232. Chronological

I.
You've done this before.
Taken airplanes as your religion,
held your baptism at one thousand feet.
Cleansed anew for each city.
It is not strictly animal; you fall in love
often and well.

II.
It is painful to navigate
through new people.
The surprise at the ache
when they do not touch you
goodbye.

III.
I want to erupt into shivers, collapse
in joy, be pulled back to earth
at the sound of a voice
that knows my spine and instincts
as well as any flight path.

IV.
The syllables of
brav-er-y
are familiar to our mouths
yet what we think about the most
is how we are going
to leave.

231. Japan

Every body I've ever been with
has been more a mirror
than a lover. In my day dreams
I am doused in white and transform
into storm. In my night dreams,
bravery is carved
into my palms a thousand times
and my blood is the color of winters
that I have no interest
in being anymore.

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.