A Long Time Coming

You sway the grassiest ripples of my heart 

soft, pliant, cast with a sheen 

heat the top of my head like a disc of sunlight

I've always wondered what it's like to love and be loved in return.

(The ache of mystery has been resolved.)

Catching a glimpse of your dusky skin is like seeing 

light glancing over inked text 

Falling for you is like wondering what's it's like to fall from air, from the window of an aeroplane 

There's the clench of the stomach, but an absence of true throat-squeezing fear.

Losing you to time--that enveloping, oozing entity--is like the dissipation of ideas 

Helpless to stop it, I can only hope to grasp 
a few of the remaining, drifting, flaxen strands, 

all the while watching the rest fade to forgotten nothing.

When I was younger I tried to make patterns out of velour carpeting, futilely lifting 

my own stories out of embossed fabric.

Now I trace lacy designs on the sinewy, raised canvas of your palms 

your face, your angled shoulders 

Lost, in the plains and ridges

I paint.

Aerial

For the first time in years, he looked out the window of a plane high, high, up 
And he saw

Those tiny lives, housed in the crooked, jagged formations of vehicles puffs of gasoline 

inscrutable from such height 

harmless from afar, perhaps

A tennis court half the size of his palm 

empty at the moment

And he wondered what it'd be like to witness a crime from above 

a simple mugging perhaps, in the narrow strip of a stringy alleyway, 

man versus man

Would it really be so different from seeing the crime down below, on land? Up close? 

Would he stop it then?

And the sudden dip of the plane smooths out the jarring whistle of air 

The landing, the rejoining the return of reality and everyday comings and goings 

A seamless blend with the glittering lights, lives.

The Strop

We are in a strop.
I don't care what you say
For it is what it is.

We are in a strop.
The bitterness of words left unspoken
Sit rancid on my tongue.

When our eyes meet
It's a tacit statement of everything we don't say
We just can't be the way we were.

As soon as I
See you, I think
Repulsion resentment regret

When you see me
I see it
Apprehension ambivalence aggravation.

We are not
We were never
A perfect unit, everlasting, connection.

I despise you.
I tell myself that every spare moment
Coaching my errant brain

Only way to cope
With the stagnant pull between us
Is to hate and hate more, to insert something anything--

Did you know?
History does repeat itself.
How many times has it been?

Once, twice, thrice--oh, third time's the charm
This time
It will be to break for good.

Inevitable
We fooled ourselves into thinking
We could bridge the distance, the distance that always was

Because
I thought the distance was the temporal
But it's the connection that proves ephemeral.

We could never stick
Like half-dried glue on styrofoam
We always peel apart.

And it's not that we are in a strop
We are the strop.

You
Me

It's not you me

It will always be

You                                                                                                                   Me

Unfeel

I have taught myself to not feel.

It's like holding a breath–
practice makes perfect–
little by little, you keep going
stronger
longer–

I recite lines in my head.
I compose them. Pretty soon
seconds, agonizing before, tick by as
unfazed numbers
meaningless, without production.

Like lines on the wall
I blend
not too much that I'm noticeably invisible
only so much that I just am.

I'm here. But not.
You'll see me, but you won't really.
But it's okay because
at least I'm here
and
that's what you see.

What you think you see.
We see what we want to.

No one wants to stop
but it's okay
because I don't want you to.

The art of unfeeling, of rewinding, of erasing
is like holding a breath.
And I keep going
increasing–well,
it's decreasing, isn't it–
till

there's no more breath to hold

Inspiration: Habits by Tove Lo

paper cranes

so he thought he could do anything.

He folded a paper crane once.
Fold over, tuck under, fold, fold fold

fold

in foiled paper that fractured bits of sunlight and pierced sight in just the right way

or patterned scraps of sinewy cherry blossom trees, delicate droplet petals

or just crinkled bits picked from the corners of a folder or desk or backpack.

And each time he folded one

carefully

creased with the side of his chewed-down thumbnail

measured the edges with one eye squinting shut 

he felt a blooming heat in the center of his chest

a burgeoning pride in the pit of his stomach, like

He can do something right. 

He can do something well.

But there are thousands more

(millions)

who can do that in their sleep

whose fingers dance like spindly water cranes 

whose movements rapid rush so

no sound is made.

They could grind him with the tip of a tapered index finger into finely milled sand–

He thought he could do anything.

