Truth/Stars/Rain
Heatwavelength
These days no shower is hot enough.
Every millimeter of me not red under the spray
is a study of gooseflesh topography,
an untouched map that begs for smoothing
before its mountains exhaust themselves.
These days I stand over the kettle
just for the heat of its scream,
and listen for the words in the smoke.
I want to follow it back to its fire,
like maybe that’ll be warmth enough
for my iced bones. Do you want to melt,
the sun asks, because I’ll help how I can,
but you have to come closer, soon
and I close the curtains and tie off the quilt
over my head. Let my lungs cloud
for the sky won’t. Don’t taunt me, star.
If I could supernova, my god.
Letter to Radiation Flowers
Yeah, I know, it’s a weird title, but I couldn’t think of what else to call it. Letter to… Chernobyl Resident X? Letter to Nuclear Plant Employee? It all fits but it’s all Weird.
Continue readingThe Long Way Home (Is Still Going Home): A Music Review
A reflection on “Cornelia Street” and “Death by a Thousand Cuts” by Taylor Swift. Because it’s that kind of day.
Continue readingTo Be Said
Written as a diary entry late last night, so I suppose the apt opener is, “Dear Me,”
Letter to Funny Hands
I wanted every cold night to last forever. I wanted to learn to let myself unravel like old gloves, held in your funny hands.
Letting it Close
The fingers are still hanging open.
Like the screen door.
Like the sentence.
Ready for you to slip
in, close them, finish,
tie up loose ends and
make this have a better ending.
Letter to My Twin Size Bed
I wonder if I will wake to find myself missing the feeling of not having anywhere to go,
not having anywhere to leave.
Missing the Missing
I haven’t been outside in 42 hours.
I keep closing my eyes and seeing cornfields.
I know this city is beautiful, objectively,
even subjectively, if you get me tipsy and out
late at night when I can see the stars
needling their way through the thick dark
that closes over us like a hand.
I pretend the callouses brushing my shoulders
are God’s fingers, and not those
of some faceless something.
I know I used to say its name in my sleep.
I know I used to say it was the only thing I wanted,
to sit at this city’s knees and listen to its stories,
let it comb its fingers through my hair.
But it never did those things.
I couldn’t find the right doorstep,
or the right window, to crawl through
and slip into its bed, wrap my arms around it
and tuck my cold toes against its ankles.
I wake up alone, and roll over, bury my face
into the pillow so the sun can’t see my shame.
I tried to love it, for a while,
even when my love letters went unanswered,
but sometimes you just get tired
of waiting by the mailbox in the cold,
so I started thinking about colder places
where the frost was staved off by the fireplace
and the earth outside stretched on for miles,
gold and silver and smooth as icing.
I don’t know why I always want to leave
the places that feel most like home.
I don’t know if I’m afraid I’m missing something more,
or if I don’t want to be afraid of missing that.
But here I am now, in a place
that will never love me back,
and all I want is to go home,
turn back the clock, say
I’m sorry, I never meant to go,
I just didn’t know how to distinguish
being held from being trapped,
and if you’ll have me back, I promise,
I’m yours to keep, I always was.
poetgoes 