243. The portraits I draw of myself in your absence.

I would like to have less edges.
I would like to be easier
to love, or simply stand next to.
When they find the wreckage,
remember
there are always harder things
happening somewhere else,
and there is light, light,
light.

242. I dream about my lover.

We are not speaking.
I am many colors
when he appears.
First, a diner, a bar,
my front lawn. He does not give
me his voice. I do not want to look up,
do not want to see how close
our bodies are. If I do, once,

he says, You broke my heart.
I begin:
No, no
that's not the way it happened,
and that is not the way
you would say it. 
But his voice
is already gone and I
am walking down the street. He follows,
staying behind, he thinks I can't see him
and every time we are on this road,
it is erupting in green, new.
Nobody has touched this yet.
No cars, everything is growing into
where it is supposed to be.

Then, it is a new room
and he has turned into someone else.
Something more tender, more present.
We tie ourselves together with thin pieces
of silver, kiss each others' wrists goodnight.
We are afraid of waking up
and forgetting.
In the morning, he's changed again,
a small dead bird, and I go outside
and mourn to the first stranger I find.
I wrap his body in plastic,
worry out loud that his soul hasn't gotten out yet,
that he won't be able to come back
to me as something else,

but I have nothing better
to bury him in.

241. A fraction of a poem in response to the fraction of which you are able to give me, and the fraction you take away.

I am the princess
cutting the heads off the beast,
and I am the queen
with my hands in my lap,
waiting for you to come home.
No, I cannot see how we will collect
all the cups, dig our hearts out
of the earth and say, "let's go."
I see the dead in my dreams
and hang myself from trees,
hands like auroras.

240. XVI

Good,
I hope you see me as
the tower. I want you
to take one look at me
and know
what I could make
crumble.

-

(I am going to miss you so very much.)

239. This time, I put out the fire.

For all of our synchronicities and golden threads,
I have not even seen your hometown.
I'd like to learn about the sounds
your chest makes, what elements exactly
are needed to create such a person.

The morning finds my crown
on the floor. When we are good,
your body is the hand of a clock
striking into my hour and we are brilliant,
explosive, all of the fireworks
brought to the party. When we are bad,
it takes you longer to make your way back
to me and I search your skin
for the remnants of other people.

Inhaling, I taste you in my throat.
One of us is the trophy, here.

238. 2013

January.
Being eaten alive,
my mother's suicide,
all of the cake and disappearances
after.

February.
My birthday.
The sound of a crash
coming from the kitchen.

March.
Counting years (ten, nineteen).
When he left, they told me
I should celebrate.

April.
The names I gave myself
and the places I forgot them
in.

May.
There is too much quiet
here.

June.
The sun found my skin
again. Discipline. I do not know
where I am.

July.
I burned your life
to the ground.
I'm sorry.

August.
I am almost far enough
away.

September.
Cancer, a body covered
in blossoms.
Help me be better.

October.
Nobody ever stays dead.

November.
Filling holes in the front yard.
I don't mean to love you still.
Turn red, turn
white.

December.
Honesty
that we are done
outrunning. Finally,
finally.