I forgot what lungs do, could you tell?
At the restaurant, the electric nausea
of new love ping-pongs in my organs.
Beats of wings stretching the length
of my torso rattle against the table.
Pay no attention to the bird.
What were you saying
about dancing?
I imagine you taking your smash
to me with a steel wrecking bar.
I imagine all the blood and sinew and truth,
veins dangling like phone wires,
spilling over the café table.
I imagine exhaling, finally.
Neither of us flinching.
I bet it is peaceful to watch a bird
break restaurant glass. I smile demurely.
Our dinner resumes. How is your sister?
I readjust my dress.
You look so beautiful tonight.
Kaitlin, the Choreographer
i’ve always wanted my limbs to swing that way
so musical and concise, salsa
hipswivel bent, fast and sweat, sexy.
i can see you scanning me with your eyes,
when we talk it’s dumb how reckless i feel,
so small, so nervous, i know you know
what it means to love something magically unhuman
like music or dance or the fluidity of sound and body
when you look at the mirror
and see bones as bridges
muscle as a language
as a catalyst do you ever ask yourself
if you could love anyone the way you love
watching bodies in motion,
moving the way you want them to.
i don’t know if you could.
my bet’s on the mirror.
8
There was a gay couple I met last year that was
celebrating their eighth wedding to each other,
this time in Washington.
With each state that
passed a gay marriage vote, they would travel and
get a document of marriage in that particular state.
Part of me thinks that is ridiculous and excessive
most of me thinks that it is wildly romantic
but I’m telling you:
once I held your face in my hands,
pressed to my mouth, aching of forever
I understood
I would marry you eight times, too.
The Airport Is Switzerland
I have been gone for six weeks this time.
We have a day and a half to be together
before I leave again for the road;
I don’t know if I can bear it
Our time is always a pendulum
Is always sporadic and sparse
I cannot seem to collect myself
at the loading zone of the Bradley airport
This place is Switzerland
Is both friend and ache
She hangs us, suspended in midair
Until the next time I see you
under the covered concrete for the
Welcome Home
How extraordinary it is to feel your own heart gasp
Welcome home to my arms,
to my hungry eyes, to my full anatomy
And in the inverse; the leaving
My cells bend involuntarily when it is
the kiss of departing
I pull for you physiologically like a tide
Our never-goodbyes (only see-you-soons)
Circle like full moons
but I still tremble with the friction
that comes before the silence
I do my best to remember the idea
of great joy and great sorrow
And that you cannot have one without the other
The airport is a lesson in two worlds
The flight is a test of each
When I go,
I can’t help but feel the continental United States
is a tidal wave ripping us far apart
I blame this on geography and the ocean and the moons
All of me wants to rebel in this instant
Say “fuck it. I’m gonna chop wood and
make banana bread and kiss you for the rest of my life”
I choose you
You said to me, crying last night
I choose you back
I hope you know every day
I choose you I choose you I choose you
I choose the ache and the waves of hot tears,
and the fast plane and the windows of time,
the brilliant hours of magic
in a field by your house, the two worlds,
the anatomy of your cells, the holy welcome
of your arms, the tears of our curbside goodbyes
oh my truest love—
It is a privilege to miss you.
My Friends and I Were in a Ninety-Mile-an-Hour Collision
and we should have died. it’s real what they say,
everything flies around you in slow motion, lights blinding, sound as an aftermath, and is that my voice screaming or hers. all i felt was the shooting pain up and down my leg, she stayed with me sitting in the passenger’s side and doesn’t remember. I cried like I was reborn with blood on my hair, i thought i lost her then, i never lost her and now i cant forget her, she sat on the curb as i tried to make bad jokes we found out she had a concussion but truly i don’t know how to explain that when the car hit us i thought i was the crumpled metal too that i was the weight of the engine on our bodies, was the torture of high school all compiled into one really loud scream, i didn’t even know my voice made sounds like that
Written at Our Dining Room Table
I stared at the back of Henry Seedorf’s head
for all of sixth grade.
One time he was singing a “Weird Al” Yankovic song about Star Wars during free time and I knew the harmony so I sang along.
I knew the back of his head way better than the front.
He had a mole on the left side of his neck
I studied it every day to make sure it wasn’t cancerous
That was my favorite part of sixth grade.
Tonight over dinner, I think about the back of your head
and make a note that I ought to study it
It is important to know one’s partner’s
back of the head for many reasons.
