Poetry

I’ve been wearing fear like armor 

Painting it to look like Love 

Walking around with terror clunking up against each point of articulation 

What-ifs and no-buts  

Tiny human lives snarled in my rib cage  

Vines I desperately wish would bloom  

But am so afraid will shrivel  

Or worse be cut  

With hatchet or hacksaw 

Doused in poison  

Weedkiller  

Grow along tracks left by the blood that came before 

I call my plate armor of fear love 

Because I wouldn’t be afraid if I did not love them 

and for this reason I cannot seem to find the straps and loops and buckles that would let this weight fall from me  

This weight that does not belong to me 

Weights in a whirlpool  

And I’ve been treading water for so long  

The only person I can save is myself 

Prove at least 

That that can be done 

Climbing trees 

Fingers in the river 

Poetry tapped out on a phone plagued with obsolescence  

I’ve written good poetry before 

This isn’t anything like that 

Just down to my bones needing to know  

Is it enough  

Enough 

Enough  

Needing to know  

What is enough 

Enough  

Enough 

Have I had enough 

Enough  

Enough 

I wish I could save you  

I wish I could pull you into my rib cage where your roots wrap around my bones and make myself a life jacket 

Float you gently downstream so you can land on the soft shore of belonging  

But you have to learn how to swim 

And I’m sorry 

It’s not fair 

No one should have ever thrown you in 

Where the water is fast 

And too deep for little legs 

You cannot touch 

Or find which way is up  

But swim, darling  

Swim, my love 

Swim, baby  

Please 

I cannot tread this water beside you  

If I have to watch you drown  

But that too is a lie  

A lie like Fear-Love 

Because I will if I have to  

I won’t move an inch  

I won’t blink  

I’ll hold your hand the whole way down  

If all I can be is your witness 

I won’t miss a second  

So I am afraid  

I am so afraid  

And one day I have to put it down 

Soon 

Because I can’t drown with you  

And I’m sorry for that too 

You kissed me  

And I saw in flaring red  

Our two hearts  

Beating like fists upon the walls of our sternums 

Too far apart  

Reaching  

Like  

Yearning  

And I pressed myself  

Clavicle to clavicle  

With the softness of the body that holds you  

The one that bears you around this living world  

Until the distance closed to inches  

Bones apart  

And I reached 

Like 

Yearning  

For your hands 

Pressed our palms together  

Until we could feel our heartbeats there too  

A rhythm of skin and blood  

Held between our fingers 

The ones that let us touch this living world  

The distance closed to millimeters 

Skin apart   

And I kissed you 

Like  

Yearning   

I hang myself from the sky  

Feet brushing the sand 

Toes dragging rivers 

The rain rivulets down my skin  

Can’t taste the salt but it’s there  

Couldn’t stand taller if I tried 

Can’t you see this is what I always was 

When I dreamed this to sleep it was beautiful 

But why are you sad? 

Can’t you see my ribs are blooming into ecosystems spreading like paint into life beyond what 

just one body could contain 

I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive  

There is a purple night approaching  

I feel it press down  

A midnight veil  

But today my eyes are blue 

You see the way the paint blends where it touches? More than kissing  

A dark bright throat  

(Cerulean) 

And beneath  

Atop a cream clavicle of cloud tops 

Tree tops weave a bodice  

Ancient green  

The sun peaks out the threads of deep emerald 

Glowing like stained glass 

That’s me! Do you see? The light? It’s mine  

It’s warm  

And low  

So low the dirt glows red  

Red like an ocean  

Wine at the bottom as dark as the midnight above  

And the paint smears 

And the paint blends 

And it’s more than kissing  

I am the in between  

And the in between is everything  

My mouth holds no breath  

My lips are gone  

But don’t you see the way my lungs inhale this twilight dusk  

The way the wind spreads the scent of moss 

The wet loamy earth  

The whispering leaves  

I have been loved for my green  

I have been loved for my gold  

I have been envied for that bright white blue that burns me from inside until I am scar tissue 

where softness was  

But do you love the sunset for the single streak of pink  

(Even if it’s your favorite color) 

My teeth have fallen into the ocean 

I think to make room for stars  

Do you see them? 

They will be found one day 

A girl will dress herself to ask in her supplication for their shape to be loaned to her own  

She will pray for sharpness 

For her bite to make bleed those who pretend their skin cannot be broken 

Perhaps she will break with the biting  

Perhaps she will bleed with the bleeding  

There 

Do you hear it 

Another breath 

Do you smell it? 

Wood to soil  

Soil to bloom  

Sweet all the way down  

The girl will come back 

Or her daughter 

Her daughters daughter  

Pray for something new  

Ask the teeth to take their gift back 

Seek again the softness that once lay beneath 

She will find me  

Spread in streaks of color across the sky  

More than kissing  

And see herself in the mirror above  

She will hang herself in the sky 

Split her rib cage open 

And smear  

And smear 

And smear 

The two of us 

More than two 

More than kissing

I taught myself forgetting 

When time was about enduring  

My life an extended lesson in fast forwarding  

But how am I supposed to bear holes built into the bottom of my memory 

A cheese grater  

Garbage disposal  

Spinal cord 

If I could lose tonight 

Any night with you 

What have I already forgotten  

In the crinkles of your laughter on a tipsy evening 

Stars spinning  

Knees touching 

What have I lost in homemade dinners 

Drives draped over your shoulder 

Fingers laced downtown walks 

Tonight: 

The rain patters soft on metal  

Cars splash through puddles of moonlight  

White-silver arcing into the inky air  

A liquid fabric draped across the dark 

Streaks of refraction glitter across the asphalt 

Motors obnoxious  

The window is open  

We always let the outside in 

Indoor kids with wolves for hearts 

In between ads for AirPods and medications with fatal side effects music made for lesbians 

cycles through at a step-lilt-swish of indie folk soul-in-the voice crooners 

You are beautiful because you are always beautiful  

And because there is peace where the crease between your brows normally dips 

The canyon of worry stretched smooth by sleep  

Lax in the glow of Billie Eilish and Lord Huron 

Curled into my chest  

I read to you 

Did all the voices 

Getting quieter as your breathing evened 

I showed you my tits before you fell asleep on them 

You laughed  

Somehow my favorite reaction to my own nudity  

Absurdly alive together 

If forgetting is inevitable then let me keep this: 

The press of your rib cage with every soft breath  

Your fingers tangled in my t-shirt  

(Your t-shirt I’m just wearing it) 

Your knee caught on the indentation of my hip  

My heartbeat whispers a drum line  

Mi alma mi Vida mi alma mi Vida  

Cariño Querida Cariño Querida 

I will find dreams in your arms softer than in my own bed  

I will forget them when I wake  

Unlike the nightmares I catalogue for future horror movies in a notebook on my nightstand 

Replaying for coworkers like a campfire story  

What lingers I shake off 

What fades I cling to 

Tomorrow:  

We will make new memories 

We will kiss and eat and laugh and sleep  

Whatever I forget we will do again  

I will write again 

Living dirt on borrowed time  

Future trees that for now 

Laugh and dance and sing and love and cry  

I let you in 

And slip into the river