to someone I don't really like anymore

Today

You worked

And I tried not to look

Because looking would have been a lie.

A rouse

To watch your hands

And weed through the hairs 

On your wrist

Like I was hiding, rifle in hand 

Full Metal Jacket

Stalking up your arms

On guard

Ascending the bergs that must mean I've reached the peak

Of your shoulders

Bony landmarks

Flank the roughness of a neck

Blood surging, do you know? 

I'm at your ear asking 

My verbs are veiled 

But what I would say in secret

Let me show you my proof 

I've watched your hands

Enough to know what they can do. 

I Think I Hate You

I'm scared you soured me
Lemon juice and buttermilk
Your face brings pangs
of fear
anger
desire
guilt.

I'm scared I'm soured
Fruit left out in the heat
growing new life
but no longer wanted
regardless.

I cannot recall the last time I felt fresh
not maxi pads or batches of cookies
but unknowing
ignorant
and full of possibility
without the awareness
that age
hurt
and heartbreak brings.

-----------------------------------------

Girl gang

She crawls across the sofa and pulls herself against the edge, poised to flip over and yet only succeeding in pressing her butt out and pretending to be sexy. The idea that he is there, behind her, watching every clumsy maneuver. 

She's in a hotel lobby in Honolulu, sitting pretty in a too large wing backed chair. She is so fucking beautiful and still so stubborn. She waits. She recalls the feeling of him showing up and prays to God that she gets to feel that once more. 

I want to 

I want to

I think you want to too

You watch me close

Picking up my scent

Feeling me out

You're movements

And our moments

I want you down to my sinews and bones

Teach me show me 

Touch me

Know me

I wish you could hear me calling out in the night

Begging

Begging you to be mine

Romance novels chocolate hearts and ripe red strawberries

I can't get my fill of you

I can't get my fill.

Get this off my chest

Oh boy I've got it bad. So bad I fantasize you showing up in all my familiar places. Peeking through the stacks and catching face with me, asking me what time I'm off work. Walking in to Tulie after I've already ordered and am on my way out. Waiting for your film to start at the Broadway and I'm there for the same one so we have to sit together. I see your face, your long fingers and black hair. I see you looking and wondering and I love that you tease me and give me something to look forward to. Your face is one I will not soon forget and I am aching all over just waiting for the day you will explore me, press into me, know me. I've got a list of requests for you to fulfill; tongue, touch, fingers, chest, lips, body, crease and hold. This isn't any cute crush. I want to be enveloped by you, taught by you, made to feel like you could never let me go. 

Let's get real

I am writing down the way your body's magnetic field spins me out of orbit and into your galaxy. I am trying to recall the smell of your body, the way beads of sweat make you slightly damp and in turn makes me damp. The clear brown of your eyes wrapping themselves over my blue; begging you, begging for you with every extended stare. I'm convinced of my crush, I wish I knew if you were too. Your breath on my neck, towering over me with strong, capable hands ready to be put to work. I have a job that needs doing, adjustments that need fine tuning. I was electric after our encounter. I shocked myself on nearly everything and there is no way that just happens. There's a truth to your smile and an earnestness I want to explore like the cavern of your mouth. Touch your rough cheek and whisper something sweet and tease you with my tongue.