Ninety (1).

Eighty-nine. Here.

I am done panicking
about time
and bad attic dreams.
I give myself flowers, chocolates,
orgasms. Turning the room pink.
There comes a point
where you don't want
to explain yourself to anybody.

Eighty-eight.

I love you.
Let's move
west.

No. 6.

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY.

Eighty-seven.

If I can't have love, then at least
give me something that feels like a car crash.









[image by Jenna Popoli]

No. 5.

I don't believe in god, I don't believe in romantic love. But I do believe in kindness. Kindness is my religion.

No. 4.

I don't want to want the things that I want.

No. 3.

I am sitting on my couch with an unfinished drawing of an antler wrapped in ribbon and words in my lap, and I say to my friend, "You know, I don't even believe in love anymore. As stupid as that probably sounds." And I think about how often I write about it, how often its themes trickle their way into whatever I draw/paint/make messes out of, and I wonder if I'm a liar. I think that I'm a liar. Either because of what I said to her, or because of what I make, or because I keep telling myself that love is a myth, blah blah biology, pheromones, etc. I love someone. He is about my height and temperament and my stomach hurts in a good-bad way when I think I love you but I don't say it because he doesn't say it and I don't think he loves me back so instead I tell myself that love is body science. How's that for a cop-out explanation? I mean it though, just like I mean it when I say that I want to be wrong.

(See also: Why I have not posted a poem here in over a month.)

Eighty-six.

You know how they say
all the lasting couples look
as though they're related?
I look for your eyes in every girl
I pass on the street,
trying to find your match.
I'll even smile at them
to try to catch one back
so I can inspect the shape
of their teeth.

I crave an adventure,
and I mean that
exactly how it sounds.
Other things.
I crave other things.

This is honesty.
But honesty
is not what you want.

I carry this
like the worst secret
I've ever had.

It was just so impossible,
kissing you, my back against
ocean rock.
The scrapes I took away
by the time the moon
was up. I wonder what your neighbors
thought of me; some mornings
the light had barely
been out.

006.

Art is only dangerous when it's obvious.

Eighty-five.

I do not want you
to remember me.
Even that much
is not deserved.

I want to love
Massachusetts,
and nothing else.

005.

004.

No. 2.

Every Sunday brings one of two things. A hollow crater in my gut that I imagine has remnants of moth wings clinging to the walls (and maybedefinitely even one or two still flying around very much alive), or, a wish-wash in-out breath-sigh in my heart (I hate using the word "heart" to describe anything, but in all honesty, the feeling seems to be situated in that particular area of my chest).

Today is Sunday, and I have both, and I don't know what this means. I say that a lot lately. I don't know what this means.

Also, lately, everything that I do has an attached emotion. I go to work and that means joy. I get on the train and that means anxious. I get off the train and that means missing. Actually, everything that I can feel or describe to you in the last weeks is somewhere between those three words.

I've been taking pictures, here and there. Talking to strangers. Getting pieces of poems caught in my head instead of pieces of songs. Like, "I try. I do. I try and try." Yes, it is that simple, and yes, that is both good and bad. "Hello, darling, welcome home." Same poem, different endings, at least if you apply it here. Where am I? And you? I want to call you home again. Simple.

Eighty-four.

I will always consider the ocean
ours.

No. 1.

Let's try something new. If it doesn't work, we cross it out, pretend it never happened. I feel like I've done this before. I know I have done this before.

It comes down to the simplicities: Single-word descriptions, springtime managing to make this rotten little town look pretty, neverenoughsleep, and the fact that I have forgotten to eat dinner for a handful of nights in a row. It isn't as if I'm doing this on purpose, I'm well past the foolish age of doing damaging things to myself on purpose, but if I've learned anything in the last months, it's that intent means exactly shit.

My phone's battery is dying and this is more bad timing, but it's not as if I ever call up anyone with these burdens this anyway. Instead, I am sitting here fighting a panic attack (side note: If a panic attack were an animal, what would it be? A wolf? A crocodile? The mouth of a whale? Something with either too many teeth or a whole lot of uncomfortable space, that's for sure), assigning numbers, and writing stupid lines like:

It isn't as if I'm trying to leave myself
all over your life.

And leaving it at that. Where the hell else is it going to be left at anyway, at this point?

Well, at least I have something to say again.

Eighty-three.

Dear god.
I do not speak to you.
I do not necessarily believe
in most things, but sometimes
I feel like I have to.
If you exist, then you know life
and you know that people occasionally need
to believe in something outside
of themselves.

Dear god.
There is a lot of death, lately.
I am not sure what to do with it.
Everyone keeps saying to me,
"Are you breathing?"
And I take a moment to measure the air,
and I still cannot find a non-scientific
answer.

Dear god.
I am sorry that I can't capitalize.
I like to think of myself
as a brave person. You and I both know
that this is not always the case,
and I often do not know who to apologize to
for my cowardice. Myself, maybe.
It is only me that is left with the Loss.
I am getting scared.

Dear god.
I am making many things, but again,
I'm not sure what to do with them.
Once upon a time, there was always a place.
Hand, heart, home.
The other question:
"How are you?" Shattered.
The word is both smaller and larger
than myself.

Dear god.
The nightmares only stop
when I ask you to make them stop
and I wake up feeling okay
but then I stand up
and there are the tidal waves.
I am sorry that I ask you for things.
I am sorry that I asked him for things.
Grace came from you both.

Dear god.
This is me trying to be optimistic.
I fell out of love with life for a long while.
Add this to my apology list.
I am not certain, but I think that love
means bravery, and bravery means life,
but I can not figure out
if this means that love equals life.
If that's the case,
I guess I'm pretty screwed.

Dear god.
If I promise to believe in you forever,
will you tell me what to do?

Eighty-two.

How lucky I was. How sorry I am to have taken it for granted.

Eighty-one.

I would pretend so hard
that you couldn't reach me.
A mountain
circled with lava
on an island
in an ocean
filled with dragons.
It was never true.

Eighty.

The fruit on the kitchen table,
turning brown, that you didn't buy
for yourself, and the orange towel
taken from the closet and hung
next to yours. You cannot bring yourself
to touch them.

Seventy-nine. Faster, now.

You've finally drawn too many waves
and you weren't paying close enough attention
and they're swallowing you up,
instead of the sparrows and farmhouses,
pounding into your lungs,
you thought the before was uncomfortable?
You thought that a strained hour was bad?
Here, the dreams about whales
that you can no longer tell him,
the painting in your kitchen from the weekend away,
too many songs, too many oceansides,
too many open fields, too many beautiful places.
His hands that never failed to ground you,
all of the times you told him not to stare,
the gingham of his shirt that you first wrote about,
the battles that you should have fought louder,
god, how everything should have been louder.
Everything should have been so much louder.

Seventy-eight.

I am strong, I am strong, I am strong.

Seventy-seven. Sea creatures turning into monsters turning into buildings.

I've made more drawings
in the last two weeks
than I did in the entirety
of our first year together.
All of it is disgustingly
bittersweet:
The sound of bathwater,
the lack of air conditioning,
the bowl of rotting fruit
positioned in the exact center
of the kitchen table,
and everything
that I no longer believe in.

It's lonely, living here.
I have my cat and two-dozen
sketchbooks, and he wakes me
with a hand on my thigh
when I'm whimpering in nightmares,
but on any given day
I am a solitary creature,
with or without choice.
I keep my shoes in a pile
in a separate bedroom
because you can never have
too many immediately accessible things
to walk away on.

Seventy-six.

It's up to you
to find me.