He thought he could do anything

he could do anything

anything

any

#

once upon a time, a boy plucked my heart from my chest

he stroked it and smiled at me, caved my breast

in around the empty cavity and wiped away

the anxiety with simple words in honeyed rays

he took my heart away with him, somewhere too far to find

until i could see it no more, left behind

i crumbled inward till no one recognized me

they took away the pieces and buried me

then one day he returned and thought of me, thought to put me back together

rubbed his hands and dug me out, tugged me to him with a tether

he solidified the ashes i had become, fashioned me into a single piece

i opened my eyes and let out a sigh, wondered at his caprice

i asked him for my heart, he told me it was safe

i shook my head, lifted shaking limbs, unsound and chafed

he brought it out to show me, and knives stuck deep into the flesh

the organ blackened, rotting, i could not see i could not hear my nostrils filled

he smiled at the railroad tracks cracking through my face–breaking into bits–

his teeth black and bloodied–

swallowed the heart whole

i screamed and screamed

till he silenced my lips

sucked me in

consumed me

*Scholastic Silver Key for Poetry

At World's End

Watch.

letters fall from the sky, 

                                       b

                                            r

                                                 ok

                                                         e

                                                               n,

                                                                        unthreaded, stringy

words break apart in the middle, incomplete, incoherent, s p l i n t e r e d

Watch.

a gaping

maw.

black, hellish, pitch

consumes, tears, desecrates

strikes a chord of fear

Listen.

thrumming undetected, distinctive, muddled, ringing

roaring, hissing, building, sudden, deafening, inaudible

pounds one too many times

Feel.

reaches inside, mashes spindly fingers through the brain

plunders, assaults, violates

spreads the two hemispheres apart and thrusts

once,

twice.

Not enough–never enough.

feeds on itself, multiplies, never-ending menacing ruin

oozes undetected, visible, unsuspected

Once you submit, you are a slave.

Once you succumb, you are over.

*Scholastic Poetry Silver Key

Today.

She died today. 

There was this girl I 
knew–
not for long, though, for long enough, I don't know–
she had this 
long,
silky, 
dark hair that swished a little when she walked. 

She had pale skin. 
Her eyelashes were long but thin, sweeping thin lines
casting shadows
spidery
delicate and brittle and fragile–like her bones. 

Her fingers tapered and sharpened at the ends,
a marionette's fingers,
perhaps. 

I didn't know her well enough
to know if she was a nice person.

I scratched the surface and saw
an Asian girl, a pretty one too, with sharp
angles and hollowed cheeks.

I looked and when I looked I saw
a girl who listed a bit in the
wind
whose eyes had two eyelids each–like
an alligator–
a film that rarely lifted, like she was in her own
world.

They said that was part of her charm. 
The girl who dreamed too much.

She died today.

It was dark. Too dark. The air was a knife against slivers of exposed skin
peeking over the tops of collars, beneath hats, between layers of
scarf.
All it took was a step in the road, a film over the eyes, 
one wrong move.
On the spot, she died.

And I knew her, but not well enough. 

#!

If I could tell you stories, I would make you laugh

I would make you cry

I would turn the world right around–full three hundred and sixty.

I would shake you up

(that’s right)

I would make your lips curve up

I would make your mouth form a perfect

Circle

(maybe a dimpled oval)

I would make your mouth tremble

I would make you

Lose Control!

I would feed you words you can’t resist

words so delicious–tantalizing beyond reason

(nothing else like it)

You live for this–for me to tell you

All.

Listen to me.

I can change your life with

One

Word

Weighted so heavy you will collapse.

You don’t know how much of a burden words can be.

Every day my head pounds

Words bursting fighting knocking clamoring pounding

to

            get

                        OUT!

If I expelled every word every day, I would be locked away.

Words like poison

dripping

v

   e

      n

         o

            m

            lethal

            hurtful

No one wants to hear.

Honest–so

Sharp!

yet so blunt.

Form the perfect weapon that can drive a wedge through the stomach

The Heart.

Lies like darts–

S l o w

Deadly.

You don’t see them now, but you will.

And they hurt in the end.

Restricted                                                

Barred

Caged

I CAN’T!

                        I have no choice.

All I have are the joyful words

Sparkling!

Delicious!

Enlightening!

I tell what you want to hear.

This is…

            This is–

                        all–

This is all I have to say.

The doctor is out.

*Scholastic Silver Key for Poetry

Love and Friendship

BY EMILY BRONTË

Love is like the wild rose-briar,

Friendship like the holly-tree—

The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms

But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,

Its summer blossoms scent the air;

Yet wait till winter comes again

And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now

And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,

That when December blights thy brow

He still may leave thy garland green.