230. For A.

I've broken my legs again.
I haven't been making it home.
I've decided to let the heart
go back to Virginia. Part of it,
anyway, the one that never stopped
tip-toeing into the dreams
of monsters and knives and
mothers. I hear her voice
for the first time in four years.
There is no parachute
for that.

229. August 16th, Salem, Moon: Waxing

At this stage of adulthood
I cry so infrequently, quarterly
at best, that the occurrences have become a thing
I cannot help but document.

I am crying and facing the northwest wall of my bedroom
and noticing the one-inch space where the paint beneath
wants us to remember its past life.
I am in the bathroom at work feeling
like a bit of an idiot.
I am at the shore and it feels as though my bones
are trying to shake their way out of my skin.
I am crying at 9:41 P.M. and it is
startling. And a Thursday.

And so forth.
I do not enjoy being reminded that I am human,
but I hear that no one is fed a life
solely consisting of cups filled with joy.

Something here runneth over. Sometimes
I'm suffocating, regardless of which town
my feet whisper home to. I will wake up
in the middle of the night and note
that there is not a person in an eighty-seven mile radius
whom I can tell about the blue paint,
or how my sister came home last week, or how
I occasionally get so goddamned lonely
that I want nothing more than to be held
but my pride has grown into an awful beast
that won't let me call out anyone's name.

228.

The last time I felt absence,
a well, an echo? The way you can't sit still
is a reminder of this
and I am not quite sure
where I am supposed to bring you.
My reappearances have poor timing,
I know. We all want
to be in two places at once.
Lord knows which one of us
is the dragon.

227.

The worst thing about being
a haunted house? It's
exhausting. Don't get lost here,
nothing is safe, et cetera.
I want to write a decent poem
and fall asleep
at the bottom of the stairs.
No, I want to live outdoors.
Always almost there.
The things I miss don't taste
like anything.

226.

Which nerve was it
running across your spine
that found me after a decade?
I do not know how to carry
anything beyond
a reasonable shelf life
and here you are again
trying to teach me the vocabulary
of apologies
when I'd thought we left this
with empty pockets.
Should I tell you about the things
I owe other people
or the ones that are owed
to my own stomach, palms,
bed? Yes, you were
one of the good ones.
Tell me that's all you needed
to hear.

225.

Once,
I compared you
to the loch ness monster
and you raised your head
out of the water
so far towards the sky
that we all thought
you would snap your neck
trying to prove us wrong.

224. Taxi

All of these tornadoes
In the fields of your hair
In my street
In our spit.
As if your body
Was still mine
To touch.