ghosts disguised as wisps of smoke rise
float into your waiting mouth
somewhere there must be a lake without anything in it,
but there's nothing like this stillness;
swallowing up every last trail of white
that plumes from the shine into pervading darkness

A spider crawled from the pile of last week's dirty laundry this morning and I didn't even have the energy to kill it.
Meeting someone is like taking drugs
it sucks up all my strength at once, and then I'm lost laying in bed for hours by the phone.

I leave early, slam your car door,
scram off to places that don't
Make me choke on my words.
I'm sorry I have so many questions
It's just that  people like you split me open
and
I won't do that for anything.

On nights I don't know where you are
I play music to bare bulbs and blanketed walls
friends howling beside me like the street dogs we are.

You're no glass of cold water, darling.

But it's our third date and I still swallow hard when I meet your eye.
The faucet drips in Nick's bathroom. I listen from the toilet
close my eyes, bare ass cooling on the seat

spring's heat plays the bastard
I sweat caffeine, work with half my head singing a song of yours.
Bile builds fortresses inside my esophagus while I wait.

Someone knocks on the door,
"C'mon Ana let's go,"

We walk to the beach, visit the tide-pools,
You still haven't called so I turn my phone off.
The pools have been ransacked by children
A dead starfish curls, drying around a stone that has been forced through its middle,
the same way we all hold on to the things that kill us.

I turn my phone back on and I don't have any messages.

Daniel

I wanted to tell you—

My mother nags me to take initiative all the time.

Your Volvo slid off the same cliff I speed down

Whenever I endeavor to die

But don’t want get caught dead taking mom’s advice

The paper identified you by your wounds,

As we all learn to identify ourselves;

Broken collarbone, fractured neck, multiple cuts and abrasions

Non-life threatening, it said

The moment you slid your hand between my legs an EKG flat-lined in my head

Phone ringing vaguely, aloof to your struggle

Someone cared about you then,

I’ll bet you sat on that stoop for five hours trying to remember

Who it was

By the time you did, her name was sliding off your tongue and you

Were flailing to catch it,

Bound up in search-and-rescue red

You called your mom and she called the police.

L3: The third vertebra does more than you’d think

Christopher Reeve was superman and even he fucked that one up falling off a horse,

I don’t have to remove a tube to kiss you or

Push you down the street in wheelchair

The doctors kept saying LUCKY

Like you’re so LUCKY, someone’s looking out for you

When you smile the gap between your teeth

Takes off my shirt

You’re so LUCKY and I’m so LUCKY

I’ll tumble down the brush in place of you one day and

Your mother will cry when you marry

A girl who doesn’t know

How you waited on that stoop for five hours

Trying to place a call.

THINKING I WOULD NEVER NOTICE

Some one sucks the marrow from my bones,

Is it you?

Cruel impaler, leaning over me in sleep

The fingers I loved so on black and white keys 

Stretch, grotesque, peeling back my skin 

Crack my ribs, tie your bib, suck me dry

Every day I feel more empty

you have the nerve to ask me why.

Untitled 9

"Do they have you taking lithium now?" my mother asks.

Good morning to you too. My eyes would roll but she has a point —I couldn't even complete the task of pouring her newest eastern remedy into a tablespoon without dribbling bits of purple nectar all over the marble counter. She sighs, tears a paper towel off its roll.

I woke up healthy enough after a week of bedridden illness to a batch of lesions bubbling up on my face. Impetigo is a skin infection most common in infants and toddlers. I'm sick twice a month at least. My immune system has its defects. Mom frets; scours the internet for magic potions to make them go away. My hands just fucking shake.

"I don't think so."
"What do you mean you don't think so?"
"I just take what they give me."
Well are you bi-polar or depressed?"
"Uh...
depressed I guess. I don't know."
"Is that what you tell Dr. Ferguson?
"Sure."
"Ok good, no lithium then. So what's wrong with your hands?"

I down the syrup that made it into the spoon. It's over-sweet, mouth now slicked with sugary slime. I think about smiling at my mom, letting the dark red syrup squeeze through my teeth, down my chin.

I meet her eyes once more, nothing like mine. I tell her I feel better already, kiss her cheek, turn towards the door. My vision is blurry, my face is blistering, my hands quake uncontrollably as I reach for the knob.

Dream 3

I dreamt you were in the passenger seat, knees
jammed against my coffee-spill-stained mahogany dashboard.

animals passionate as we are should not be confined to such small spaces
I could tell exactly where we were driving: southbound on the 101,
by the bridge where they found scattered remains of a woman 
the same year I graduated high school and you blew out 28 candles.

Crow black clothes don’t necessarily suit your hair, you know. I’m just being sour.

You're a coward: can’t even look me in the eye 

We were going again together last night; my dreams abased us both

but only I woke abject, victim to my own absurdist regime

memory apical, mind distressed. 

Its not fair how you look so young, 
my hands lift up, possessed 
to hold you, and I

fold them in my lap.

Your eyes talk so much more than you do, 
joke less and less and less. 

I held your hand while we got dressed and shook the sex smell off with smoke

at work you said you had to go,

staring at my mouth to drive it home. 

Exegsis

You are not my lover, Name omitted.  Even with hands hot and heavy on my hips. I don’t let anyone touch me. You don’t know how I pinch at that skin in anguish because you don't know who I am. You are not my friend, Name omitted, but I felt you in my loins last night. I read your words like rolling up my sleeve for the first time. Everything after was just tapping the syringe. In the morning I learned how to be broken by you, but I still don’t know your middle name.

Stray dogs collide for a moment to smell each other’s groins. I have buried my muzzle in the nape of your corduroy coat. I know your scent: orphan; boy; mutt. I carry it in my gut as dogs do. You sleep in the garbage pile by the railroad. You are not my lover, Name omitted, but your scent sticks to my face. The pound howls out into darkness and we shrug it off. Trouble brews in silver spoons; your absence in my blood.
Still, I let sleeping dogs lie.