Maybe one day we’ll be on a famous lesbian couples game show, and I’ll need to point out your glorious cranium out of ten less attractive heads
I mean, I know the front of your head really well
You have my favorite head
But I want to adore all parts of you equally
I feel a twinge of guilt that perhaps I have not given the proper attention to the back of your head
I think about the day we met and how you made dinner
I remember watching you move like a symphony
conductor, swiveling around the linoleum,
talking passionately with your hands
as I stood idle with a jar of water, smitten by your skill and the conversation.
I pretended I was your girlfriend and we lived like this with you gliding around the kitchen and how maybe you’d kiss me in between chopping vegetables.
I imagined staring across from you at our dining room table thinking about how I could best love you.
Your New Girlfriend Is Pretty and I Hate Her
when you say good morning from your flannel sheets
and the night is still thick from your fucking in this room
i imagine a halo around your skin
seeing it like i used to.
the undertaker, with soft doe eyes,
says “good morning” back to you
at least that’s how i imagine it in my head when
you say good morning to another woman
she must be my killer
she must be my evil end
when she opens her mouth,
does she know how we spent the year?
drunkenly, buckling
under the truth of being stupid and nineteen
how i didn’t know you bought me a ring
how you placed it on the dresser when you left
does my heartbreak echo in the hall
of your mouth after you kiss?
unless?
unless the undertaker has really pretty hair
and you love her
then it’s not really that bad.
maybe she’s not an undertaker after all.
maybe she’s just like a perfect face but maybe
when she holds your hand does it feel
like the strings of the piano might snap
the weight of the attic might collapse
are there boxes of my letters underneath your old clothes
are they chorusing an album that i don’t dare play
(endless numbered days) i know you know you are
always in parentheses for me
oh my lost love
there is no undertaker
there is no evil laugh
i’m just writing a poem about you
and your beautiful new girl
and trying to not get coiled into a dream
that is hard to forget
a memory tough to shake, little scars
i should have known that something so honest
couldn’t last the greed of my mouth
You Are with the Wrong Person
It was a joke, mary
You are so young and drunk and sensitive
Your eyes dart back and forth like fish in a pet store
waiting for approval
I’m going to teach you to toughen up, kid
And I know a lot about being cool,
And then she would glide across the floor
and make smart jokes
and I would clap my uncool hands
So proud
Most of my life I’ve felt like
a shopping cart with a shitty wheel
Been too weirdo
too chubby girl
too excited
All I wanted was to convince her
that I was useful and smart
and not even magazine-cool, just regular-cool
I’m not saying that she didn’t love me good enough
I’m not saying she didn’t hold me with tenderness
in the hours of falling asleep;
That after torrential rain bent our frames into making—
we did grow to love each other
But there is something that happens
when you are told you are Too Much
You begin to ask everyone,
how small would you like me?
What I Thought About While We Fell Asleep Watching Chopped
for MB
I want to fold myself into a word written on paper
safe safe safe, tuck it inside of every lapel
i carry your love like a candleless flame
through the rooms of my house in the palm of my
hand. ok, yes: this could be a lightning miracle dive
that burns too fast. a darling sparkling in the hall.
a kamikaze of light & hurt & impulse. but here’s my
confidence: I’ve got flint, faith, a penchant for good
endings. two strong hands. let’s both of us sit in the
glow for a little while. discover the untethering, the
miracle of open windows, my heart wide as a bell for
you, chiming all through brooklyn. and if perhaps
you like the open windows and would rather leave,
I will still smile my joy at every burning coastline
knowing that while we drove to dinner or walked the
dog, or slow danced in the kitchen at the farm, I felt
like a million bucks just thumbing the hem of your
collar, a thief, a spark
Language Barrier
I read that in Japanese there is a word
for the light that passes through the trees
I wish I had a word for the way you look at me
I could say your eyes are the sound
of wooden chimes in winter
or the dust of the thicket awakening from sunbeams
when the snow clears
I want to say something, some accurate alchemy,
Some kind of splendor
to mirror in syntax
the kind of ceremony in your eye patterns
when you study my face in bed,
like I am being understood from the ground up
What kind of magic are you
The Last Time It Was Good
Your friends got married on a campground
in southern Washington.
it felt like a cool kids’ summer camp
I was too poor to ever go to.
The wedding was beautiful.
The tables had perfectly homemade centerpieces,
the flowers—fresh from the market and placed playfully
in mason jars, bluegrass music
floating in and out of the barn.
The bride and groom took a rowboat on the lake that said
“Just Married” on the back. It was so
tender and wholesome. I felt privileged to go.
So naturally, I got shit-faced and wore
a nurse hat all night
I laughed obnoxiously and asked multiple times
if there was a surgeon in the room
so I could have a “heart-to-heart” with someone.
I think my boob came out at some point
while I was jump dancing.
Within the hour, I was crying rivers
about my childhood
You know,
A typical saturday
I woke up, cotton-mouthed and hollow
my head pounding from the first light of morning,
piercing through the cabin windows at 5 a.m.
I squinted my eyes as I opened the cabin door
Ready to make the trek to the main house for some water.
You stirred by the noise of the door, likely exhausted
by assuaging the blow of my alcohol-induced trauma parade
We had been fighting a lot around that time, always
coming to the conclusion that maybe we were too different
I was too soft, and you were too cool and the glow of two years had long become pale, but We will fight this! and Love will prevail!
We loved each other like an ongoing apology.
I was the only one awake when I stepped
onto the grass in my socks
My breath involuntarily pulled itself back into my body.
I had walked into a photo of a lake, quiet and dreamlike
The fog of the morning wrapped
around the edges of the water
Like a Bob Ross painting or a movie with Rachel McAdams
My mouth fell onto my kneecaps and I swiveled
around like a child in my socks and hopped
onto the mattress. Hangover be damned,
this was too beautiful to be selfishly observed.
You mirrored my enthusiasm for the glow
and the fog and the dream, suggested we
take one of the green camp rowboats out onto the lake.
I remember that morning vividly
my eyes crusted from crying
Staring across from you
your cheeks smudged with campfire ash.
We smiled weakly at each other,
and I told myself we were good.
I promised I would stop drinking so much.
You believed me.
I looked over the boat at my reflection in the water.
I looked kind of happy
for someone who was drowning.
THREE
Congratulations, you are bipolar
Explanation of How Things Work
My heart, a mansion
Too many rooms
Not enough warm
shuttered big and blue
My heart a mansion
Too many rooms
Crawled into myself
Burned the roof
My father, kite string
Tied taut across yard
Encircled around my neck
Now I never forget
I never forget
Grief Is a Sundress and I Am Starving
You stood in the kitchen doorway just before bed. I rested my body in a gentle lean against your back, after a year of crying. The sand of last Summer. Like a ghost without a bedroom, finding a wall. I wanted to tell you that I tried my best to get up from the indent in the couch where I spent October. And the parties. And Christmas, my love, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t, and I wanted to and I want you to know that. My body is a crater in the living room, and you are a perfect moon, and I am going to ruin you. Imagine your heart as a Hitchcock movie, ok? Imagine a shower curtain. My brain is a lurking shadow. Crooked, sometimes not there. When I was six and they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my eyes got big and I said: SPACE. There is no more room in my head. I wanted to write something redemptive tonight, but the shame is so loud, it has become thick in my eardrum, I could paint the room with it. Gigantic. I buried a hatchet / it’s coming up lavender / the future is unwritten / the past is a corridor I’m at the exit, she sings. Will my brain hum itself into not eating again? Will I monster myself in the dark? I can spin for days, it’s actually quite amazing. Seventy-two hours, I’m talking. No sleep, no appetite. Forced spinach & threw it up. Did you want to know these things? Is this helpful?
+
Ok, fine, I’ll try something different. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to being a black hole. The safety of throwing yourself into a window. Ok, here we go. Like jumping off a cliff into the river: I have nice fingernails? I’m trying to take care of myself? I drink less now? this feels terrible. Like eating celery. Lucille Clifton says: Say it clear and it will be beautiful. OK, Lucille. I had a manic episode that lasted for months. I was not on a boat in Spain eating tapas at the end of it, I was exhausted. An ocean of concrete and sitting in my own shit. I don’t know if that is beautiful. I don’t know what it is like to love me. Probably like having knives for hands and wanting to itch your back. Or caring for a lion that doesn’t know it is dying and is also going to kill you on accident. I have never been soft & slow like a moonrise. But I guess this is the part where I say “it’s a process.” That is a smart thing to say. Pragmatic. I am doing my best and you are a patient song. The one that sings about Walden and burning trash on the beach. My brain might trick me into my speed brain again, maybe next summer or some unsuspecting weekend in LA, but I am a person that exists, and I took a shower today. And maybe tomorrow I will eat a full meal. There is always a thing or a dad that says “you are a piece of shit,” boring their own hell into my head, and yes, the brain is a disappointing masterpiece, but hopefully I get better each time and learn how to stuff socks in the mouths of monsters. Hopefully there is enough chocolate and TV marathoning and crying and unlearning to get through life, and every time it gets just a little bit easier.